Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on her excellent presentation. When you are speaker number 65, it is probably best to adapt your speech a little, so I will save a bit of time by saying that I agreed with every word that the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin, Lady Owen and Lady Sugg, said—end of. I have been a supporter of Liberty and its predecessor, the NCCL, for 50 years. I also had the privilege of leading Sir Chris Bryant’s Private Member’s Bill in this House on increased protection for emergency service workers. It became the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. You could therefore argue that I have had a foot in both camps.

I want to make a brief point about police employment issues—not strictly speaking part of the Bill—but then move on to the issue of aggravated offences. I appreciate that the employment issue is not a direct part of the Bill. However, as a former chair of ACAS and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, I want to make a point about the importance of retaining skills and experience in the police force. When you cut back a police force by 20,000, it has a devastating effect: you lose literally hundreds of years of experience. It might mean you lose some bad habits, but you also lose the institutional memory and there is a reduction in on-the-job training capacity.

If you reduce a service to the bone, as the last Government did, you have a demoralised workforce and a stampede for the door when the opportunity for a retirement package arrives. Those with a grievance are the ones forced to stay. Practicality says that the police will then prioritise their work and leave other things undone. Dealing with attacks on lesbian, gay and trans people is a long way down the list, and it might explain why retail theft and attacks on retail workers are so serious as we speak. It is this kind of short-termism that makes the issues of powers and responsibilities of the police rather secondary. My plea to the Minister is for adequate resources and for active management planning, which allows the police to do their job.

Nevertheless, I support fully the attempt by Rachel Taylor MP to extend aggravated offences to include attacks on gay, lesbian, trans and disabled people, and I congratulate the Government on their commitment to include this in the Bill. Can the Minister say a little more about the likely content of that amendment? The Law Commission report on hate crime laws in 2021 recommended

“that aggravated offences be extended to cover all existing characteristics in hate crime laws: race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity”.

As has already been said, it was also in the Labour Party manifesto of 2024. One can only wonder why this has not been on the statute book for years in this day and age, but I look forward to our consideration in Committee.