Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I will use my time to focus on the protection of women and girls. The first issue I wish to raise is honour-based abuse—a crime motivated by the perpetrator’s perception that an individual has somehow shamed or may shame a family or community. These crimes, which include devastating honour-motivated killings, female genital mutilation and forced marriage, have happened in the shadows for too long. It has been pointed out that there is a lot in the Bill, but honour-based abuse is not currently mentioned. I am not suggesting a new offence, but I want to ask the Minister whether he will incorporate a statutory definition of honour-based abuse in the Bill, with language strongly supported and agreed by survivors and the groups and charities that work with them, alongside issuing formal guidance to ensure understanding and consistency across agencies.

Offences related to honour-based abuse continue to have the lowest conviction of all flagged crimes, and it remains hidden, misunderstood and underprosecuted. Far too often, cases are misidentified or inaccurately recorded, which obscures the true scale of the problem and limits the protection available to victims. Collective and family involvement is not consistently recognised in investigations, and courts are left without a clear framework to identify and address honour as a motive. A survivor-led and sector-backed definition has already been developed, which recognises the role of collective perpetration, honour-based motivations and the powerful silencing effect of shame. This definition would provide a consistent basis for identification, recording and intervention, and effective protection for those at risk.

I also intend to raise whether the Government will consider adding honour as an aggravating factor in sentencing, which would ensure that honour-based motives are formally recognised by the courts and better reflect the gravity and broader societal impacts of these crimes. The announcement in August that the Government intend to introduce a definition and accompanying guidance was hugely welcome, and this change has been campaigned for for many years by many people, including Yasmin Javed, whose daughter Fawziyah was so tragically murdered in the name of honour. The Bill provides the earliest legislative opportunity to act on that commitment, so I hope that the Minister will be positive in his response.

On other issues relating to women and girls, I fully support my noble friend Lady Bertin’s work on regulating online pornographic content and hope that the Government will take the opportunity to deliver many of her recommendations in her powerful report, Creating a Safer World. I also support my noble friend Lady Owen in her ongoing work on image-based sexual abuse.

Finally, I turn to Clause 191 on the decriminalisation of women in relation to abortion. Noble Lords will have received much correspondence on the subject, and I want to use this time to clarify what Clause 191 does and does not do. Clause 191 removes women from the criminal justice system, meaning that they will no longer be investigated or prosecuted for having an abortion. What the clause does not do is make abortion legal up to birth. There is no change to the 24-week limit. There is no change to the 10-week limit on telemedicine. Abortions would still require two doctors’ signatures to be legally provided, women would still have to meet one of the grounds laid out in the Abortion Act 1967 and, importantly, non-consensual abortion would remain a crime at any gestation. Abortion outside these limits remains illegal, and anybody, including a medical professional, who assisted a woman in obtaining an abortion outside this law would be liable for prosecution.

The reason this clause has been introduced is because more than 100 women, many of them vulnerable and abused, have been investigated by police in recent years, and these investigations have taken many years. Those investigations themselves can prevent women getting the healthcare, mental health support and referral to appropriate support services that they need. I appreciate that noble Lords will want to discuss this clause in more detail in Committee, and I very much welcome that. It is supported by leading medical organisations, and I encourage interested noble Lords to read what they have to say.

I also highlight that decriminalising women in relation to abortion is not unusual. It would bring England and Wales in line with Northern Ireland and 50 countries worldwide, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and over 31 European jurisdictions—and, indeed, the United States, where women can never be prosecuted for having an abortion. Those countries have laws that criminalise those who provide an abortion, and that will remain the case here.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. As the Minister might notice, it is not intended to be dealt with under the Crime and Policing Bill but under the Modern Slavery Act. That means, in a sense, it is probably simpler for the Government to accept it, because it is an improvement to an Act of 10 years ago. I am not quite sure why, oddly enough, the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and I did not think about it in those days, but it was not raised.

