Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 22 and to Amendment 1. I believe that we need to look at the current rules as they stand and have a review of those rules, their effectiveness and who they fall upon. As someone who has been a youth worker for over three decades now, I have seen large parts of poorer communities, black and white, end up in very serious legal entanglements just because of what somebody else has subjectively decided was a piece of anti-social behaviour which has then led to some kind of legal sanction. These respect orders seem like a very fast track too. Many people’s behaviour is not what I would call traditional, is not recognised, and therefore these orders would become a real danger to them; there is a real danger that they have done something that was anti-social and all of a sudden, they are facing a criminal sanction.

Notwithstanding what the last speaker said—that the court would then go back and test and would have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, above the civil court’s level of proof—it would be too late for many young people, because it would have blighted them. Many young people act out once they realise they are in trouble, because they are afraid. If we are going to put someone through that mechanism, we had better make sure that they actually have a question to answer before we posit a question that leads them to end up in some kind of legal entanglement.

Another thing to consider is that, if we change the age of criminal consent, we have to be careful that we do not expose young people to gang grooming. If a gang is able to say that, under a certain age, you will not be legally held to account for your crimes, they will use that as a rallying cry, as a recruitment cry. Currently, most children of 10 years of age understand the risk they would be taking. If we remove that, we could be exposing those children inadvertently to high levels of gang membership, because they will be told, “You cannot be prosecuted, because you cannot be held responsible”. I really think that bears looking at.

All that said, my Amendment 22 is a very small amendment, but I believe it is very important. We all know that anti-social behaviour can be an absolute blight on a whole community’s life. It is often the beginning, the prelude, to a very large and long criminal career, so if we can nip it in the bud early, that is very important. When it comes to where people live, the ripple effect from small amounts of anti-social behaviour can affect hundreds, so I welcome the Bill’s aim to tackle anti-social behaviour in the UK, especially around housing developments. I think that is a very good thing to do. However, I am concerned that the Bill in its current form fails to extend the new powers to all housing providers. Currently, the Bill provides for social housing inconsistently. This does not appear to be a purposeful exclusion; rather, the Bill uses the definition of “housing provider” from the crime and policing Act 2014, a definition that talks about not-for-profit housing providers.

As the Bill is currently worded, institutional housing providers are not covered by these rules. I think it is very important that they are, because it is a huge sector, projected to grow to very large proportions in future, and it looks after the same vulnerable communities as any other housing provider. That is the important thing here. Whether they are institutionally funded or not is actually irrelevant; it is about who is their client group. Their client group is some of the most vulnerable communities in this country, which many of our RSLs are very good at catering for, but because they are dealing with the same client group, because the young people and older people in their purview are exposed to exactly the same situations, they should have exactly the same powers to help people.

We are talking about the ability to defend people’s life chances, because we can make where they are living safe. It can be dealt with properly. I have worked on many housing estates; I was born and raised on one myself. Anti-social behaviour that cannot be addressed by the landlord is an absolute blight on people’s lives, so we are just asking for that small wording to be changed. It would be a very small but very powerful change. I believe that it is not a purposeful exclusion; it is just because we are using the definition from 2014.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I too agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, and I have added my name to his Amendment 12 to ask the Government to amplify the basis upon which exclusion orders might be made and the quality of the evidence required. An order excluding someone from his or her home has always to be seen as a last resort —in this context, when other less drastic restraints have not worked or are clearly not likely to work. I therefore hope that the Government can clarify the likely scenarios and the criteria that will apply when exclusion orders are sought and granted.

As I understand it, under the Bill, the application will be based on the risk assessment to be carried out under new Section J1, supplemented by guidance yet to come. The Bill does not expressly say, as far as I can see, that the risk assessment should be included with the application to be made to the court, or that it should be served on the respondent where possible. Both requirements should surely be explicit, not implicit. I suggest also that at least the risk assessment should be expected to summarise the behaviour and attitude of the respondent giving rise to the risk of harm, and specifically to the need to evict him or her from their home. In addition, and by analogy with the family jurisdiction, with which I am more familiar, it should actually state the effects of making or not making the order on other known occupants of the home, including relevant children.

Finally, the assessment, I suggest, should set out clearly the reasons to believe that making an exclusion order will actually reduce the perceived risks. Experience shows—certainly, my experience shows—that in some cases, making such an order may do no more than move the problem on somewhere else.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, one area that is of great concern to me is private music tuition. I have had some pretty horrendous safeguarding cases to deal with in churches, where a church musician who has committed some serious offences has gone on to privately tutor underage pupils. That particular form of tuition—which is very often done privately, arranged by parents who see an advertisement on the internet or in a newspaper—needs to be included.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I have been a community worker for over 35 years now and I have dealt with many communities where one parent has found someone to do tuition, and that has acted as a bit of a kitemark. Other parents have felt they were safe because of the relationship they have with that particular parent. This very strong common-sense proposal would protect entire communities in one fell swoop. I really support this very important amendment.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to this group of amendments tabled by the Government and to Amendment 337A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Amendment 337 provides Northern Ireland with provisions equivalent to those in Clause 105. As with similar amendments earlier in the Bill, we recognise the need for aligned protections across jurisdictions, and I would be grateful if the Minister could outline the engagement with Northern Ireland departments and confirm that operational partners are prepared for implementation. Similarly, Amendments 520 and 550 ensure appropriate territorial extent and commencement powers for Northern Ireland. These are direct drafting and procedural changes that appear entirely sensible.

Turning to Amendment 337A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, we are supportive of the principle it raises. Closing a loophole that allows barred individuals to tutor children through so-called private arrangements seems an important and proportionate step, while the amendment sensibly preserves the long-standing exemptions for family and friends. I recognise, however, that extended regulated activity in this way may raise practical questions about enforcement and the potential impact on legitimate private tutoring arrangements, and it would be helpful to understand how these concerns would be managed in practice. I hope the Minister will respond constructively to the issues highlighted here.

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[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I know that the Minister is doing his best and this is not meant to be a controversial debate, but surely the paramount concern must be the welfare of the children. Sharing information is not just a mechanical exercise. It requires trust by the parent who is employing the music teacher in a private space that they are approved—that they are permitted to engage in one-to-one teaching activity in somebody’s home. The parent could be downstairs or in the next room, but I know that music teachers can get up to all sorts of tricks while the parent is in the next room. We need to be a little bit more robust in ensuring that this regime is there to protect children and not simply to make life easy for bureaucrats.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

This supposes that a parent has the wherewithal, time and skill to interrogate this list. It is not making a level playing field. I have been a governor of many schools. We have people who are employed specifically to do these things. I have never met a parent who has done them. We should be sending a message to people who are deliberately trying to trick parents that they will be held directly responsible, not that the parent will have to catch them out. It only takes one predator to get lucky once to devastate a child’s life, whereas a parent will have to be lucky every single time to stop this. The emphasis is in the wrong place.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, just briefly, in 2011, I went out with Hampshire traffic police who were demonstrating ANPR systems to me. We detected an uninsured motorist and they relieved the motorist of the car. I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the problem he describes.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 416C in my name, but before I do that, I give my unequivocal support to my noble friend Lord Ashcombe’s amendment. We really need to take into account the confusion this causes for poor communities, because people will sit around and make a direct calculation about what is cheaper, and unless we send a very strong message about which is riskier, these numbers will continue to grow. As motoring becomes more expensive, insurance will become optional for many communities, whereas if you are involved in an accident, it will be anything but optional, so I really support the amendment.

I speak to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, as someone who last had a drink, I think, when I was 17 years old—I do not drink at all—but I deal with young people regularly and have been doing so for over three decades now. What is important about a limit is how easy it is to detect in the moment, so although the noble Baroness would lower it to 50, I think we should lower it to zilch, to nothing, to nada, because when you are out with your friends and you are 18, 19 or 21 and the night is going your way, you will not make that adjustment. To ask, “Have I jumped 50, have I done 80?” probably will not happen: you will take the risk. Young people are full of energy, they are risk takers and it is too much estimation, so I support the noble Baroness’s amendment as it stands but we should probably be going to zero, so that people have no confusion when they are out of a night enjoying themselves, particularly young people.

