Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendments 476, 477 and 478 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to which I have added my name. I am also sympathetic to the other amendments in this group and declare, as ever, that I am a schoolteacher in Hackney. I would also like to acknowledge the help of Transform Justice.

I rather innocently assumed that one of the cornerstones of the justice system in this country is rehabilitation, but this does not seem to be the case with our young people. As we have heard, every year in England and Wales there are 13,000 convictions of children aged 10 to 17, who are disproportionately from poor backgrounds, minoritised communities, in care or excluded from school. Those convicted acquire criminal records which only add to their disadvantage.

Some of these criminal records remain through life. A child charged for affray for a playground fight would have to disclose that for ever on a standard and enhanced DBS check. Also, currently, as we have heard, a criminal record is acquired on conviction rather than according to the date of the offence itself. This means that many people commit offences as children but acquire an adult criminal record because, through no fault of their own, the hearing at which they are convicted happens after their 18th birthday. This situation has got worse because of the recent delays in the court system. This is patently absurd.

As the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has said, brains do not mature until people are well into their twenties. Also, research has shown that teenagers take more risks when they have an audience. As I see in the playground every week, children are immature and often reckless, not seeing the consequences of their actions.

Our criminal records should allow for rehabilitation in order to allow young people to move on from childhood mistakes. These amendments would mean that young people should be able to be free of their childhood offences at a specific interval after they have finished their sentence, so they do not have to explain old and no longer relevant childhood offences to potential employers—even if they manage to get as far as an interview. We are not talking about the most serious crimes here.

For everyone else, these amendments would mean that childhood offences should automatically be taken off the records five and a half years after conviction. We also propose that a conditional caution, when accepted by a child, should not appear on the records. We propose that those whose conviction is delayed until after their 18th birthday should not acquire an adult criminal record.

With the number of NEETs approaching 1 million, we should be doing everything we can to remove barriers to employment and let rehabilitation of the young be truly part of the justice system.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to speak to Amendment 486D, and I support all the other amendments in this group. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for his compelling introduction, and for the other powerful speeches. You may wonder why I have tabled this very specific amendment. The best way I can relate it is to tell a brief story. I was truly shocked when a friend drew my attention to an incident involving his teenage daughter a few years ago, but which, I believe, affects many of our young people, receives very little publicity and ruins many lives.

My friend’s daughter had arrived at a railway station to find that the ticket machines were not working and there was a long queue for the ticket office. Desperate to catch a train to get her vaccinations for charitable work abroad, she foolishly jumped on a train without a ticket.

When she got out at her destination, she offered to pay at the barrier. The inspector told her to get a ticket at the ticket office. However, there was a long queue, so, knowing that she would not have time to do that, she went to the machines, but she found that she could not get a machine ticket for a journey from the station where she had left to the station she had arrived at.

Very naively, she thought she would therefore get the ticket after her appointment for vaccinations, and she left the station in a state of some panic. It was then that she was approached by the ticket inspector and told she was to be prosecuted under Section 5(3)(a) of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 for travelling without paying the fare with intent to avoid payment. It was the first time she had ever done something like this. Her ticket would have cost £3.20. That is less than a cappuccino coffee.

I discovered that, if convicted, she might not only face a fine of up to £1,000 or imprisonment for up to three months, but her conviction would be recorded on the Police National Database and future potential employers would see it after a basic criminal records search for up to six years and for up to 11 years, I believe, after an enhanced check. Through just one moment’s teenage lack of judgment, her prospects of obtaining a job and a career would be blighted during a crucial period when most young people are trying to get on the career ladder—all for a £3.20 fare.

Acting as a friend, I had many exchanges of correspondence with the rail company, all to no avail. The upshot was that I ended up joining her and her desperately worried parents at the local magistrates’ court for her hearing, where I intended to plead the mitigating circumstances of her case. To my horror, I discovered she was one of dozens of other children and young people queuing up that morning, charged with exactly the same offence, which was a regular occurrence at that magistrates’ court, I found. It was nothing unusual. I managed to persuade the train company to drop her case if she paid a fine, but thousands of other young people are not so lucky.