When I was a judge, I had the specific example of a child being put into an orphanage by their father, with the intention of a large amount of money being paid eventually for that child to be adopted. The child was in the process of being adopted in England by an American family who came to England. The whole set-up was so unsatisfactory that the child was removed and went into care. The question then was whether the child should go back to the natural parent—the father—but the problem was that he had put the child into the orphanage.

This is a very serious issue that is seriously underestimated and not well known. The very least the Government could do is to amend the Modern Slavery Act.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Randall said, I too recently met the Hope and Homes for Children charity. This amendment helps to name, define and criminalise the form of exploitation my noble friend set out. As he said, it is often hidden behind humanitarianism or done in the name of childcare. The deception, exploitation, control and harm that children face in these institutions have all the hallmarks of modern slavery. That is why it is important not to treat it separately from modern slavery. By including it we will, I hope, help to ensure that traffickers cannot claim that they operate as charities, rather than being the exploitative institutions that they are. The amendment would help to close a legal gap and, hopefully, disrupt the financial incentives that create harm. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to my noble friend’s arguments.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 247A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, who has laid out the case in detail.

It is a sad fact that children, some with living parents, are deliberately separated from their families and placed in residential institutions overseas. These institutions then present these children as orphans to attract donations from well-meaning supporters, often in the UK. The children become commodities: the more vulnerable they appear, the more money flows in. This is exploitation on a grand scale, masquerading as charity, and it is funded in part by British individuals and organisations who often have no idea that they are perpetuating abuse.

Amendment 247A proposes an overdue expansion of the definition of exploitation in Section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to explicitly include orphanage trafficking. As the explanatory statement confirms, this new clause would insert a clear definition into the Act that orphanage trafficking means that

“The person is a child who has been recruited into a residential care institution overseas for the purpose of financial gain and exploitation”.


Our approach throughout the Bill’s scrutiny has been to ensure that our legislation is robust and responsive and specifically targets the modern tactics of abusers and exploiters, particularly concerning vulnerable children.

The phenomenon of orphanage trafficking was not adequately understood as a distinct form of modern slavery when the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was drafted a decade ago. In recent years, however, extensive research and reporting, including by UNICEF and specialist organisations working in south-east Asia and Africa, have revealed the scale and systematic nature of this exploitation. We now know that the practice uses the guise of charitable care to perpetrate sustained abuse for profit. This is unacceptable.

By explicitly defining this conduct, Amendment 247A would ensure that the MSA 2015 is fully equipped to address this tragic global issue. We have seen the importance of such clarity throughout the Bill. Just as we have recognised that exploitation evolves, we should now acknowledge orphanage trafficking as an identifiable and compatible form of abuse. This amendment applies the same principle to this particularly insidious form of overseas exploitation.

The amendment serves three critical functions. First, it would provide legal recognition and awareness. This is a necessary first step to legally recognise orphanage trafficking in UK law. This action would raise the profile of a genuine issue that, despite being recognised in jurisdictions such as Australia and New Zealand, remains poorly understood here. It is time this was addressed. Australia’s experience demonstrates that legislative recognition creates public awareness and shifts provision towards sustainable, family-based care models rather than institutional placements.

Secondly, the amendment targets financial facilitators. This is the amendment’s most powerful practical effect. Adding this specific definition to the MSA 2015 would mean that individuals and organisations which provide financial support to these exploitative overseas institutions could be in breach of the Modern Slavery Act. This would allow enforcement action to be taken against them.

Thirdly, it covers international obligations and UK leadership. This amendment aligns with our commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and reinforces the UK’s role in setting global standards for combating modern slavery. It demonstrates that our child protection framework extends meaningfully beyond our borders.

Supporting Amendment 247A is a necessary evolution of our anti-slavery legal framework. It would ensure that our commitment to protecting exploited children extends effectively beyond our borders and covers every known facet of trafficking, reinforcing our foundational principle that the law must protect the vulnerable from financial and criminal exploitation.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child should be upheld at every level. We hope the Government will support this amendment in order to protect innocent, vulnerable children from this very distressing practice.