Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

We are very happy on these Benches to support this amendment. We all know the grim scale of fraud, now our most common crime. Authorised push payment scams are driven by online platforms, adverts on social media fuelling shopping and investment frauds, and hacked accounts enabling ticket scams. Yet, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, platforms such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, can still take six weeks to remove illegal content, allowing scammers to resurface again and again—so-called “life-boating”.

This amendment is designed to cut through that inertia. It would provide a clear statutory duty of care on tech and telecom firms to prevent scams at source, using their own AI and tools. It would also require them to share the financial burden with payment providers, which must already imburse many victims of authorised push payment fraud. That seems a fair step, given that the platforms host most of the scams and profit from the engagement that keeps users scrolling. Weak voluntary charters, non-binding Ofcom guidance and even the Online Safety Act’s proportionate measures have let these firms do the bare minimum—reacting to reports rather than proactively detecting fraud through verification, AI-driven scans and systematic audits. Big tech has unparalleled know-how—the AI, software and manpower to spot fraudster patterns and take them down. Banks cannot fight this alone and nor can the police. This amendment would compel these companies to protect their users, stopping scams upstream.

We hope that the Government’s fraud strategy follows the example of this amendment and goes even further with a failure to prevent fraud offence, backed by strong fines and tougher binding Ofcom standards. Meanwhile, Amendment 367 would provide some timely backbone, giving tech and telecom firms a real incentive to act swiftly before yet more victims lose potentially everything.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. I want to add a brief footnote to the speech that he made in support. In an earlier debate, the Minister was very complimentary about the work of the fraud committee on which we both served, and he can convert that praise into action by accepting one of the recommendations which we made in our report.

It is worth quoting the relevant sections of the report that led up to that recommendation. On page 162, paragraph 57 states:

“However, banks are the last link in the fraud chain and cannot be expected to foot the fraud bill alone”.


Then we come on to our recommendation:

“To incentivise companies to act on fraud and more accurately reflect the balance of responsibility for fraud, the Government must establish a mechanism by which fraud-enabling sectors—in addition to the outgoing and recipient PSP—are required to contribute to the costs of reimbursement in cases where their platforms and services helped to facilitate the fraud”.


That is a very clear recommendation. We came to that conclusion after taking evidence from, for example, TSB and academics. They all made the point that there was absolutely no incentive on the part of the telecommunications companies to do anything, because their business case rested on generating revenue and they faced no penalties. That was our recommendation.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. Like him, I served on the Select Committee on fraud, ably chaired by my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes, that produced a very substantial document indeed. After we produced our report, the Government published a consultation document headed Preventing the Use of SIM Farms for Fraud. In December 2023, the Government published their response to that document. I want to quote briefly from three paragraphs of that response.

Referring to the responses they got, the Government said:

“A few responses noted that banning physical SIM farms alone is likely to result in displacement to eSIM farms”,


which is the point that has just been made. They went on:

“However they acknowledged that if eSIMs were included to the proposed ban, the Government’s definition of SIM farms should be adapted to ensure it excludes smartphones that can hold more than four eSIMs”.


The Government’s response to that section was:

“Responses noted that the definition could also include eSIMs and mobile apps. However, we did not receive sufficient evidence at consultation to include them in a proposed ban, due to their complexity and ongoing pace of development. This could be further addressed by the proposed powers to extend the ban to other forms of telecommunications equipment and articles used to perpetrate fraud”.


They referred to a further final paragraph headed “Government response”:

“The Government considers it important to ensure that the ban is flexible and can be used to rapidly prohibit other types of technology where these are identified in the future. Some such technologies are mentioned above, whilst others may emerge in future and the Government will continue to review fraud methodologies closely for changing patterns and new technologies being used, such as eSIM farms and others. However, the Government agrees with respondents that any powers to ban through secondary legislation ought to have clear parameters for their use”.


That was the last Administration, of course, and it would be helpful to know whether the Government agree with that line.

The question I want to ask the Minister is this. Referring to the clauses on SIM farms, Clause 114(4) says:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this section (other than this subsection)”.


Is that in effect giving the Secretary of State powers to introduce by secondary legislation something that the previous Government said should not be done by secondary legislation? I leave that question hanging in the air while the Government seek advice from the Bench to see what the answer is.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 358. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Young of Cookham. Because we are going to be discussing this and a later amendment on fraud, I declare my interest as a director of Santander UK.