This was a young teenage woman who was on an important journey in connection with unpaid charitable work abroad. Her heart was in exactly the right place. On the spur of the moment, she panicked and thought she might miss her train. She had tried to pay the fare at the train barriers when she arrived, so she emphatically did not intend to avoid it. Of course—and I emphasise this—she thoroughly deserved the fine, but did she really deserve the likely prospect of being unable to obtain a decent job for the next six to 11 years, all for a one-off, first-time offence relating to a £3.20 train ticket? She was no serial offender.

The charity FairChecks has demonstrated that, with a criminal record, young people can be locked out of future employment opportunities and even voluntary work. Research shows that at least 30% of employers automatically exclude a candidate with an unspent conviction. But the facts show that, as we have heard, young peoples’ brains are still developing, which makes them more impulsive and less able fully to understand the consequences of their actions. It is therefore crucial that they be given the opportunity to move on from their mistakes without carrying the weight of those childhood errors during early adulthood. In all honesty, might not many of us say, “There but for the grace of God go our children”?

My amendment would give our children a second chance if they are found without a valid ticket on the railways. They would still be liable for a penalty fare or a fine but, provided it was a first offence, their lives would not be ruined by being given a disclosable criminal record. I emphasise that my amendment would not apply if they were caught a second time. In those circumstances, they would not have learned from their mistakes and potential employers would have just cause in wanting to know they were dishonest.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames and Lord Carter of Haslemere, and my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede for tabling Amendments 420, 476 to 478 and 486D. They form a formidable trio in terms of not just their expertise but the respect that they rightly command in your Lordships’ House.

A number of noble Lords have raised the question of the age of criminal responsibility. I hope I will be forgiven for not addressing that now; I know for certain that we will be addressing it at least twice in the days and weeks to come.

The Government acknowledge the principle that underpins these amendments—namely, that having a criminal record will have a significant impact on children and that such a record can, in some circumstances, follow them into later life as adults, again with profound consequences. That said, as I think all noble Lords agreed, it is critical that our criminal records disclosure regime strikes the right balance. On the one hand, we want to support people who have committed criminal offences, either some time ago or when they were very young, to be able to move on with their lives. But there is also a need for appropriate risk management in the public interest, as well as to safeguard the most vulnerable.

I will deal first with Amendments 420 and 476 to 478. The existing regime helps employers make informed recruitment decisions through the disclosure of appropriate and relevant information. This will mean that some serious offences, even when committed as a child, will always need to be disclosed, particularly where a person is applying to work with children or vulnerable adults. As some of your Lordships will be aware, in his recent independent review of the criminal courts, Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the Government review the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. In the Statement I made to your Lordships’ House on 2 December, I said that we will consider opportunities to simplify the criminal records regime to ensure that it is both clear and proportionate, particularly in relation to childhood offences.

I would be very happy to meet with any of your Lordships over the coming weeks to discuss this in more detail. It is of the utmost importance to the Government that we work together to ensure that we get this right. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I was very struck by the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, that this is not always as straightforward as it might appear, hence the need to make sure that we do this carefully, in a structured and thoughtful way. As I said, I would be delighted to see any of your Lordships. Given the offer made by my noble friend Lord Hanson in the previous group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and I may be seeing rather more of each other than perhaps he had intended—but it is always a pleasure on my part.

Turning to Amendment 486D, I am very surprised to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Carter, says because the Government’s view echoes what my noble friend Lord Ponsonby said: children are generally treated leniently when fare evasion occurs. This offence is most commonly dealt with by transport staff, so usually no question arises of a child acquiring a criminal record for fare evasion and similar offences. The police usually become involved only in cases of a refusal to pay for a ticket, for repeat offences or because of some other complicating factor. Even when the police become involved, this does not usually result in a prosecution taking place because the Code for Crown Prosecutors requires prosecutors to consider, as a specific public interest factor tending against prosecution, where a child is young or where it is a first offence.