On my own amendment, this is a requirement for occupants to leave their car once they have been stopped on a traffic stop by a police officer—so that police officers have that power. There is a gap in the current law: the Road Traffic Act 1988 does not currently have powers for an officer to request that vehicle occupants exit the vehicle during a traffic stop. This leaves officers vulnerable to attack and ambush, particularly in the light of modern vehicles. If you are a police officer and you stop a vehicle, you may want to listen to the engine, but now electric vehicles can run silently and their ability to accelerate is unbelievable. They weigh more, so they tend to be more deadly when used in an attack, and I think we need the law to respond to that.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I hear the noble Lord, but with respect, this provision relates to suspicionless stop and search. That is a term we use to describe a stop and search power that does not require reasonable suspicion that the person who is about to be stopped and searched is a criminal, is equipped or whatever it is.

The power in Section 60, therefore, is a suspicionless stop and search power, which is why it needs to be circumscribed and why there have to be certain conditions met before an area can be designated, because the normal law of the land, as noble Lords will recognise, is that anywhere in the land a constable can stop and search an individual whom they reasonably suspect of carrying a knife or being otherwise involved in criminality.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

Section 60 in and of itself is a special circumstance, so whether it is suspicionless needs to be looked at in that context, and I would just like to offer the noble Baroness this context. There is no such thing as non-serious violence. Let us be very clear, when we are talking about the impact of knife carrying in particular, that any knife that has ended up in the body of a person has been shown to multiple members of the community and been used to create terror before that tragedy has happened. The idea that a stop and search is only potent when it leads to an arrest or a charge is simply incorrect. Having been a youth worker for over 35 years, I have worked with some of the most gang-involved people in the entire country, and they will tell you that they will be armed because they do not believe they are going to be stopped. Every time you do a stop and search, it sends a ripple, particularly to those who need to hear the ripple, that it could happen, so it lowers their propensity to go armed. Just because it does not lead to a charge, that does not mean it has not been effective.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but I return to my central point, which is, as he pointed out in his intervention, that the normal law of the land is for stop and search on reasonable suspicion that the individual in question is a cause for concern: “I have reasonable suspicion that that person may be carrying a knife, et cetera, or otherwise involved in criminality”. These are special powers given to a relatively junior police officer; this is not a chief constable, let alone a magistrate or a judge. It allows a police officer to change the law of the land for a time-limited period for that area, to change what the stop and search regime is in that area. It is quite right that a power of that kind be tightly circumscribed because of the problems that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, spoke about and because citizens do have rights to go about their business without fear of arbitrary stop and search.

This brings me back to my question about the relationship between Amendment 411, which is in this group on its own, and Amendment 415, which noble Lords opposite have in a separate group, and the apparent dichotomy between them. Amendment 415 says that, where there is a stop and search, an officer should not be allowed to require the presentation of digital ID; it does not even say “compulsory digital ID”. So if, as I think the Government now propose, digital ID becomes available to people to partake of, if they want, as a more convenient method of ID, we are going to have circumstances where noble Lords opposite will have more routine stop and search, but when a stop and search happens, an officer would not be able to ask the person searched to identify themselves if all they have with them is digital ID. That seems like a contradiction to me. I, for one, have always been very concerned and opposed to compulsory single identifiers, not least for the reason that they will lead to routine stop and search with people required to identify themselves to the police when they have done nothing wrong. I should be very interested if noble Lords opposite could square the relationship between this amendment and the one that follows.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

This discussion has opened up an important but much underdiscussed area of public policy. I hope that the Government seriously take on board all that has been said by those who have spoken and remain attracted to the idea of a serious review of this complicated area of law to see whether we can mend it.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. As is my way, I must sound a note of caution for one group of people. I know that many noble Lords have a problem with our very low age of criminal responsibility, but it affords a level of protection to young children being groomed for gangs. We need to bear that in mind.

I have great sympathy for these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Spellar, spoke about the Lammy review. I was on the Lammy review. I ran a job club for over 12 years, and many of the young men I dealt with were unable to seek employment because of what we used to call a blip when they were younger that was still appearing on their DBS. That small blip often drove them to much more serious crime, because they were older and needed to raise more money.

We should do a review, because it is a complicated area, but there are two things to focus on. First, returning to my theme, the single biggest driver of crime is the idea that you have got away with it. If we are going to remove some of the consequences, we need to think clearly and carefully about how that will be perceived by people who are involved in criminal activity—particularly if they are young and do not have all the experiences to risk-assess their own behaviour. We must bear that in mind, because, inadvertently we might be encouraging them to approach criminal behaviour. The myth on the street will be that when you are 18, it is wiped out anyway. We might argue about the nuance of what we are prepared to wipe out or not, but that will not be the conversation on a dark night in the park when the boys are planning their next manoeuvre. It is important that we bear that in mind.

Secondly, there are people in gangs whose sole job is to recruit young people. One of the big things they say to those young people is, “You are too young to go to court”. We have to be careful about making that true, or at least appear to be true. Removing these spent convictions would be such a powerful thing to help people move on, and I support it, but let us think very carefully about how we talk about it, where we draw the lines, how we explain it and how it is enacted in reality rather than just in concept as we sit in this Chamber.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to all these amendments, particularly Amendments 476, 477 and 478. These amendments highlight how the system of criminal record disclosure, particularly as it relates to children, is complex and very confusing. I am an advocate for criminal record reform, having been a youth magistrate for over 20 years and having been on the Youth Justice Board. Those roles have consistently demonstrated to me how decisions made in childhood, often in relation to relatively minor offences, can have consequences that extend well into adult life, as we have heard this evening.

As noble Lords will know, I recently tabled an amendment to the Sentencing Bill to address the anomaly in youth sentencing whereby the first court appearance, rather than the date of the offence, determines whether a young person is treated as an adult. I am therefore very conscious of the unfair impact these technicalities beyond a child’s control can have on their future.

Although we have had success in reducing the number of children in custody because we wanted to keep young people out of prison, we have at the same time increased the threshold of seriousness of offending in these disposals of conditional cautions over a number of years.

I know that the Justice Secretary has recently acknowledged publicly that aspects of the criminal records and disclosure system are in need of reform. Rehabilitation is about giving people a chance to change, and, where appropriate, we should work to ensure that childhood mistakes do not turn into lifelong punishments, giving them the opportunity to get on with their lives.

I am also attracted to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier referred. It is very important that the Minister view these amendments on childhood as an opportunity to reflect on a broader review of criminal records and the DBS disclosure system, which might now be appropriate.

These amendments highlight just how complex the system has become. Ensuring that the system is fairer, while keeping in mind the importance of rehabilitation and protection to the public, would, in my view, be a worthwhile objective.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

You cannot have two interventions.

I do not know the answer to the first question. I have not looked at what goes on in other jurisdictions; I do not know how well it works or whether it works. Secondly, it seems to me that there should be a lot of changes to the way this is all dealt with. If the police investigated the man as well as the woman, one would hope they would not pursue their investigations.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking to my amendment—

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords—

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[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

In the Worby case, the woman discovered what had happened to her, went to the police and was not investigated.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, please excuse my enthusiasm but the Committee can see that, every time I blinked, somebody else jumped in.

I will speak in support of my Amendment 461B, which is focused on protecting underage girls. Before I do that, I will pose a few questions to the Minister on the back of the debate we have had today. First, an assertion has been made that this is happening all over the place and that many women are being prosecuted. Can the Minister give us access to the figures that she is working on to answer that question?

Secondly, is there any proof that the police are targeting women? That assertion has been made a number of times.

Also, what work are the Government doing to improve the nature of police investigations? The right reverend Prelate made that point very well. Surely, any woman in this situation should be treated as a victim until there is some very strong evidence that she is anything but a victim. What are we doing to help the police perform their duties better?