It was a huge pleasure and privilege to chair the Lords inquiry into online and digital fraud, which reported in 2022, and I would like to think that we had some impact in raising the issues, which are of huge importance to the public. Fraud is one of the crimes that people are most likely to be victims of. I know the Minister knows that because he is the Anti-Fraud Minister in the department.

Noble Lords have already spoken about the importance of this amendment, the need for the law to be kept up to date as the technology develops, and the fact that allowing as much flexibility in legislation as possible to enable that to happen is important. The reason we talked about the “fraud chain” in the report is that, obviously, people encounter fraud in myriad ways. Fraudsters are, as we have heard, incredibly flexible, and entrepreneurial—for all the wrong reasons. Of course, telecoms—people’s smartphones or phones—is where many people will first encounter the fraudster, who will then try, as we heard in our evidence, to get them away from technology and strike up some kind of relationship which unfortunately ends in people often losing life-changing amounts of money.

I do not want to pre-empt the debate on Amendment 367, which I hope we will also reach today, but the question, perhaps now or for later, is whether the Minister is confident that the previous Government’s and this current Government’s ask of the telecoms industry is strong enough given the frequency with which the public encounter fraud via their telephones. I will ask the question now, but I am sure we will come back to it. We are all waiting for the forthcoming fraud strategy from the Government, which we understand is—I hope—close. Can the Minister give us a little precursor of whether that will impose tougher asks and potential penalties on the telecoms companies for the reasons that we have already heard?

Refugee Accommodation: Move-on Period

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her suggestion; I will certainly examine it. It is important that society as a whole embraces individuals who have come to this country fleeing persecution, hunger, war and destitution.

For those who are not across the detail of this proposal, it is about individuals who have been granted asylum and who are being helped to move on from that into the community to begin their new life with approved asylum status. We are trying to ensure that we evaluate that pilot, monitor it successfully and give due regard to those who are already under the 56-day period, but to look at what tweaks we can make, because there are immense pressures in the system on hotels and the whole House wants us to resolve that as a matter of urgency.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Home Office has reported that in some cases, when the 56 days expire, asylum seekers are simply refusing to leave the hotel. What are the consequences for them?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. For individuals who have been granted asylum, under the pilot we have extended the period from 28 days to 56 days to ensure that transition takes place. We are now tweaking that for certain categories of individual applicants back to 28 days. In a sense, the noble Lord hits a very important point: the asylum claim has been approved, and the period—be it 28 or 56 days—is there for that transition. At the end of that period, the Government have fulfilled their responsibilities in the asylum claim approval and the hand-on period. Therefore, we need to ensure that individuals then begin their new life under their own steam.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for tabling Amendments 78 and 79, to which I have added my name in support. My comments will be brief. I add my voice to those of other noble Lords in the Chamber in appreciation of the debates that we have heard today on the detail of the Bill, which in many ways indicate the interrelatedness of the issues before us, and about what it is to live well together to enable the flourishing of every person throughout their whole lives.

I am very grateful to the Minister for her engagement with me over several months on the matter of kinship care, and I acknowledge the Government’s evolving view on how best to ensure consistent and sustainable support for kinship carers. I appreciate that the Minister is open to further conversations, and I look forward to them.

Part of the challenge is providing a clear, agreed and workable definition of kinship care, and there is more work to be done on this, recognising that Amendment 79 sets out in some way to go about this task. It is about finding the right balance to achieve what is needed in supporting kinship carers and is not so open as to be unworkable in law and unrealistic in affordability. That, to me, is a challenge—it is around the parameters of what kinship care is—but I do not think that it is unresolvable.

However, the longer we take to get to this point, the more lives are being impacted. Kinship carers are overrepresented in the health, education and social care sectors, so the withdrawal from this labour market has an obvious impact on wider society. The north-east region, which I serve, has the highest rates of children in kinship care. The impact of this in real terms, given multiple and systemic factors of inequality, is immense.

Amendment 78 would grant kinship carers the right to take statutory paid leave, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, said, akin to the entitlements of adoptive parents. It would allow them to spend a period of protected time with the children entering their care as they settle into their new arrangements. Further, it would enable caregivers to remain in employment while they adjust to their new responsibilities and continue contributing to the economic growth that this Government strive for.

