Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her new role, and I very much look forward to working with her. I further welcome the clarification that this Bill brings to the law on spiking and the new offence of taking non-consensual intimate images. I very much look forward to supporting my noble friend Lady Sugg on her amendments on honour-based abuse and my noble friend Lady Bertin on her amendments on online pornography. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend Lady Bertin on her brilliant review and thank her for her tireless efforts pushing for comprehensive law on online pornography.

I turn now to the new taking offence. I greatly welcome the implementation of the Law Commission recommendation to update the pre-existing voyeurism and upskirting offences and implement a single taking offence. I am very pleased to see that it is vitally a consent-based offence, removing the unnecessary burden of having to prove the motivation of the perpetrator, which has featured in previous iterations of image-based abuse offences. However, it is vital that we further strengthen this offence, by increasing the time limits prosecutors have to bring forward charges, so that victims are not inadvertently timed out by the six-month time limit of a summary offence.

In February, the Government gave me an undertaking to extend the time limits for the non-consensual creation offence in the data Bill after it was highlighted by the campaign group #NotYourPorn. The extension of the time limit here means that, for the creation offence, victims have three years from when the offence is committed or alternatively from when the CPS has enough evidence to prosecute. Given that we have already achieved a legal precedent for extending the time limits on image-based sexual abuse, I would be grateful if the Minister, in his summing up, could commit to extending the time limits available in both the new taking offence and the pre-existing sharing offence, to ensure that all image-based abuse offences have parity within the law.

I was pleased to see the updating of the Sentencing Code to reflect the new taking offence and to clarify that photograph or film to which the offence relates, and anything containing it, is to be regarded as used for the purpose of committing the offence. However, I am keen that we look into further ways to ensure that this content is not kept by perpetrators and remains offline in perpetuity. Further, I will continue my work with survivors of this abuse and charities to explore ways in which this content can be removed from the internet as rapidly as possible.

Additionally, I was concerned that there does not seem to be a sufficient definition of what it is to “take” an image or video in the offence, and I would therefore also be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the definition of taking will include screenshotting. In the 2022 Law Commission report on intimate-image abuse, the example was given where a person may consent to being in an intimate state on a video call but not consent to the person screenshotting them. The Law Commission concluded that taking a screenshot of a video call should fall under the definition of taking, because this conduct creates a still image that does not otherwise exist.

I turn now to the issue of spiking, which my colleague in the other place, Joe Robertson MP, has highlighted, alongside the campaigners Colin and Mandy Mackie, whose son Greg tragically died after a spiking incident at university. While the clarification of spiking in this new offence is very welcome, I echo the point made by my noble friend Lady Coffey that there is concern that the intention element might be too narrow and that it might not allow for cases where a person has been spiked that do not fall into the categories of injure, aggrieve or annoy. This Bill is a positive step, and I look forward to working with the Government and noble Lords to strengthen it.