Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent and tightly drafted amendment from my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. I say that it is tightly drawn because proposed new subsection (2) is about concealing one’s identity, not about wearing the clothes themselves: the scarf or the hat. I speak as a cyclist who frequently cycles in the winter, when of course you need to wear protective clothing to keep you warm. However, this is about allowing a police officer, or another person who is entitled to know your identity, to know your identity, and it is about failing to stop when required to do so by a constable.

I am glad that my noble friend mentioned the issue of live facial recognition. I am just about to finish my four-year term on the British Transport Police Authority. In terms of clear-up rates, one of the issues we have in unfortunately failing to tackle violence against women and girls—which, of course, is a government priority and a priority of the Department for Transport—is that we have way too many persistent, repeat offenders on bail who are travelling on the rail network and who are able to enter stations and get on trains. Live facial recognition, were it to be rolled out for a good reason, with proper checks and balances, would significantly reduce the incidence of those people being able to get on trains and Tubes and assault women and girls, and others. Live facial recognition is important because, if people are going to be wearing face coverings, that will naturally circumscribe the powers used in live facial recognition.

Rates of crime on bikes and scooters have gone up. Many people who are committing those crimes are hiding their identity and I believe that, in most cases, there is a legitimate reason for the police to stop them. In 2024, Sky News received figures from FoI requests that showed that crimes involving e-bikes and e-scooters had risen by more than 730% in the preceding five years. These crimes included theft, robbery, burglary, drug trafficking, stalking, rape, violent crimes and weapons offences. In 2023-24, 11,266 crimes were recorded that mentioned an e-bike or e-scooter—up from just 1,354 in 2019-20. These figures do not include data from the Metropolitan Police and the West Midlands Police—I know that West Midlands Police have been busy doing other things, not always to their great credit —so the actual numbers were likely higher.

On 30 December 2025, the Metropolitan Police reported that it had seized 37 e-bikes and scooters in an attempt to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. That resulted in 52 arrests and weapons being seized. Between January and December 2025, Merseyside Police seized 1,000 unregistered vehicles, e-bikes, e-scooters and scramblers. It launched Operation Gears in July 2024 to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour linked specifically to bikes and scooters. In its words, two-wheeled vehicles

“are increasingly linked to serious criminal activity, including violence, robberies, and serious organised crime (SOC) offences”.

The Metropolitan Police has also produced reasonably new data—up to the end of 2023. They show that there were 4,985 cases of robbery and theft of a mobile phone in London using a motorcycle or an e-bike in 2023, and a face covering was worn in over 1,000 of those. These statistics demonstrate that it is legitimate to link bikes and scooters to crimes. Therefore, if someone is covering their face specifically to avoid identity while using these vehicles, it does raise suspicion, and it most emphatically gives police a legitimate reason to exercise their due and proper powers. On that basis, I support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who regularly jumps out of the way on a pavement from e-bikes, electric scooters and so on, I think this amendment is probably very sensible, but we should listen to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, because, as far as I can see, it does not go sufficiently far. We need to add to it, perhaps on Report, a provision that the police can require someone to take their face covering off, because without that, I do not think it goes very far.

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

My Lords, in my experience, the fastest and most dangerous group of cyclists are Deliveroo and Uber Eats riders. That would be the case because they have to get as many deliveries in as they can. In my experience, an awful lot of them wear face masks. I would be interested to hear from the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe—we have heard what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, had to say—what you would begin to do about that. They have great big things on their backs saying Deliveroo or Uber Eats, but they drive fast and wear masks. Will the police stop them?

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I cannot comment on or pre-empt the detail of the White Paper now, because that would be a breach of protocol. But I say to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that we will clearly examine those issues. We will take steps to enhance the powers of HMICFRS to ensure that its recommendations are properly acted on and indeed taken forward. In addition, we will examine how we can make recommendations more effective as part of the police reform work, ensuring that the key policing bodies’ expertise—the co-operation the noble Baroness asked for—is acted on to drive performance. I look forward to that very shortly and, ahead of the White Paper being implemented, I cannot accept the noble Baroness’s amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Will the White Paper deal with action rather than consultation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The White Paper will set out a number of proposals that the Government intend to bring forward in policy, legislation or executive action. There are a number of areas around police efficiency—what is done centrally and what is done locally, how it is done centrally and how it is done locally—that will form part of the wider debate on the police White Paper. The noble and learned Baroness will not have long to wait for the police White Paper. When it does come, undoubtedly there will be a Statement in the House of Commons and, as ever, I will have to repeat the Statement here in this House. There will be an opportunity to look at that direction of travel and how, importantly, we are going to implement the measures that we are putting in the White Paper, which, again, will be produced very shortly. I am sorry that I cannot give the noble Baroness any more comfort than that.