I will respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika. The notion that you can represent only people that you are of is one that we should fight very hard. I come from a very poor community and have spent my life representing people who have no relation to the way I look, where I come from and who I am. That is something we should fight very hard. I am a man and a father of two. When we talk about pregnant people, there is at least some idea that a man is 50% of how that situation arose, so I think I have some stake in the debate.

Finally, there is no debate on this side about what a woman is. If somebody is pregnant, in my world they are most certainly a woman. I cannot envisage any situation where somebody other than a woman would be pregnant. I am happy to take direction from the noble Baroness if she has such things.

My Amendment 461B is focused particularly on protecting young girls. To address this gap, my amendment would introduce a mandatory safeguarding investigation whenever an abortion is performed on a girl under the age of 16. This measure is in the best interest of vulnerable women and does not impede lawful medical care. It would simply ensure that when a child undergoes an abortion, relevant authorities are alerted and must promptly investigate the circumstances. Specifically, the investigation would seek to determine whether the pregnancy resulted from a criminal offence, such as rape or sexual offences under the Sexual Offences Act; whether the girl was subjected to coercion, exploitation or abuse; and whether any person involved, such as the abuser, may be liable for prosecution under existing laws.

One thing I know from my many decades of community work and dealing with vulnerable people in vulnerable situations is that an investigation-free zone is ripe for abuse. If you are an abuser, what you need is privacy. Clause 191 would provide privacy for many abusers, and that needs to be looked at very seriously.

The idea that there is a surge of young women who are being investigated needs to be taken into account, because this clause stands or falls on the idea that there are a lot of young women who are under a lot of pressure because of the things that are being suggested.

Clause 191 will bring about the most radical change to abortion laws in a generation, and it was done on the back of very little scrutiny and debate in the other place. I believe it falls to us in this Chamber to give it our full, undivided attention.

The other question I pose to the Minister is: what level of support is there for this publicly? We have heard that many of the professional bodies support the Bill, but do the public support it? Are they in the same place? Have they been consulted on what this would mean? I do not mean, “Do they support abortion?”; I mean, “Do they support the effect that this Bill would have?”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way because I can save the Minister here. A study in 2023 by the National Centre for Social Research found that the majority of people did not want to see women criminalised in the kind of circumstances that we are talking about.

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[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, but, of course, the wrong question was asked. Let us be very clear, I personally do not want to see anybody criminalised, and I doubt that people want to see women who have gone through a very distressing situation be criminalised. But they would probably want to see a law, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, across the way, that dealt with the balance much better. Currently, that was the wrong question to answer.

I tabled the amendment because I am very worried about the real-world consequences for young women in vulnerable situations where, when they are being coerced, their abusers would know that no investigation is even possible. No matter where you stand on the question of abortion, surely noble Lords can see that the most vulnerable young women should be protected by us in law.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, talked about women who had suffered from rape gangs. They are exactly the kind of women I think would have benefited from some kind of investigation. As it stands, Clause 191 will prevent that happening.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 461 and in support of the Clause 191 stand part notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton. I have put my name to that stand part notice, too.

As other noble Lords have observed, Clause 191 was passed in the other place following a very brief and truncated debate, entirely incommensurate with the gravity of its impact. In moving the amendment, the Member for Gower noted that it was about ensuring only that

“vulnerable women … have the right help and support”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/25; col. 306.]

I am sure that we all support the provision of appropriate and timely support for a woman considering an abortion. However, it drastically understates the effect of Clause 191, regardless of the intent of its mover.

We must confront the radical legal reality that this clause removes all deterrence against a woman performing her own abortion up to the very moment of birth. How does that ensure that women have the right help and support? The clause will decriminalise actions by a woman at any stage of her pregnancy, including actions which are criminal at present under the Offences against the Person Act and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act.

In 1929, they knew that a child who has been in the womb for 28 weeks was capable of being born alive. Now, we know of children who are born alive at 22 weeks and live. In 2020 and 2021, 261 babies were born alive at 22 and 23 weeks, before the abortion limit, who survived to be discharged from hospital. Why is abortion so distressing? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, said, it is because, by 23 weeks, the unborn baby has all its organs, muscles, limbs, bones and sex organs, it may hear, and it makes facial expressions, responds to loud noises, is getting into a pattern of sleeping and waking, practices breathing and it definitely feels pain. After that, they just keep growing.

Proponents of Clause 191 have been at pain to say that the Abortion Act is not changed and that the time limits remain the same, but that is not the reality of the clause. Clause 191 may not repeal the Abortion Act but it renders its protections largely symbolic in practice. At present, the Act operates as a tightly drawn exception to criminal offences that otherwise prohibit ending a pregnancy. Its force comes from the fact that abortion outside its conditions is unlawful. Once associated consequences are removed, the framework ceases to be a deterrent or a boundary for conduct and becomes, in effect, merely a regulatory code for providers, albeit with criminal consequences for clinicians who are left untouched for now. It is a profound shift. Time limits, certification requirements and clinical safeguards would no longer operate as meaningful legal limits on a woman’s actions.

Clause 191 is not an outworking of modernised enforcement; it is a hollowing out of the underlying settlement, which nullifies the protective structure built into the 1967 Act, particularly its recognition that abortion law is not a matter of personal autonomy but one of safety, safeguarding and the status of the viable unborn child. Both lives matter. The issue is not whether the Abortion Act still exists on the statute book; it is whether it still performs the function that Parliament intended. Clause 191 leaves the text intact while removing the mechanism that makes its limits real. I strongly urge noble Lords to support the removal of Clause 191 from the Bill.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has brought me to this point after watching the deliberations on this. I was someone who, through multiple decades of youth work in particular and community work, was reluctant to do this, but I feel that it is the right thing to do. I just note a few things that would need to happen to make this effective and safe for the wider public.

I have dealt with many gang-involved young men, in particular. There are groups of young men whose sole job is to recruit for those gangs. Sometimes, with our criminal age of 10 being so low, it has made a number of children safer because it has kept them away. If you raise that age, it means that those recruitment people can go around saying, “You’re okay. You can’t be prosecuted, you can’t go to court and you can’t get in trouble”. If we are going to make this change, it needs to be sounded very clearly that there is still a route for you to get in trouble—that it is very important.

The more important piece, I would argue, is to look at how the Metropolitan Police now approach all young children; it views them as a victim first and it is very reluctant to move them into being a criminal without some very serious evidence—that approach needs to be embedded somewhere alongside this change. However, I make the point that there are a number of 10 year-olds—there are not millions of them out there, but there are enough in some of our poorest communities—who are sophisticated enough to be a real danger.

If we are going to make this change, we should make sure that, alongside it, we still have a way to affect the behaviour of those young children, in particular around bullying. If we remove supervision from them—often, supervision from the police is the only thing that carries enough weight in their own mind—they become a serious source of bullying and can cajole other children into breaking the law.

While I will support the amendment, I have been moved to this position only very recently, because it has had to fight against multiple years of experience of dealing with some young children who are very criminally involved, deliberately so. I still see the noble Baroness’ point, but I make a plea to the Minister to make sure that measures are put in place to keep the community safe and to identify young people early, not labelling them as criminals but dealing with their ability to bully and cajole other young people.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak on Amendment 469, and I have listened with great care to the persuasive argument presented by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom I think I can also refer to as a noble friend. I have also been briefed by Justice, a body that I have the highest respect for; indeed, I have been a member of Justice—I think I joined in 1964—for up to 60 years.

I accept the widespread view in other countries that the age for findings of criminality should be 14 years, which is the proposition in Amendment 469. I accept also that Scotland has recently raised the age of criminality from eight years to 12 years. We should also take into account the alarming increase in crime committed by young children going down to the age of nine years, and even lower. I read, for example, from Home Office statistics, which record that 9,544 offences were committed by children aged nine or younger in 2024. That is a rise of 30% on the 7,370 under-10 crimes recorded in 2019, before the pandemic, and an 18% rise on the total for 2022 of 8,064. They range, alarmingly, over crimes concerning rape, arson, stalking, attacking police, making death threats and drug and racially motivated offences—that is for nine year-olds. In Cheshire recently, police faced an attempted murder suspect who was too young to go before the courts. I take full account of all that.