I again thank the Minister for her willingness to meet me and engage with these amendments. I urge her to carefully consider the difference these amendments would make to the lives of kinship carers, to those growing up in their loving care and to wider society.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who makes a strong case for more support for kinship carers. I added my name to Amendments 135 and 144 to demonstrate cross-party support for a squarer deal for carers.

Before I add a brief word to what has already been said about carers, I add a quick word about Amendment 77, on foster care. A long time ago, my wife and I were registered foster parents in the London Borough of Lambeth. We did short-term fostering, typically when a mother went into hospital to have a child and somebody needed to look after her existing child or children. It is not quite clear from the wording of Amendment 77 how short-term foster parents might qualify if the amendment became law.

If the definition in Amendment 78 was used—namely, that the fostering of a child had to last a year—then short-term foster parents would not qualify, even though they might have been providing short-term fostering for up to a year with a series of different children. Short-term fostering can last from two days to two years. On the other hand, should a two-day short-term fostering spell qualify for leave on its own? Probably not—so, we need a bit of clarity on entitlement if this is to go further.

Asylum Seekers: Accommodation

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in moving asylum seekers from accommodation in hotels.

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

The Government are committed to reducing hotel use through reform of the asylum system, including streamlining asylum processing and establishing the Border Security Command to tackle people-smuggling gangs at source. In the year ending September 2024, 35,651 people were in hotel accommodation, down 36% from September 2023.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful for that reply. Labour’s manifesto said that it would

“end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.

That must be right, as hotels are an expensive and inappropriate solution, but it will be a challenge for the Government as, since July, there are 5,000 more asylum seekers in hotels than there were and all the 35,000 the Minister has just mentioned are likely to get leave to remain. Responsibility currently rests with the Home Office, but do we not need a much more joined-up approach with local government if we are to reduce dependency on hotels, not least because a hotel costs £145 a day per person, whereas so-called dispersed accommodation costs less than 1/10th of that, at £14 a day? Should we not transfer responsibility for asylum seekers in hotels from the Home Office to local authorities, together with the funds, saving public money and enabling those in the hotels to be more integrated with local services when they leave them?

Fighting Fraud (Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee Report)

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Friday 30th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. We are all absolutely delighted that she has made a recovery from her recent hospitalisation and is once again able to take part in our proceedings. The points she made about AI and the skills shortage are well taken. I look forward every weekend to reading her column in the Sunday Times. It is also a pleasure to be reunited with the fraud squad who took part in the committee and to endorse what others have said about the qualities of our chairman and support staff.

The theme running through our inquiry and this debate is the mismatch between, on the one hand, the incidence of fraud and the damage it causes and, on the other, the resources devoted to it. This was well summed up by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, an impressive witness. He said that:

“You could probably times the £80 million by five and you would start to make a small dent in relation to the scale of the problem”.


His comments were reinforced by what Mark Fenhalls, chair of the Bar Council, told us:

“The state has retreated from the investigation and prosecution of fraud over the last 15 years”.


Prosecutions went down from 20,000 a year in 2010 to about 5,000 a few years ago. The government response to our report, while welcome, was drafted by one of our more cautious civil servants:

“We recognise that there needs to be improvements in the response to fraud, from the reporting process through to investigations”.


But, in fairness to the Government, the Minister Tom Tugendhat took a more robust approach when he gave evidence.

Before I sat on this committee, I was doubtful about the success of police and crime commissioners. However, I was impressed by the performance of Mark Shelford, the Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner, and his approach to fraud. I was delighted to read in his report:

“I personally have taken on the national lead role for economic and cybercrime on behalf of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners”.

We need more like him.

I will focus my remarks on authorised push payment fraud and compensation. The Payment Systems Regulator, the PSR, reported that there are more incidents of APP fraud than any other type of fraud in the UK, with 95,000 incidences in the first half of last year and gross losses of £250 million. I wholeheartedly agree with one part of our recommendation in the report, which has been adopted: that the recipient bank should be in the frame as well as the paying bank. The paying bank is acting on the instructions of a legitimate customer. The recipient bank has allowed a fraudster to open an account, almost certainly with false details, or is operating an account on behalf of a money mule, aiding and abetting a crime. If banks devoted the energy with which they pursue noble Lords, who are politically exposed persons, to explain how we got every penny we own to checking up on the authenticity of the new accounts operated by fraudsters, there would be a lot less crime.