I share the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, that the proposal in the amendment would kick this matter of efficiency, co-ordination, performance and implementation further down the line than is already planned with our police White Paper proposals very shortly. So I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment on the basis of those comments.

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As I have already said, I advise the Government to look at the presumption that crime will be recorded even if the police do not believe that a crime has been committed. This is one of the causes of the problem we are discussing. Frankly, if it is not resolved, I guarantee that we will be back looking at this in a few years’ time. For that reason, I support the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I also very much support this amendment as, I hope, a nudge towards an opening door that the Government are already looking at. Following on from the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, it seems that, quite apart from the recipients of these NCHIs, there are two further issues: the waste of time and the waste of money. The police are always short of money and of time. That is obvious and has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Hogan-Howe. If this was removed, they could get on and do their job. They would save a great deal of money and something even more important, because they would be dealing with the crimes that people really need them to deal with.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this is already proving to be a crucial debate in the passage of this Bill. I support Amendment 416E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. Sadly, my noble friend Lord Strasburger is unable to be with us to support the amendment, which he has signed, but I hope that I reflect his views in speaking today.

Non-crime hate incidents, although born from the well-intentioned Macpherson report in 1993—which the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, called “an honourable start”—have morphed into a mechanism that frequently harasses and silences legitimate debate. In doing so, they consume prodigious quantities of police time, as we have heard—time that is desperately needed to investigate the crimes that we have discussed throughout Committee. Non-crime hate incidents, which started from benign motivations in 1993, have morphed into an ugly and frequently used technique for harassing and silencing somebody whose views the complainant does not like. In the process, prodigious quantities of police time are being wasted on non-criminal matters, meaning that real crimes that would otherwise be investigated are being ignored.

The seeds of what has gone wrong were sown by the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry concluded that a racist incident should be defined as being

“any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”.

In essence, that means that anyone—whether involved in an incident or not, whether a reasonable person or otherwise—would be able to determine that an incident, no matter how harmless, was racist in nature. The inquiry went on to recommend that

“the term ‘racist incident’ must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment”.

It is remarkable that the inquiry concluded that incidents which are not criminal offences as defined by Parliament should be investigated by the police with equal vigour as those which are criminal offences. That raises fundamental questions about the purpose of the police and what their priorities should be, particularly in a world of potentially limitless demand and highly constrained resource.

Nevertheless, Macpherson’s recommendations relating to racist incidents and their recording were rapidly accepted and implemented by the police and government. Following a 2006 review by Sir Adrian Fulford, a shared definition of hate crimes and non-crime hate incidents was adopted across the criminal justice system, including by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. This expanded the recording of NCHIs beyond purely racist incidents to cover all those characteristics that are covered by hate crime legislation in England and Wales—race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Key to the expansion of alleged NCHIs was the creation, in 2014, of the College of Policing’s Hate Crime Operational Guidance for police forces. Perhaps recognising that the guidance was likely to cause grave concerns to many, the College of Policing made a pre-emptive defence of their policy, saying:

“The recording of, and response to, non-crime hate incidents does not have universal support in society. Some people use this as evidence to accuse the police of becoming ‘the thought police’, trying to control what citizens think or believe, rather than what they do”.


The guidance goes on to say, in relation to hate incidents:

“Where any person, including police personnel, reports a hate incident which would not be the primary responsibility of another agency, it must be recorded regardless of whether or not they are the victim, and irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element”.


The use of “must” in the guidance leaves no latitude for police discretion or the balancing of rights exercise, which would be necessary in considering the subject’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

With the advent of social media, the number of NCHIs being recorded has rocketed. Policy Exchange reported in 2024 that over 13,000 are being logged annually in England and Wales, consuming 60,000 police hours a year. Some keyboard warriors with an axe to grind have made a full-time occupation out of submitting prolific quantities of NCHI complaints with little or no justification. These include a disgraced former policeman who prodigiously exploits the system to frequently harass his political opponents. Some incidents have hit the press, such as when Graham Linehan, the co-creator of “Father Ted”, was arrested on the tarmac at Heathrow over an NCHI.

However, many victims of spurious NCHIs are not even aware that a complaint has been logged against their name. One campaigner found out only when the complainant launched a judicial review of the police’s refusal to take the matter further. As we have heard, the impact of having an unproven NCHI secretly logged against your name can be severe and mean that you are refused a visa to visit certain countries, including America, or that you fail an enhanced DBS check for a job in areas such as education or health.

Freedom of information requests to 43 police forces found zero examples of NCHIs preventing crime. The Metropolitan Police announced last October that it has stopped investigating NCHIs entirely. Last month, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing reported to the Government that NCHIs are “not fit for purpose”.