However, I have a sense of unease in raising the age of criminality from 10 to 14 years. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, raised the case relating to two year-old James Bulger, of February 1993. I need not go into the full facts, but it suffices to say that in a shopping centre in Bootle in Merseyside, a little boy, two year-old James Bulger, was separated from his mother and was met by two other boys, 10 year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. They proceeded to take him away, eventually to a railway line, where they committed the most horrendous murder of that little boy. Following that, they were tried and convicted in November 1993 and in June 2001 were released from prison on licence. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has dealt with their anonymity following their release.

The record is that—and I think this is very relevant—Robert Thompson is not known to have been a reoffender, but not so with Jon Venables. He has had multiple convictions, including for child pornography. He is currently in prison and recently, in 2023, bail was refused because he still posed a danger and a risk to the public. As I said, I have expressed my unease about this.

The only further comment I make on the horrendous case relating to poor two year-old James Bulger is that it is not the only recorded crime of horrendous behaviour by young persons. I recall reading in the newspaper of the recent murder of a pensioner, and I am fairly sure that it was underage children who were responsible for that. I also recall reading in the newspapers of the murder of a homosexual in a public park. Again, if I recall correctly, underage children were involved, including a young girl.

Juvenile crime, I suggest, should be kept on the record. It was highly relevant in the case of Jon Venables that it should be kept on the record. Perhaps we could make an exception for the very serious crime that I have outlined to your Lordships. But one way or another, that record of criminality should remain with the juvenile.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Kingdom Security did not have its contract renewed, but similar practices have proliferated throughout the ASBI enforcement world. Such scam-like behaviour of taking fines for profit discredits and trivialises a serious approach to tackling anti-social behaviour. This is a chance for the Government to row back on this. I hope that the noble Lord will call a Division on this, and I shall certainly vote in support of Amendment 7 if he does.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment tabled in my name. As noble Lords know, I am terrible with the billion rules that we have in this place, so bear with me. This amendment would make a small change that would make a big difference to many residents around the country.

I shall try not to rehearse the arguments that I have made before, but we now need to reflect the reality of the housing situation in this country. With the Government’s mission to build 1.5 million homes, this reality will only become bigger—that many of our housing providers in the social sector are for-profit companies. It is a matter of fairness to make sure that the vulnerable residents that they are responsible for have the same access to the law that any resident would have, regardless of the legal structure of their landlord. To make that happen, I have proposed small changes to remove the particular words “non-profit private”. That would make a massive difference to these companies’ ability to keep people safe.

The law is at its best when it is clear and coherent. Good law should be comprehensive and unambiguous. If Parliament intends these powers to apply to housing providers, as I say, it should apply to all of them. This amendment would not alter the policy intent of the Bill but strengthen it, reinforcing the simple principle that tenants’ safety and accountability must be the same, regardless of where you live in the country. I recommend the amendment to the Government and ask for this tiny change to make sure that we can deliver safety for all our residents countrywide.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my noble friend Lady Doocey’s name and mine, which seek to ensure that the Government’s new anti-social behaviour powers are grounded in evidence, proportionality and democratic accountability, as well as to other amendments in this group.

On these Benches, we do not dismiss the misery that persistent anti-social behaviour causes, but we remain deeply unconvinced that layering yet another complex civil order on to an already confused ASB framework is the right approach. As Justice has highlighted, respect orders risk duplicating existing powers, come with limited evidence of effectiveness and lack basic procedural safeguards. They rely on a weak civil standard of proof, yet they impose severe restrictions and carry a potential two-year prison sentence upon breach.

First, in Committee, we warned that the threshold of “just and convenient” is far too low for an order that can deprive a person of their liberty and exclude them from their home. I very much welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, had to say in his observations on the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, defended that language as “familiar” to the civil courts. However, he offered a chink of light, agreeing to examine the arguments for the wording in Amendment 1, “necessary and proportionate”, to ensure strict alignment with the Human Rights Act. I very much hope that his reflections have led him to accept this higher and safer threshold today, ensuring that these orders are not used merely for administrative expediency. We need an answer to the pilot or not-pilot question raised by my noble friend.

Secondly, I return to the issue of democratic accountability. Our Amendment 2 requires that the terms of respect orders and PSPOs must be subject to a full council vote. In his follow-up letter to me, following Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, rejected this, claiming that it would introduce delays and unnecessary bureaucracy. But democratic scrutiny of civil liberties is not an administrative delay; it is a constitutional necessity. The Government’s resistance to this directly contradicts the Local Government Association’s own statutory guidance, which recommends as best practice that final approval of a PSPO be undertaken at cabinet or full council level, to ensure openness and accountability.

Currently, research by the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life, formerly the Manifesto Club, shows that nearly half of all PSPOs are signed off by a single, often unelected, council officer, without any democratic vote. This lack of scrutiny has led to absurd and stigmatising orders banning innocuous activities. If full council approval is already recommended as best practice by the LGA, standardising it in legislation would not be an arduous delay; it would simply force all councils to meet the standard of transparency that the Government’s own guidance expects.

As regards Amendment 3, as I highlighted in Committee and in correspondence with the Minister, there is currently no formal means to directly appeal a PSPO FPN. Citizens feel pressured into paying unjust fines to avoid financial ruin. The Government’s move to increase the maximum fixed penalty notice for PSPO and CPN breaches to £500 is highly dangerous without statutory safeguards. In Committee, the Minister suggested that, if individuals feel a fine is unreasonable, they can simply make representations to the issuing agency. This is totally inadequate; there should be a formal right of appeal.

I turn to Amendment 7 in my name, which concerns fixed penalty notices for public space protection orders and community protection notices. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for her support in this respect and for her very extensive unpicking of these ASB powers. Under Clause 4, the Government are pushing ahead with a 400% increase to the maximum FPN for these breaches, raising it from £100 to a punitive £500. Without statutory safeguards, this will simply supercharge a system that is already widely abused. This new clause addresses the deeply concerning practice of fining for profit. It stipulates that neither an authorised person nor their employer may retain any financial benefit from the fixed penalty notices that they issue.

The Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life’s Corruption of Punishment report exposes the grim reality of the modern enforcement market. Environmental and ASB enforcement is increasingly seen as a business. Local authorities are entering into contracts with private companies, boasting of “zero financial risk” while sharing the “surplus revenue” generated by fines. Guidance and formal representations are entirely inadequate when faced with the modern enforcement market. As the Campaign for Everyday Freedom’s research also highlights, 66 councils currently employ private companies to issue FPNs, and the standard model is that these companies retain a percentage of the income, often up to 100% until costs are recovered. This creates a direct perverse financial incentive to issue as many tickets as possible for innocuous actions.

As I have pointed out to the Minister, Defra has already issued strict guidance stating that private firms enforcing littering should not receive greater revenue from increasing the volume of penalties. It is entirely illogical not to apply the same statutory prohibition to anti-social behaviour enforcement. We must ban fining for profit in the Bill. It is a time to a put a statutory end to the revenue collection system masquerading as justice.

Finally, in Amendment 12, we have proposed an annual report on the use of these ASB powers, for all the reasons I have stated that were so well expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I entirely understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is trying to achieve something very similar in her amendment. We are all aiming for much greater transparency in the use of these ASB powers, and I very much hope that the Government will go for at least one of the proposals.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment was tabled by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and I have attached my name to it. Before I move on to it, I want briefly to indicate my support for the excellent amendment in this group tabled by my noble friend Lady Buscombe, Amendment 387A, which would give regulatory authorities greater powers to tackle illegal activity that is afflicting many villages, towns and cities in our country and, in particular, is impacting the amenity and quality of life in residential and commercial areas. I very much hope that the House is predisposed to support that amendment.

Amendment 385 seeks to get around the problem of cyclists hiding themselves from the public by covering their faces when breaking the law. It would give police officers the power to stop individuals while wearing a face covering. Following an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, in Committee, my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe also provided that a constable may require the person to remove the face covering.