I want to refer to an exchange which did not feature in our report. It took place on 10 March last year, when one of our witnesses was Revolut, which is basically in the money transfer business. I asked a question about suspicious authorised push payments:

“What percentage of customers do you convince that it is a fraud and that the payments should stop? To what extent does the customer just go on?”


This was the answer from Nicholas Taylor:

“Our machine learning models correctly identify over 90% of attempted APP fraud … It is incredibly difficult to break the spell. We have all the normal warnings before you make a transfer, but our models detect and block a payment post fact, where we think it is a fraud, and then we make the customer talk to one of our agents. Even after we have directly intervened, 80% of them still go on to make the payment”.


We heard at an IPT breakfast seminar last July that the larger banks have even more sophisticated systems, using behavioural biometrics, data analysis and other technologies to detect fraudulent payments, and their experience is the same. Sadly, as we heard from one of the brave victims who gave evidence to us in Birmingham, at least one victim went ahead despite repeated warnings from her bank. I think that exchange influenced our response to the issue of reimbursement. We said:

“While we recognise the case for mandatory reimbursement of victims of APP fraud, we are concerned that a blanket reimbursement policy may lead to increased levels of moral hazard and fraud, and the perception that it is a ‘victimless crime’. In some cases, it may even lead directly to new avenues for APP-reimbursement frauds”.


We asked the Government to revise their proposals to legislate to allow the PSR to mandate blanket reimbursement of APP fraud conducted via faster payments. The government response did not take on board the risks of an overgenerous compensation scheme, it just recognised the urgency to protect consumers and said that they have given powers to the PSR to direct banks to reimburse victims of APP fraud.

The PSR then issued a comprehensive consultation document on proposals for reimbursement and responded earlier this month on 7 June. This was one comment on its proposals:

“Under the new legislation, 100% of consumers’ APP fraud losses will have to be reimbursed by PSPs, except in extreme cases of negligence on the part of the customer, which will—by all indications—be extremely rare”.


I am all in favour of improving the current position, in which only 46% of fraud is reimbursed. We need minimum standards and a common approach, but the proposals will apply to all cases, except where the customer has acted fraudulently or with gross negligence.

My concern is that, with consumers protected in this way, some customers may be willing to make more risky payments without properly considering the consequences, whereas we should be considering exactly the opposite. The proposal means that people who are careless will be fully compensated. I think this is overgenerous. If you are careless with your wallet, your insurance company certainly will not compensate you. If you are careless and damage your car, you will not be compensated. Obliging the banks to compensate you unless you have been grossly negligent is overgenerous, weakens the message that people should be careful and, far from deterring fraudsters, will encourage them. It is also inconsistent with the paragraph I quoted from our report. There is time to put this right, as the PSR is still consulting, before finally agreeing the regime. I will not be popular for saying this, but I urge them to think again.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 93 and 95. Amendment 95, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier—who, sadly, cannot be here—is closely related to Amendment 93 but has a key difference in that subsection (3) of the proposed new clause says that the annual report must detail how much money has been brought in and how much has been spent in securing it.

UWOs were introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017. At the time, I was Treasury spokesman in your Lordships’ House. I have no recollections of piloting this legislation through, but I have some memories of some of the statutory instruments that flowed from it. The background was that this had been tried in other countries with varying degrees of success. I do not think anyone can argue with the principle: an individual has at his or her disposal substantial sums of money for which there is no reasonable explanation—they may be an official working for, or who used to work for, some totalitarian Government, whose official salary in no way could support their standard of living. I see the case for UWOs but, as we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, they have not been a stunning success.

When the Bill was going through, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, tabled some amendments to give the SFO more powers but also to understand the ambition of the Home Office with that legislation. A Home Office assessment in 2017 predicted that there would be about 20 UWO applications per annum. We just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that, to date, there have been nine applications against four individuals, with not a lot of money realised. In fact, in one case, the cost of failure against the Aliyev family was about £1.5 million. Since then, we have a cap on the costs that can be awarded against the SFO or the prosecuting authority, but I wonder whether that goes far enough and whether we should not provide that there should be no order for costs against the SFO unless the proceedings were brought maliciously or without any reasonable justification. That would place a burden on the person against whom the UWO was claimed to show, in effect, that the institution of proceedings was abusive.

