Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction and I am grateful to the many organisations that have provided briefings. In too many areas of crime and policing, we are failing the people who most need protection: children and vulnerable adults exposed to predators, shopkeepers bearing the cost of unchecked theft, farmers shouldering the consequences of criminals stealing expensive farm equipment to order, and traumatised women who hesitate to report assaults, fearing that the justice system will only compound their suffering.

Much of this comes down to resources. Although the Minister often states that Labour is investing an extra £1.2 billion in policing this year, the reality is that little of this will reach front-line services. The National Police Chiefs’ Council notes that a quarter of this sum will be returned to the Treasury through increased employer national insurance, with the rest already committed to fund pay awards and service debt. A decade of underfunding has forced police to borrow just to maintain their dilapidated buildings and antiquated IT. Already, gaps in children’s services, mental health and social care force police into roles they are ill-equipped to fill.

In scrutinising this Bill, we have to ensure that we do not set the police up to fail. Take drug testing: the Bill expands the range of triggers for police to be able to test someone for drugs but makes no provision at all for more drug testing centres or forensic resource. That must change because drugs are deeply intertwined with serious violence and linked to more than half of all homicides. Drug-related deaths have doubled since 2012, and about 70% of thefts and cases of domestic violence are driven by addiction. Yet more than 27,000 suspected drug suppliers remain on bail or under investigation, largely because we lack enough trained forensic specialists. If these delays, and the patchy availability of treatment programmes, are not addressed, the measures in the Bill will become irrelevant.

In a similar vein, there are a number of provisions in the Bill that are welcome in principle but need careful scrutiny in practice. Among those are new offences—such as assaulting retail workers and the proposed respect orders—which, while well-intentioned, risk duplicating existing laws and further straining a justice system already operating way beyond capacity.

Liberal Democrats have long argued that neighbourhood policing is the most effective way to address these problems before they take root. The role of local beat officers is crucial: they know where the domestic abusers live, where kids are left home alone, and where the drug dens operate. Effective neighbourhood policing depends on familiarity, consistency and trust—qualities that can only be built over time. We cannot keep parachuting in new officers and expect these relationships to flourish. That is why we have proposed legal minimum resourcing to ensure that neighbourhood policing teams are maintained at the level necessary to sustain long relationships and a sense of safety among communities.

That sense of safety is especially important for young people. At the moment, one in three young people reports that they do not feel safe in their communities. The dangerous and often tragic result is that they carry weapons. We therefore back proposals to tighten the rules around the online sale and delivery of weapons and we will bring forward amendments to give legislative life to even more of the Clayman review’s recommendations.

Turning to police and criminal justice reform, very few people realise that 90%—yes, 90%—of crime is now digitally enabled. That means that chief constables must be given the flexibility to decide the right mix of traditional police officers and specialist staff needed in their forces, because digital skill is very often now more highly valued than physical prowess, and recruitment should reflect that.

Meanwhile, training has to move with the times. One-third of all police officers now have under five years’ experience, but inspection after inspection exposes serious flaws in the training provided. Poor professional development, combined with infrequent updates on new laws and procedures, means that many front-line officers have outdated skills, leading to uneven standards and a workforce that lacks confidence to use its powers. With 94% of reported offences unresolved, new laws mean little if officers are not equipped to enforce them, so we will push for the first national review of police training since 2018.

However, reforming policing alone is like fixing a lock on a door that is completely rotten. It simply beggars belief that at the end of March 2025 there were 310,000 cases outstanding in magistrates’ courts; that serious offences such as rape are taking more than two years to come to trial, with offenders back out on the streets on bail, tormenting their victims; and that perpetrators who are convicted of crimes often pass through prisons without any kind of rehabilitation.

I shall highlight some serious concerns on civil liberties. In Clause 138, the move to give police automatic access to driving licence data for any law enforcement purpose, not just driving offences, marks a major expansion from current practice. The Home Secretary need only consult police, with no full parliamentary oversight, when drafting these regulations. While the Bill does not mention facial recognition, and Ministers say that there are no plans to use DVLA data this way, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, in a written submission to the Home Affairs Committee, stated that police chiefs are seeking access to the DVLA database for facial recognition searches, and proposals by the previous Government would have enabled this. To do this would put more than 50 million innocent people in a perpetual digital line-up, which poses profound risk, particularly for people of colour and minority groups. Big Brother Watch found that in the UK in 2023 89% of police facial recognition alerts wrongly identified members of the public as people of interest. We shall vigorously press the Government to ensure that DVLA access is necessary, proportionate and set out clearly in primary legislation, restricted to tackling serious crime or public safety threats.

It is about not just facial recognition but a whole range of biometrics, some of which are only now in development. I am particularly concerned about the need to future-proof the Bill against tomorrow’s technologies. New digital tools such as remote data extraction, advanced surveillance systems, predictive analytics and wearable sensor technology will soon reach the UK market. The Bill must be capable of evolving this technology, ensuring that protections for citizens remain robust as new digital tools appear.

In conclusion, public confidence in policing is at an all-time low. This may not be fair—I do not think it is—but it is the reality. New duties imposed by Parliament must therefore be matched by new investment. We must deliver policing that keeps people safe without edging towards a surveillance state. The Bill gives us a great opportunity to strike that balance, but more power without resources or safeguards risks serious consequences. Let us ensure that the Bill empowers the police, protects freedom and prepares the service for a fast-moving technological world, because only then will it truly deliver safer communities.