I think it is fair to say that many of us have been disappointed by the Government’s response so far to all the amendments on cycling, e-bikes and e-scooters, and to our efforts to use the Bill to destroy the business model that makes mobile phone thefts so profitable and attractive to criminals. I do not seek to relitigate our debate last week on mobile phone theft, but I hope that your Lordships’ House can understand the context in which I am moving the amendment in my noble friend’s name.

My noble friend Lord Davies of Gower said from our Front Bench in Committee:

“I task any Member of the Committee to watch footage of these phone thefts and deny that there is a problem with face coverings and bikes. Face coverings mean that they are not detected by CCTV, while electric bikes, often modified, mean that the victim has no chance of chasing and retrieving the stolen property”.—[Official Report, 20/1/26; col. 163.]


Our city streets now teem with men—they are usually men—on fast cycles, electric bikes and scooters, whose faces are, even in summer, hidden by balaclavas or ski masks. This feels hostile even if it is not, especially if it is accompanied by loud music or shouts of, “Get out of the way”. Often, the intentions of such concealment are malign; at best, they are hurrying to make fast-food deliveries and endangering people like me who are using the pavement for its proper purpose.

I must stress that we are not talking about this being a London-only issue. For example, newspaper reports show that, in Darlington, there were hundreds of complaints last year about youths on bikes wearing balaclavas and riding recklessly in groups around pedestrians, which is appalling—especially for the elderly or infirm. We need to put a stop to all of this. We need a new power, and we need it now, rather than waiting while the problem grows.

I should make it clear that I am not against cycling or the wearing of masks, scarves or helmets. This is not a prohibition. I merely want the police to have the powers they need to take action where they suspect that a crime is being committed. The powers in the Public Order Act to remove face coverings in designated areas or for local authorities to make public space protection orders—these were mentioned by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, in winding up—are inadequate. They may be useful for hotspots such as Oxford Circus— I strongly support such use—but they ignore the fact that cycle crime is widespread and undermining faith in both the police and the Government.

The Minister of State, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, later argued in our debate on Report on 4 March that mobile phone theft is coming down a bit: it is down by 12% under this Government. I concede that—it is good news—but it is still at an appalling level, making life miserable for tens of thousands of victims. I made the point that, in 2023, there were 4,985 cases of robbery and theft of a mobile phone in London alone, using a motorcycle or an e-bike, and that a face covering was worn in more than 1,000 of those incidents.

We have also heard that the Department for Transport is planning legislation on what it likes to call “micro-mobility”. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, suggested, such legislation could in practice take another two years; in fact, it could take longer to secure a legislative slot. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe made the point that, when the Food Safety Act was passed, during which time she was a civil servant, it had been waiting for a slot for nearly 10 years; that was until Edwina Currie created a crisis and it became a political priority. In short, we cannot wait.

Moreover, this Bill is the right vehicle for this amendment on face coverings because it concerns the enforcement of criminal law by the police, rather than controls on cyclists, cycles and e-bikes per se. Countries such as Switzerland, France and Denmark are reported to have proscribed facial coverings in public spaces. I am not seeking to go that far.

To summarise, this amendment would allow a police officer—but not other enforcement officers, it should be noted—to stop a person cycling or riding a scooter who is wearing a face covering in such a way as to conceal their identity, and to require them to remove it. It would not ban such face coverings. The penalty would be a level-3 fine of up to £1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one month.

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe tackled this matter gently in Committee, hoping that the Minister would take the opportunity to bring forward a government amendment on Report. In the absence of a more positive response, I would normally have been minded to test the opinion of the House, but, in the interests of the expeditious transaction of House business, I will not do so. I beg to move.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 386 seeks to enable police officers, after a lawful stop, to ask a member of the public to exit the vehicle. I support the work of the Police Federation of England and Wales, and I have tabled this amendment for four obvious reasons.

First, the amendment seeks to close a clear operational gap. In a world of keyless and electric vehicles, removing the key no longer guarantees that the vehicle is disabled. Officers need a law to reflect this reality. Secondly, the amendment would create a modest and practical power, not a sweeping new stop power. It would apply only after a lawful stop has taken place and would allow officers to control the scene more safely. Thirdly, it is about the safety of officers, passengers and the wider public. Requiring occupants to exit a live vehicle can reduce the risk of sudden flight, injury, interference with evidence and escalation at the roadside. Fourthly, the amendment contains proper safeguards. The tests of reasonableness and proportionality are built in, and the Secretary of State may issue guidance linked to the PACE codes.

This is a sensible, limited and necessary amendment that I hope the House will support. We are now living in an era when many police officers and members of the public are being harmed, because people can simply drive away as police officers do not have the right to make the situation safe by asking them to step out of the car. I have been through the reasons why this is a proportionate and useful amendment that fills a gap that needs to be filled. I commend it to the House.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 387A. Let me begin by explaining the reason and intent behind this simple amendment. On 20 January, further to an Urgent Question regarding business rates in the hospitality sector, I asked,

“are any of the many thousands of Turkish barbers, as they are so called, vape shops and nail bars—which are all cash only and which have infected our villages, towns and cities—paying any business rates? … We know that most of them are about money laundering, organised crime and county lines drugs”.

In his response, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, stated:

“I agree with a great deal of what the noble Baroness says. HMRC has announced substantial measures to crack down on some of the businesses she mentioned, and I think she will have seen several of them closing in recent months. She is quite right that more needs to be done”. ”.—[Official Report, 20/1/26; col. 139.]


The Labour MP Joe Powell stated recently:

“The crackdown on dodgy shops across the country is something the public cares deeply about. Our high streets are being hollowed out by illegitimate businesses that often don’t pay the tax they owe, sell illicit goods and have links to serious organised crime. That has real consequences for those that play by the rules, and for communities fed up with seeing illegal activity in plain sight”.


In response to an Oral Question on 5 March in your Lordships’ House regarding growth in cash-only businesses, the Labour Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Watts —to whom I have given notice that I will be referencing him in this debate—stated that the businesses

“are not there for the customers’ benefit but, in some cases, for the business to avoid tax and other things”.

The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, in response, stated that

“the Government are very aware ... HMRC has recently engaged in increased enforcement activity around those exact points”. —[Official Report, 5/3/26; col. 1415.]

There is clearly cross-party support for the intention behind this amendment. In addition, I have been informed that the Chartered Trading Standards Institute very much supports this amendment, stating that it would be extremely helpful to the trading standards profession and other enforcement agencies. If ever there was a case for sharing intelligence across Whitehall and HMRC together with the Home Office, the National Crime Agency and trading standards, this is it.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Lord Bailey of Paddington]

386: After Clause 160, insert the following new Clause—
“Direction to exit vehicle following a lawful stop(1) Where a constable in uniform, or a traffic officer, has required a vehicle to stop under section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (power of police to stop vehicles), the constable may direct the driver and any passenger to— (a) exit the vehicle, and(b) remain outside the vehicle for so long as is reasonably necessary for the exercise of the constable’s functions.(2) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, that person fails to comply with a direction given under subsection (1).(3) A person who commits an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.(4) A constable may use reasonable force, where necessary and proportionate, to secure compliance with a direction given under subsection (1) for the purposes of officer safety, public safety, or prevention of escape or interference with evidence.(5) The Secretary of State may issue codes of practice or guidance relating to the exercise of powers under this section and such codes may be incorporated into Codes of Practice issued under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.(6) In this section “vehicle” has the same meaning as in section 185 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment closes an operational safety gap created by keyless and electric vehicles, where removing a key no longer disables a car. It provides a modest, post-stop direction power so officers can safely manage encounters outside a live vehicle. Safeguards are built in through reasonableness, proportionality and PACE-linked guidance.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his answer. I am partially sated by what he said about the consultation that is coming along, but we all know that consultations can take for ever, and we may not get the outcome that I am seeking. I want to make the point that we have already had officers in London and in Essex injured by people deciding to drive away. In most other jurisdictions across the western world, this law has been put in place because they have already had deaths. I think it is just a matter of time before an officer is seriously hurt if we do not address this issue. But, as I said, the Minister was very generous in his answer and has given a way forward. I accept that way forward, so I shall not move my amendment.