Police officers can give out-of-court disposals, which allow them to respond to low-level offending proportionately and effectively. These out-of-court disposals, of which there are a variety, provide opportunities for children to make reparation and restoration to victims, and to be diverted into courses or services which can help to change their offending behaviour. Most types of out-of-court disposals are not automatically disclosed on criminal record certificates.

The Government believe that it would be very unusual for a child or young person to get a criminal conviction for this type of offence but, were that to happen, the disclosure time limits under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act are very different from those that affect adults. Rehabilitation periods for children are typically half the length of those for an adult. For example, if a court were to impose a fine for fare evasion, there would usually be a requirement that the child disclose their conviction for only six months, as opposed to the case of an adult, who would have to disclose it for a year.

For all these reasons, under the existing legislation, the Government’s view is that there is a very small chance of a child who is a first-time offender getting a criminal record for a fare evasion offence in the first place, and an equally small chance of such a conviction following them into adult life. I will, however, make inquiries and write to the noble Lord giving such statistics as I am able to find.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I am extremely grateful. To some extent mine is a probing amendment—I need more facts and evidence around this—but the Minister referred to the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The cases I spoke about were prosecuted by the train operating company. I am not really convinced that it had even heard of the Code for Crown Prosecutors; judging from all the correspondence I had with it, I do not think it had, to be honest. I believe there is something there to be investigated more closely, because I saw the evidence with my own eyes.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I do not think that I can improve on what I have said. I will make inquiries into the statistical evidence that we hold and write to the noble Lord.

I reiterate that I am very happy to meet any of your Lordships, including, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, ahead of Report to discuss these issues in more detail. In the meantime, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 423 would implement a recommendation of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in the judgment in the Lee Clegg case in the 1990s. Briefly, the facts of that case were that, on 30 September 1990, Private Lee Clegg was on patrol in west Belfast, when a passenger in a stolen car was shot and killed. Lee Clegg was charged with murder, and his defence was that he fired in self-defence. He was convicted of murder on the grounds that he used disproportionate force.

On an appeal, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords had to decide whether a soldier on duty in defence of the civil power—in a similar position, therefore, to police firearm officers—who kills a person and who would be entitled to rely on self-defence but for the excessive use of force, is guilty of murder or manslaughter. A manslaughter verdict would have meant a change in the law. Lord Lloyd of Berwick said that the arguments in favour of such a change were very persuasive. Quoting from the Court of Appeal, he said:

“There is one obvious and striking difference between Private Clegg and other persons found guilty of murder. The great majority of persons found guilty of murder, whether they are terrorists or domestic murderers, kill from an evil and wicked motive. But when Private Clegg set out on patrol on the night of 30 September 1990 he did so to assist in the maintenance of law and order and we have no doubt that as he commenced the patrol he had no intention of unlawfully killing or wounding anyone. However, he was suddenly faced with a car driving through an army checkpoint and, being armed with a high velocity rifle to enable him to combat the threat of terrorism, he decided to fire the … shot from his rifle in circumstances which cannot be justified”.


Lord Lloyd continued:

“It is right that Private Clegg should be convicted in respect of the unlawful killing … and that he should receive a just punishment for committing an offence which ended a young life and caused great sorrow to her parents and relatives and friends. But this court considers, and we believe that many other fair-minded citizens would share this view, that the law would be much fairer if it had been open to the trial judge to have convicted Private Clegg of the lesser crime of manslaughter on the ground that he did not kill … from an evil motive but because his duties as a soldier”


meant he had a high-velocity rifle, and

“he reacted wrongly to a situation which suddenly confronted him in the course of his duties … we consider that a law which would permit a conviction for manslaughter would reflect more clearly the nature of the offence which he had committed”.