Related to this, last year the register of overseas entities was introduced, following the invasion of Ukraine. A Joint Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, looked into the register of overseas entities and to what extent it could relate to the UWOs. Can my noble friend the Minister update us on that? The register should provide some valuable information in seeking an UWO, and a failure to provide relevant details, or the provision of inadequate details, would clearly be of immense value.

However, at the heart of the problem is something that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to in a previous debate: the inequality of arms in the firepower available to each side. The targets, by definition, will be well resourced, and the SFO considerably less so. This is not the first time in our debates on this Bill that we have emphasised the importance of resources in the fight against economic crime.

My final point is this: we have had two Bills in quick succession on economic crime, and I think we can now expect a legislative silence in this area while Governments of whatever complexion concentrate on other issues. Hence the importance of a provision to keep the Government up to the mark in telling Parliament how they are using the valuable powers that Parliament gave them with the UWOs. That, in effect, is what these two amendments seek to do.

[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, having spoken briefly to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who regrets that he is not able to speak to his amendment, I think I know broadly what he would have said, and I agree with him. I shall try to articulate it briefly.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cookham, about inequality of arms in this area, is critical. It is very strange and troubling that there have been so few applications of this nature since the jurisdiction came into existence, and the reason, unquestionably, is that the SFO, which is responsible for deciding whether to make these applications, is understandably very wary of the cost consequences of losing.

As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, by definition, the respondents to these applications will be well resourced. They will retain City firms whose partners charge £600, £700 or £800 an hour or more—and, in responding to the applications, which will tend to raise quite tricky points of fact and complex issues of foreign law, they will swiftly run up legal bills that extend to hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pounds. If the principle that the loser pays applies to these applications without qualification, the cost consequences of losing, from the point of view of the regulator or prosecutor, will be a considerable deterrent to making applications, even when there is obviously a good reason to do so.

The points that I am considering in these short remarks may come into focus later on this afternoon when we discuss another amendment. The reason for me making them now is that it seems to me that the information that would be yielded by the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, would be of great value both to Parliament and to those who make decisions in this area in deciding how the regime needs to be restructured so that applications are made when they should be made.

Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I welcome the Statement, but does my noble friend recognise that there is a connection between absence from school and anti-social behaviour? The figures for the last 12 months indicate that 27% of secondary school children were persistently absent—the “ghost children” we have been reading about recently. As part of the multiagency plan that my noble friend referred to, will he be in touch with the DfE to ensure that more is done to promote school attendance and thereby reduce the risk of children coming into contact with the judicial system?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend raises a very good point. I have read some of the articles about the so-called ghost children with similar alarm and concern. I have spoken to the Department for Education about this; it has asked me to stress that it is worried about these stories as well. Without being an expert on this, I can say that there are three strands to its work. The Secretary of State regularly attends an attendance alliance. I am afraid that I cannot give much more detail about it because I do not know much more about it, but it is very good that the Secretary of State is taking this as seriously as I have been told. Local registers are being set up. They are voluntary. The intention is to collect data on the estimates from local authorities as to how many children are “ghost status”, if you will. We are also using certain specialists that exist in multi-academy trusts. Apparently they are very good at collecting some of this data on missing children and they are advising in areas where there seems to be a particular problem. If I can enhance that answer in any way over the coming days, I will certainly do so.

Public Order Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendments 3 and 4 not moved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

I am unable to put Amendment 5, by reason of pre-emption.

Amendment 5 not moved.

HM Passport Office: Backlogs

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I can take that point back. I may be completely wrong here but I thought the EU insisted on six months. I am glad someone is nodding, so I am not going mad: the EU insists on six months. There might be a pragmatic solution. We are probably undergoing a hump in the process and things will smooth out, particularly by engaging more staff.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend mentioned that the performance of the contractor answering the telephone lines was unacceptable. Does the contract with Teleperformance have any penalties, so that there is a financial consequence to the company if standards are not maintained?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As always, my noble friend asks a very good question. I do not know the answer to it. I know that we have been engaging with the contractor and outlining that what is happening at the moment is utterly unacceptable, and I know that steps are being taken to rectify that.