Amendment 386 not moved.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to give enthusiastic support to this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I think that a criminal record disclosure regime is very important—we all understand that we do not want the worst of the worst working with children and so on —but the impact on rehabilitation is quite serious.

On Monday evening, it was therefore a great relief when the Minister said to those of us who were worried that non-crime hate incidents might be stored on a criminal database that could be used to prevent future employment or volunteering opportunities that that was a misplaced concern—although having the word “hate” by your name on a police database might not be what one would want.

In this instance, we are talking about people who have criminal convictions, have been in prison or have been serving their time. In working with former prisoners, I have known former drug addicts and gang members who have been invaluable as volunteers or in working with young people or youth services, but many of them are simply kept out of being able to help because of the barring scheme. A group of ex-prisoners that I had some dealing with wanted to do some work with care homes—we desperately need people to work in care homes. They were fully rehabilitated but were basically going to be barred from doing so. That seemed to me to be unfair and counterproductive. There was also a teenage victim of a grooming gang—a victim—who was convicted for soliciting prostitution at the age of 16. She should get a pardon, of course, but the main thing is that she is barred even from going on her own child’s school trips. She desperately wants to help out in the school, but she cannot.

These things should be looked at quite straight- forwardly. It is tricky, because I am aware that we do not want threatening people to work with, for example, children, but we should not be risk averse. I commend the noble Baroness on the wording, which is an appropriate balance between public protection and rehabilitation. There is no point putting people in prison and telling them that they will be different people and be given a second chance if they rehabilitate but then denying them that second chance when they leave prison. They might as well just carry on being criminals. I think this amendment is, as they say, a no-brainer, and I hope the Government will accept it.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 390A from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I just want to give a practical look at this. As many noble Lords know, I have been a youth and community worker for well over 35 years now, and one of my biggest projects was to run a job club. Many of the young men in particular in my job club were very disappointed when they could not get work. Invariably, they had had some brush with the law that meant prison time, had done the work on themselves to be productive members of society, and came out, but then the barring code, DBS and all kinds of things got in the way. What do you believe they returned to then? They returned to the only skill they had, which was criminal activity. Most of the most serious criminals I dealt with—the repeat criminals, the ones that you really needed to cross the road for—were so because, at that moment when we could have assessed them slightly differently, when their youthful transgressions could have been looked at in a different light, we did not, and they then became a really serious, long-term problem to us all.

When I spoke to a group of young men very recently, and I keep saying men because I have been doing work with gang-involved young men, one of them finished our conversation by saying to me, “You”—by that, he meant us—“are doing it to yourselves”. He said that if we continue to view him as a criminal, he will continue to behave as a criminal.

We are all certain of two things: we do not want people who have committed crimes of the worst kind to go unpunished and get away with them, and we want to protect public safety. But since these rules first came in, some time ago now, our protection awareness and the rules have greatly advanced. As a trustee of a charity that does youth work, my job was to look at people’s criminal records and help to assess whether we could help them to work safely with our young people. Usually, we could do that, and for those for whom we could not we had to ask them to leave.

The idea that the Government should have a review is long overdue. If you really want to rehabilitate people, you have to show them that there is some chance that they can re-enter society and make up for what they may have done incorrectly. We understand that it is a balance but, again, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, pointed out, the wording of the amendment contains that balance. I commend it to the House.

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[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, can I add my two-penn’orth to this? I declare my interest as the co-chair of the national police ethics committee, but I am speaking more as a serving Bishop. I have to hear disciplinary complaints against clergy. Sometimes those clergy have committed something which is being investigated first by the police. To answer the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, often the police tell us, “We don’t want you interfering until we have finished”. If the result of the criminal proceeding is that the person is convicted, I can then do quite a summary process in terms of applying a penalty or perhaps depriving that member of the clergy from serving in their parish, perhaps banning them from ministry for a time or for life. But all of that is very much on that balance of probabilities, on the civil standard. It is very different from the criminal standard.

There are many cases where the police investigation may not lead to a trial or may lead to a trial and acquittal but there are still major issues around the suitability of that person to be a minister of religion, such as their safeguarding ability. I need to be able to reassure my people in my diocese by following a proper disciplinary process on exactly the same facts as the criminal case was dealing with, but to that very different standard of proof.

Again, as chair of police ethics, I think the ability of the police to be respected by the public, for me, demands that there are occasions when somebody who has been acquitted at the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt should still then face the disciplinary matter at that civil standard of the balance of probabilities, so I could not support this current amendment.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 392 in my name is about fairness, discipline and humanity.

First, misconduct investigations that drift on for months and years are damaging to everyone involved—the officer, the family, the complainant and public confidence in the system. Secondly, where these cases run on endlessly, the consequences can be severe. Long investigations place huge strain on mental health and, in the worst cases, such prolonged uncertainty has been linked to suicide. That alone should make this House pause and ask whether the current system is working as it should. Thirdly, I want to stress that this amendment does not block proper investigation and does not touch criminal matters. It simply says that, after 12 months, there should be independent scrutiny by a legally qualified person so that cases can move on properly and an officer can either be brought back into service or removed from the service without delay. Finally, swift justice is a matter for all involved. It matters for the innocent officer who should not be left in limbo. It matters for the complainants who deserve prompt and credible outcomes. Justice delayed helps no one; this amendment would bring greater urgency, greater accountability and a greater sense of fairness to the police disciplinary system.

Morale in the police force, particularly in the Met, is very low and one of the things that officers continually point to is the length of investigations when an officer is accused of something. This is not to say whether the officer is innocent or not—that is a whole other affair—it is the length of the investigation. If you speak to any of your local bobbies, particularly if they are an officer, they are likely to tell you they are considering leaving. When you probe a bit deeper, this question of investigations always comes up. One of the major roles of this Government now has to be to improve police morale by doing the right thing and making the whole system fairer.

I come from the Black community, the community arguably most over and under policed simultaneously in this country. If we are to have a police force that can actually care for the people who have the most interaction with the police, we need to raise their morale. I commend this amendment to the House. It could be a very good step in the right direction to make these investigations fair and to raise police morale.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 393A in my name seeks to codify the Supreme Court decision in W(80) which relates to police disciplinary proceedings involving the use of force. The amendment relates to the test used to determine whether an officer misconducted themselves when he or she used force in self-defence. The amendment would place in statute the current legal position that an officer must hold an honest belief that they or others faced an immediate danger and, crucially, that where that belief is mistaken, the mistake must also be an objectively reasonable one.

I have retabled this amendment to encourage further consideration by the Government of their decision to depart from this test following Sir Adrian Fulford’s rapid review. Under their proposal, an officer would be able to rely on an honestly held but mistaken belief, even if the mistake was unreasonable. This is a significant shift, and one intended to be made by statutory instrument and without public consultation.

Since this is Report, I will not repeat the arguments made in Committee; however, I continue to believe firmly that the current civil law test is the right one in the context of misconduct proceedings. Of course, as many have rightly emphasised, it is essential that officers required to make split-second decisions in life-threatening situations are treated fairly, but fairness to officers must be balanced with the equally important obligations of learning, improvement and accountability of officers. The current test already achieves that balance. On the previous references to delays in the misconduct proceedings arena, I would say that these matters should be addressed by review, rather than removing the possibility of misconduct proceedings.

It is important to be clear that this amendment does not concern the criminal law. It does not touch on criminal prosecutions, as was suggested during Committee. To answer the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, with respect, the reason that disciplinary proceedings await the outcome of criminal proceedings is that this is what the police ask. I chair the safeguarding service in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster and in many cases the police will say to us, “Please stop: do nothing”, and the policy is that we stop and do nothing until the police say we can do something. That is an important reservation.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments all address the same question: how we protect the public from unlawful force while treating officers fairly when they carry out dangerous duties on our behalf. From these Benches, we start from two simple principles: there must be clear, consistent standards of accountability; and we must not drift into a two-tier justice system that treats police officers differently from everyone else.

