Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, in introducing a Bill described as challengingly broad. It is not easy, however, to identify an overarching theme, so I shall speak rather generally about children who are the subject—or, if you like, object—of much of the Bill.

I declare an interest as a trustee of Safer London. We—not me; I pay tribute to the professionals in the organisation—work with young Londoners and families caught in cycles of violence, exploitation and trauma. We help them escape harm, heal, rebuild and believe in brighter futures. That may sound naive and flowery, but it is hard-headed and hard work.

An effective response is often rooted in safeguarding, not the imposition of punishment. Young people caught up in child criminal exploitation, for instance, are frequently significantly affected by trauma—seriously adverse childhood experiences—before this happens. Alongside this, Safer London is finding that about a third of its clients are neurodiverse or have special educational needs. Allowing for those undiagnosed, this may actually mean about 50%.

So many are so vulnerable. Grooming often involves quite small gifts—so called—followed by, “Now you owe me, and if you do not do as I say, you will see what is coming to your sister”; a sort of debt bondage. It takes skill to work alongside, advocate for and help a young person effect change, to see beyond behaviour to what leads them to where they end up or are in danger of ending up. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me mention resources. When support services have lost funding, anti-social behaviour has increased. The first inquiry of the House’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee three years ago looked at alternatives to short custodial sentences and heard a lot about the need for more investment in treatment as the response to crime. This applies to children as well as adults. It is hard for a child with a criminal record to find employment when they need an economic future outside criminality. On top of this, I am told there is a racial element as black children do not get diversionary sentencing to the same degree as others.

Of course, this skates the surface and I share the frustration of other noble Lords this afternoon. I may express through amendments concerns about polygraphs and whether there are gaps in the mandatory reporting provisions. Those are just for instances. On a different, broad point, how much new law are we loading on the police, who have to prioritise and get their heads around the detail of new offences, when, as other noble Lords have said, an activity has been covered by an old law? But I recognise that sometimes we do need to update, as with cuckooing, which I welcome specifically, and with the late addition of halting the criminalisation of women in England and Wales under abortion law dating back to 1861 to bring us into line with changes that noble Lords across the House—and I have been reminded I was among them—voted into Northern Ireland law in 2019.