Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Alex Davies-Jones and Anna Sabine

Committee stage
Thursday 8th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Yes, we are happy to meet with Shoaib Awan to discuss this, and yes, we have a commitment to looking at the situation more widely and at the issue directly. As someone who loves a car boot sale, I am keen to explore the question further.

I ask the shadow Minister to be patient for a little while longer as we finalise our plans for the implementation of the 2023 Act, and as we look into the issues in more detail to get the policy work right. On that basis, I ask hon. Members not to press their new clauses.

[Anna Sabine]

I seek a quick clarification from the Minister. Was she saying that under the plans to implement the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act, there may be scope within some secondary legislation to look at GPS thefts specifically? Did I understand that correctly?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Yes.

Crime and Policing Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Alex Davies-Jones and Anna Sabine

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q One issue that has been raised with us is the idea that AI imagery of child sexual abuse does not impact real-world victims. Could you speak to that point? I think it is an important one to make and get on the record.

Dan Sexton: Yes—that is something that comes up frequently. There are a couple of bits of evidence that I can offer to show where that is untrue. For instance —I think clause 36, which is on AI models, is tailored towards this—we see models that have been trained specifically on child sexual abuse, often on particular victims. Offenders collect images of a particular victim, and these tools have given them the ability to not just complete their collections, but create more content of children who have already been abused, sometimes many years ago. They are victims, or survivors now, and not only is their abuse not finished, but more content of them is being created. In one instance, we found 128 individual models, each trained on a specific victim with the intention of creating more imagery of those victims. It is not a victimless crime. That is 128 victims just there.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

Q This question is probably best aimed at Action for Children. It is on a point that was raised in some of our written evidence about the proposed sentencing under the proposed child criminal exploitation offence compared with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The proposed sentencing for child criminal exploitation is 10 years, which is much shorter than the penalty of up to life imprisonment under the Modern Slavery Act. That might create a perverse situation where you can be sentenced for child criminal exploitation and get much less than you would under the Modern Slavery Act. Do you have any views on that?

Sharon Maciver: As I mentioned in my introduction, the harms caused to children are lifelong and traumatic and devastate children, young people and their communities. On the length of the sentence, I do not suppose there is any length of sentence that would be justifiable in terms of the harms that are caused by exploitation. I share the concerns on what you described—the length of time in the Modern Slavery Act versus what is described in the Bill. We would want to see that increased.