Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Bailey of Paddington and Baroness O'Loan

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Bailey of Paddington and Baroness O'Loan

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.