Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, while I agree with so much that has been said so eloquently today, I want to focus on three areas close to my heart: the inadequacies of enforcement of the criminal law; how to deal with the Wild West of e-scooters and cycling; and the best way to reduce shoplifting. Although this is not declarable as an interest, my son is a detective in the Met, and I think he would agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has just said about the need to retain skills and experience in the police.

In a long career in and outside government, at the top and on the front line, I have discovered that enforcement of the law is as important as the rules and regulations themselves. As Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, said, the laws of the country must be enforced. There is no substitute for law enforcement, and that is why, in March 2024, we the Conservatives ensured that police numbers were at their highest ever. For this Bill to be effective, they need to rise further, and the resource needs to be focused on the right things: away from the obsession with online harm, prosecutions for tweets and non-hate crime, and into neighbourhood policing.

The truth is that we have moved away from the founding Peelite principle that police need to be part of the community they serve. They are increasingly a wholly separate organism, usually absent from our streets and town centres, and sometimes appearing to want to control our thoughts. Part of the problem has been the huge increase in bureaucracy, with energetic police men and women weighed down by paperwork requirements and the inefficiency of the police, CPS and court interaction and its supporting and less than compatible IT systems. My noble friend Lady Coffey has drawn attention to the burden of yet more reporting requirements in the Bill. To my mind there is an enforcement crisis, and I ask the Minister what he is planning to do about it.

I am very pleased to see Clause 106, introduced in the other place, which creates new offences of causing death or serious injury by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling. I also like Clause 8, which makes it easier to seize an e-scooter being driven anti-socially—I note that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, actually wants to go further. As noble Lords know, I have been horrified by this Wild West of scooters and cyclists, especially speedy electronic versions, dashing through lights, driving routinely on pavements and spreading terrors among mothers with pushchairs, the disabled, the infirm and sometimes me. I have been knocked over myself. The truth is that this lawlessness in London has got worse; the results can be seen in A&E admissions.

However, there is no need to wait for the new Act, as cycling on pavements is illegal. Current laws must be enforced. I ask the Minister to consider a hotspot policy, perhaps by the Transport Police, to crack down on bad behaviour by cyclists and e-scooterists. We know that this sort of enforcement works. When I worked at Downing Street in the 1990s, the Met got burglary down with Operation Bumblebee and, more recently, we have seen the successful crackdown on mobile phone thieves at Oxford Circus.

My final plea for better enforcement relates to shoplifting, which has also exploded recently. I know from my time at Tesco how this ruins honest endeavour and allows free-riders free rein. It is so difficult for the staff and there is a wider impact. I remember women putting large jars of Nescafé and beef fillet down their trousers to sell and fund their drug habit and I remember the drudgery and cost of adding security tags to every valuable item. The Bill rightly responds to USDAW’s long-standing campaign and creates a new offence of assaulting a retail worker. Clause 39 seeks to tackle the ridiculous situation whereby so-called “low-value theft”—under £200—tends to go unprosecuted. However, I note that the Opposition have concerns about how this is achieved. We would also like to see tougher sentences on shoplifting where there have been more than three occasions of theft.

In conclusion, I return to Sir Robert Peel. He not only founded the Met but gave officers clear guidelines on expected behaviour, so establishing a highly visible and positive relationship with the British people. In this respect, it is time for us to revisit our roots.