On Amendment 391, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, we have particular concerns. It would, in effect, close off the possibility of independent scrutiny by the IOPC once a criminal court had acquitted an officer. That might sound attractive in the interests of family, but it risks confusing two distinct questions: whether conduct meets the high criminal threshold for conviction and whether it meets the professional standards we rightly expect from those who wield state power.

We are more sympathetic to Amendment 392 from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey. Misconduct cases that drift for years are bad for families seeking answers, for complainants whose evidence fades, for taxpayers funding prolonged suspensions and, not least, for officers left in limbo. The broad thrust of the amendment—that investigations need clear expectations and real grip—is one we support, while recognising that complex cases sometimes need longer and that rigid timelines can carry risks.

Amendment 393A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, seeks to put beyond doubt the test that should apply in police disciplinary proceedings involving the use of force. We support the aim of aligning those proceedings with the approach of the Supreme Court in W80 as a modest but important safeguard for bereaved families and communities who need to see that internal standards reflect the law as articulated by the highest court. If the Government are now moving in that direction through secondary legislation, so much the better, but Parliament is entitled to a clear, on-the-record explanation of the test, not simply an assurance that it will be sorted out behind the scenes.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, sits down, I wish to say that this is not a rigid timeline for anything other than a review to look at the timeline. I accept that a complicated case may need to run, but even in a complicated case, somebody should say, “Okay, this is complicated—we need more time”. In many instances, 12 months would be the point where somebody said, “We need to wrap up and move on”.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for initiating his Amendment 391. I know that it is motivated by the desire to support police officers in the difficult role they perform. He and I share that motivation. I say to him, however, that the amendment as drafted would have the effect of curtailing existing powers that the Independent Office for Police Conduct can use to reinvestigate or reopen a case that it has previously closed. The amendment also seeks, more generally, to prevent the reopening of investigations into complaints against the police from the public, again if such complaints have resulted in criminal proceedings which have not resulted in a conviction.

I take very straightforwardly the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who made the point that I was going to make: we know of no recent cases where the Independent Office for Police Conduct has reopened a closed case. However, it is in the public interest that cases of alleged police misconduct can, if need be, be reopened in the light of substantive new evidence or evidence that the original investigation was flawed. As has been said by the three noble Members who have spoken, not all criminal proceedings against serving police officers involve line-of-duty incidents. Some may involve serious corruption or sexual violence by police perpetrators, and there may be compelling public interest arguments for reopening such cases.

The powers of the Independent Office for Police Conduct to reinvestigate a case are already limited by existing law, which requires the IOPC to have compelling reasons to reopen a case. This is a legal threshold and is already a high bar. Disciplinary proceedings involve different evidential tests, as was mentioned by those who contributed, and the lower threshold for finding misconduct or gross misconduct is the balance of probabilities. They also serve a different purpose from a criminal trial. We rightly expect the highest standards from our police officers, so a blanket presumption that no police officer who has been acquitted in the criminal courts should face disciplinary proceedings would, in the Government’s view, be quite wrong—I think that reflects the points of view put by the noble Viscount, the noble Lord and the noble and learned Baroness. That is a compelling argument which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, will reflect on if he seeks to push the amendment, which I hope, in due course, he will not.

Amendment 392, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, seeks to improve the timeliness of police complaints and misconduct investigations by creating a new system of legal adjudicators with the power to overrule both chief constables and the Independent Office for Police Conduct by closing down investigations where they determine that there is no good or sufficient reason for any delay. As we have previously debated, unnecessary delays in these investigations are not in anyone’s best interests. I know the impact they will have on public confidence and on the welfare of the police officers involved. However, while it is right to strive for improvements in timeliness, this amendment risks adding another layer of bureaucracy, thereby adding cost and delay and not removing it.

The Government are committed to supporting chief constables to remove those who are not fit for purpose, but the amendment has the potential not only to overrule the responsibilities of chief constables and the Independent Office for Police Conduct, but to create some perverse outcomes. The Government’s recent police reform White Paper already confirms our commitment to an independent, end-to-end review of the police conduct system, which I know the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, would support. It will include looking at timeliness and how this can be improved. Again, further process will be brought back following the police White Paper proposals.

Amendment 393A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, would require that, where a police officer uses force based on an honestly held but mistaken belief, that belief can justify the use of force only if the mistake was objectively reasonable. In effect, as she knows, it seeks to codify the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of police officer W80, which found that the civil standard applied to this test. As the House will know, police officers carry out important and demanding roles. The Government are determined to ensure that both the public and the police are able to feel confident in the police accountability system. That is why we commissioned a review—again, the noble Baroness referred to this—from Timothy Godwin, a former senior police officer, and Sir Adrian Fulford. They carried out a rapid, independent review into police accountability.

The findings of that review were published in October 2025—again, the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, referred to this—and it recommended that the Government change the legal test for the use of force in police misconduct cases from the civil to the criminal law test. The Government, again, have accepted this recommendation and we are in the process of making the necessary changes via secondary legislation. Our intention is that these changes will come into force later this year, in the spring of 2026.

While I understand the noble Baroness’s concept, I cannot support it, because we have put in place the independent commissioners to examine the matter thoroughly and they heard evidence from a wide range of stakeholders. Their recommendation was clear: the current approach has created confusion, inconsistency and, I accept, a very bad effect on police morale, particularly among firearms officers. I hope the changes we are making will bring clarity to the system. I reassure the House that it will still be the case that any force used must be proportionate, reasonable and necessary. I hope that satisfies the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, after her comments—it may not—and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey.

Finally in this group, I will speak briefly to government Amendments 395 and 397. These are technical amendments to ensure that specialist police force barred and advisory lists are consistently applied across police forces. The provisions in Clauses 173 to 181 and Schedule 21 are part of a broader effort to raise standards and conduct within law enforcement. They also include the closure of a legislative loophole. These technical amendments have been tabled to ensure that we have alignment in the treatment of civilian employees within the police service.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I hope I have satisfied the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington. I hope not just that I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, but that on reflection he is able to listen to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and therefore not push his amendment to a vote. But, as ever, that is entirely a matter for him.

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Tabled by

[Lord Bailey of Paddington]

392: After Clause 167, insert the following new Clause—
“Scrutiny of investigation timeliness(1) The Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2020 (S.I.2020/2) are amended as follows.(2) After Regulation 13 (timeliness of investigations), insert—“Scrutiny of investigation timeliness(1) A legally qualified person must be appointed to scrutinise any investigations of misconduct or gross misconduct which have not been completed within 12 months.(2) The legally qualified person must determine whether there is good and sufficient reason for the time already taken, and how much time is anticipated to be needed for completion of the investigation.(3) In determining whether there is good and sufficient reason, the legally qualified person may have regard to any relevant matter, and must have particular regard to—(a) whether the investigation has been efficient and effective;(b) whether there has been unnecessary or unreasonable delay, having regard to the complexity and seriousness of the case;(c) the impact upon the officer and others;(d) any anticipated further delay;(e) the public interest and effect on confidence in the police disciplinary system;(f) representations made on behalf of any person entitled to receive a copy of the information provided.(4) If the legally qualified person determines that there is good and sufficient reason to continue the investigation, then the legally qualified person must set a date for the conclusion of all proceedings.(5) Nothing in this provision shall have any effect in relation to any criminal investigation.”(3) The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 (S.I.2020/4) are amended as follows.(4) After Regulation 19 (timeliness of investigation), insert—“Scrutiny of investigation timeliness(1) A legally qualified person must be appointed to scrutinise any investigations of misconduct or gross misconduct which have not been completed within 12 months.(2) The legally qualified person must determine whether there is good and sufficient reason for the time already taken, and how much time is anticipated to be needed for completion of the investigation. (3) In determining whether there is good and sufficient reason, the legally qualified person may have regard to any relevant matter, and must have particular regard to—(a) whether the investigation has been efficient and effective;(b) whether there has been unnecessary or unreasonable delay, having regard to the complexity and seriousness of the case;(c) the impact upon the officer and others;(d) any anticipated further delay;(e) the public interest and effect on confidence in the police disciplinary system;(f) representations made on behalf of any person entitled to receive a copy of the information provided.(4) If the legally qualified person determines that there is good and sufficient reason to continue the investigation, then the legally qualified person must set a date for the conclusion of all proceedings.(5) Nothing in this provision shall have any effect in relation to any criminal investigation.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment proposes a 12-month limit, unless extraordinary circumstances reviewed by a legally qualified person dictate otherwise, which would encourage forces and external bodies to complete misconduct and gross misconduct processes quicker, allowing officers to resume duties and limiting the negative impact on their health and wellbeing.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Before we voted, he said to me that he hoped I was satisfied. I will say that I am partially satisfied with his answer, and that is good enough; I will not test the opinion of the House. I would like to say, however, that he talked about the work that the Government are doing to look at how we can shorten these investigations; he mentioned that the Government were going to give this more consideration. I implore him to look at how we shorten these investigations. They are unnecessarily wrong and they are causing huge damage on both sides of the equation. I would like to support the Government in that work, and if I can be of any help, I hope they will let me know. However, I will not test the will of the House.