NCHIs must go. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, stated during our debates on the seventh day in Committee that the College of Policing is reviewing this guidance and that we would see this review before Report. I hope that the Minister can confirm whether that review will address the chilling effect on free speech identified in the Miller judgment and whether he accepts that the police must prioritise actual criminality over the recording of NCHIs.

I support this amendment as a necessary check on the expansion of the surveillance state. When will the Government act to abolish NCHIs? If the Minister cannot answer that question, we will have to return to this matter on Report.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I would like briefly to support my noble friend Lord Blencathra in his Amendment 416I, as the Committee will not be massively surprised to hear, given that we have covered this on previous occasions.

The police are turning a blind eye to the use of illegal vehicles on our streets. Why is that? I should like the Minister to answer that question, if at all possible. Illegal vehicles on our streets should be seized and destroyed. There should be a campaign to do that; if that happened, they would not come back. At the moment, the use of illegal vehicles is tolerated. If people were riding illegal petrol-powered motorcycles around London, they would very quickly find themselves in trouble. If people were driving trucks with no licence plates on them, they would very quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the law. At the moment, the large delivery companies in particular are facilitating this. They are contractors, but, none the less, their agents are using illegal vehicles for commercial purposes. That should not be allowed and the Government should put a stop to it.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, that fact that someone has brought forward these two amendments makes me feel like saying, “Hurrah!” It is not just in Kensington and Chelsea. I live in EC4, and I spend my time walking on the road to get round the huge groups of mainly Lime bikes. I have not checked as to whether they are illegal, but the fact is that a great many of them take up a great deal of space and it seems absolutely extraordinary that nothing is being done about it. I watch other people, particularly women with pushchairs—even in EC4 there are women with pushchairs—and sometimes people in wheelchairs, either negotiating gingerly these bikes or walking, as I find myself walking, on the road. I hope that the Minister will consider carefully what is being suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, because this really is a scourge. I say “Hurrah” to the noble Lord for bringing this amendment forward.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, these two amendments after Clause 144 from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, are trying to give further powers to address the issue of dockless bikes and scooters, which we have discussed many times in this Chamber and which have become an issue on many streets in cities across the country, whether they are part of a scheme or privately owned. This is a big issue for pedestrians, as we have heard, as they find their route blocked by bikes and scooters, despite a number of local authorities installing dedicated parking places for such micromobility schemes.

We are all aware, as we have heard in this debate, of the challenges that local authorities have faced trying to manage these vehicles on pavements and highways. However, there is a further issue. As City AM reported last month, a London property firm had to invoice Lime for nearly £8,000 for removing, storing and returning dockless bikes left on private land. Despite the ability to geofence where bikes can be left, I understand from reading this article that it took Lime 11 months to fence off this bit of private land as a no-parking zone on its app—and even then bikes continued to appear. This is about the management and regulation of these schemes. There are many stories like this, where riders park up their bikes near stations or other transport hubs, cluttering pavements or indeed parking on private land, causing issues with access and deliveries for residents.

The devolution Bill making its way through the House will start to help with the management of micromobility schemes across the country, some of which, as we discussed earlier in this Committee, have been on trial many times over many years, partly extended by the previous Government. We need legislation on this issue. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether future legislation will come to tighten up the rules on what is safely allowed on our streets, on how people park and the regulations, and on what a safe and legal vehicle is on our streets.

These amendments are trying to deal with the inevitable consequence of recent Governments not acting to keep up with the explosion of different types of micromobility on our streets. I hope to hear some assurance from the Minister about future legislation to deal with the understandable concerns across the Committee.

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Clause 8 of the Bill strengthens these existing powers by removing the requirement for officers—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. If the powers exist, are the police actually using them?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

They are, but we always leave it to chief officers to direct their police forces to use the full waterfront of different powers and regulations under their purview. We can always encourage them. I am sure that a number of chief officers will be looking intently at the debates in all the days of Committee on the Crime and Policing Bill and will understand the priorities the Committee voices. Certainly, with no little thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and others, we have had plenty of debate on this issue and they will have heard that it is one of extreme concern.

Clause 8 will allow the police to act immediately to stop offending behaviour and confiscate vehicles without delay. In addition, the Government have consulted on changes to secondary legislation to enable quicker disposal of seized vehicles, and our response will be published in due course. These measures demonstrate the Government’s commitment to effectively tackling the illegal and anti-social use of micro-mobility devices such as e-bikes and e-scooters without duplicating powers that are already in place.

I want to stress that riding a privately owned electric scooter on public roads is illegal, and the police have powers to take enforcement action against offenders, including seizure of the e-scooter for the offence of driving without insurance or a licence. The enforcement of road traffic law remains an operational matter for chief officers, who are best placed to allocate resources according to local needs, threats, risks and priorities. The Government will continue to support the police with the tools and powers they need, but this amendment would add unnecessary complexity without improving public safety. With that in mind, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.