Amendment 392 not moved.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bailey of Paddington]

408: After Clause 182, insert the following new Clause—
“Police covenant: mandatory reporting on suicide and attempted suicide(1) The Secretary of State must ensure the collection and publication of data on suicide and attempted suicide among police officers and police staff for the purposes of supporting mental health and wellbeing under the police covenant (see section 1 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022).(2) Each police force in England and Wales must collect and submit annually to the Secretary of State—(a) the number of confirmed suicides by serving police officers and police staff;(b) the number of attempted suicides by serving police officers and police staff; (c) contextual information, where reasonably available, including duty status, length of service, role, rank, known occupational stressors, and access to mental health support.(3) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, and annually thereafter, lay a report before Parliament (to be known as the “Police Covenant Mental Health Report”) which must include, but is not limited to—(a) national and force-level data trends,(b) analysis of occupational contributory factors,(c) assessment of the adequacy, usage and evidence-based outcomes of mental health and suicide prevention provisions under the police covenant,(d) recommendations to address identified risks, and(e) a statement from the Chief Medical Officer for England.(4) The report under subsection (3) must—(a) be published and disseminated to all police personnel;(b) include commentary from the College of Policing on compliance, data quality and best practice at force level;(c) include contributions from staff representative bodies and trade unions.(5) Anonymised data, disaggregated by force area, must be published, subject to data protection and safeguarding.(6) Each Chief Constable must, at the end of every calendar year, provide a statement to the Secretary of State certifying that the requirements under this section have been met by their police force.(7) Where a Chief Constable fails to provide a certification under subsection (6) without reasonable excuse, the Secretary of State must notify HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services.(8) The Inspectorate must have regard to a notification under subsection (7) in the course of its inspection of that police force under the police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) programme.(9) The Secretary of State must establish an independent advisory board, to be known as the “Police Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Advisory Board”.(10) The Board must consist of persons with expertise in clinical care, occupational health, staff representation and academic research.(11) The functions of the Board are to—(a) advise the Secretary of State on guidance relating to suicide prevention and mental health in the police workforce,(b) set standards for the collection and reporting of relevant data, and(c) review and make recommendations on force-level responses to risks identified through data and inspections.(12) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of the Police Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Advisory Board, including provision about—(a) the Board’s procedures,(b) its terms of reference, and(c) its reporting duties.(13) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about—(a) data collection standards,(b) statutory guidance,(c) audit mechanisms, and(d) such further oversight as may be considered necessary. (14) In this section, “police officer” and “police staff” have the same meanings as in section 1 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.”

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, before I go into detail on Amendment 408, I thank the Police Federation of England and Wales for its tireless work on this issue.

If we are serious about the police covenant then we must be serious about the well-being of those who serve. We cannot claim to support officers and staff while failing even to measure properly the most tragic outcomes of poor mental health. The amendment is rooted in a simple principle: what is measured is what is acted upon. At present, the collection of data on suicides and attempted suicides in policing is too inconsistent and too limited. Without clear national data, patterns are missed, warning signs are overlooked and opportunities to save lives are lost.

The amendment would require proper annual reporting to Parliament, force-by-force data and analysis of occupational stress points. This matters because policing places extraordinary pressures on people—trauma, long hours, operational strain and repeated exposure to distress. We need evidence-based data, not just warm words.

The amendment would strengthen accountability. Chief constables would have to certify compliance. HMICFRS would be alerted where forces fell short. An independent advisory board would help to drive best practice. This is not just about getting figures and gathering data; it is about making sure that those figures are acted upon.

Behind every statistic is a human being—an officer, a staff member, a family member or a team member left grieving and asking whether more could have been done. This amendment would help us understand the scale of the problem, improve prevention and honour the spirit of the police covenant by protecting those who protect us. I beg to move.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Bailey of Paddington and Lord Hogan-Howe, for tabling the amendments in this group. I am conscious of the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, supported the amendment’s general direction of travel.

First, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, that suicide and attempted suicide in the police workforce have devastating consequences. I and the Government recognise fully the need to address mental health and well-being in policing seriously and responsibly. As the noble Lord will know, the National Police Wellbeing Service already does vital work in tackling suicide risks to the police workforce, including work on prevention, postvention support for forces, a 24/7 mental health crisis line for anyone working in policing, and specialist trauma services.

I am grateful for the way in which the noble Lord has framed his amendment and brought it forward. However, I say to him respectfully that placing an additional statutory reporting duty in primary legislation is not, I feel, the right approach at this time. I say this for three broad reasons. First, much of the information sought by the amendments, particularly in relation to attempted suicide, is often clinical, confidential, medical data. In many cases, it cannot be lawfully or ethically shared with employers, so mandating this through primary legislation would be the wrong approach and would risk unintended consequences around confidentiality, trust and data integrity. In my view, that is a significant blockage in the amendment to date.

Secondly, I reassure the noble Lord that the absence of legislation does not mean the absence of action. This is a really important point. Police forces already collect data on deaths by suicide, and there is national co-ordination of that data. The challenge is not in getting forces to comply; it is in what we ask for from forces, how it is defined and, most importantly, how it is used to drive meaningful prevention. Again, I look forward to the future and looking at a revised national police service downstream, following the White Paper, where training, well-being and personnel functions are brought into the centre and where there is a smaller number of police forces on the ground. There will be a real focus on this, and I know it is important to do that.

Thirdly, I do not want to be locked into a rigid framework before necessary clinical, operational and ethical questions have been resolved. This is not simply a matter of reporting; it also requires high-quality support. In particular, as I think the noble Lord will accept, it demands a culture that understands that mental health challenges are there in police forces. Police officers see some horrendous things on the ground. They have really hard experiences and are very often traumatised. It is important that we embed in the culture of the police force how we respond to those issues. It is not simply about collecting statistics. I know that that is the noble Lord’s prime motivation but, ultimately, it should be about having an automatic, embedded culture that recognises the stresses and strains, helps identify them and puts in place measures to help people with their mental health.

That is why the Government are focusing their efforts on strengthening well-being support, trauma care and early intervention in the police White Paper, and also why my colleague, the Minister directly responsible for policing and crime, has engaged with police leaders, staff associations and experts to look at how we can improve the quality of the data and, more importantly, the quality of preventive action. As it happens, I had a useful discussion with the Police Federation at my party conference in Liverpool in October last year. We understand that there is a real issue to help support, but I do not believe that the amendments before the House on Report today would be the right solution at this stage.

With this recognition of the problem and a grateful Minister who says to the noble Lord, “Thank you for bringing this issue forward”, I hope that, on the basis of what I have said, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his response and for the nature of his response. I truly believe that the Government are beginning to focus on this long-lasting issue. My slight pushback and challenge are around the embedding of a culture. The organisation is so big and so diverse in its approach to this problem. Many forces do not collect the figures and certainly could not provide them when asked by the Police Federation. We need to ask them officially because, as was said, we need to embed that culture. By asking for those figures, we build a mechanism that embeds that culture.

However, in view of the Minister’s very generous approach to this subject, and my belief that the Government truly are beginning to focus on this, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 408 withdrawn.