However, Lord Lloyd ruled it was inappropriate for the courts to change the law, and it was for Parliament to do so.

Here we are, 30 years on, with that opportunity, and the issue has never been more important, given the analogous position of police firearms officers. Since 2010, British police have shot dead 30 people—an average of two a year. Most recently, we have seen the prosecution last year for murder in the case of Sergeant Martyn Blake. Police officers are being deterred from volunteering for firearms training and the National Police Chiefs’ Council says police forces across England and Wales are grappling with a significant shortage of firearms officers, exacerbated by the lack of legal protections afforded to armed officers, particularly regarding criminal and misconduct hearings. The move to anonymity in criminal proceedings is welcome but not enough.

Parliament enacted legislation in 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, which set out the law of self-defence in Section 76. This provides that the question whether the degree of force used by D—the defendant—was reasonable in the circumstances is to be decided by reference to the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be, but, crucially, the degree of force used by the defendant is not to be regarded as having been reasonable in the circumstances if it was disproportionate. Therefore, the upshot is that a police officer cannot rely on self-defence to a murder charge if he used disproportionate force. This is unlike in the case of householders who, since the Crime and Courts Act 2013, will now generally have a defence if the force was disproportionate, but not if it was grossly disproportionate.

This confirms my belief that there is a lacuna that needs to be addressed, just as the House of Lords said in the appeal in the case of Lee Clegg. I should add a brief postscript here to the Lee Clegg case, since I believe he was subsequently acquitted on the grounds of new evidence.

On 23 October 2024, the then Home Secretary made a Statement on the Martyn Blake case. She said that

“the current system for holding police officers to account is not commanding the confidence of either the public or the police”,

and that although the public are entitled

“to expect that when officers exceed the lawful use of their powers … there will be … robust processes in place to hold them to account”,

she continued:

“Police officers who act with integrity and bravery to keep us safe each day need to know they have strong public support. If officers lack the confidence to use their powers … public safety is put at risk”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/24; col. 300.]


My amendment seeks to strike this balance by implementing the recommendation of the House of Lords in the Lee Clegg case all those years ago. If passed, it would not, as in the householder’s case, result in an officer’s acquittal, since I do not think that can be justified in the case of trained firearms officers. There needs to be accountability and a criminal penalty. The House of Lords in Clegg seemed to agree, since it recommended manslaughter, not acquittal, for such cases. I will be very interested to hear the views of the Government on this long-standing issue.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. Firearms officers provide a valuable and necessary service, and are an important part of UK policing. They do a very difficult and dangerous job and deserve our thanks. The current climate is not conducive to good policing and does not support our officers. This amendment is a positive one which will help them.

This is a topical amendment. Several days ago, the Independent Office for Police Conduct ruled on the case of Sean Fitzgerald being shot during a raid by West Midlands Police. He was holding a black mobile phone, which the officer who shot him believed was a gun.

This ruling was the conclusion of a long, complex investigation that included experts whose reconstruction corroborated the officer’s testimony that the phone could have been mistaken for a gun. The director of the IOPC said:

“The determination over whether the officer should face disciplinary proceedings largely came down to a split-second decision in what was a dynamic, fast-moving, armed police operation”.


This was a tragic accident, but it highlights the fact that firearms officers have to make very difficult, instantaneous decisions that can result in life or death. They have to quickly make a call on what is the safest option for themselves, their fellow officers and the public. In order for them to make the best judgments for themselves and for the public, they need to be confident that they will be supported in making that endeavour.

It is striking that in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, former firearms officer Sergeant Harry Tangye said that his and his fellow officers’ main fear was not being shot themselves; it was facing the investigation that would happen after they discharged their weapon while doing their job. The case of the shooting of Chris Kaba demonstrates this. In response to how the officer was treated, up to 300 Metropolitan Police officers stepped back from firearms roles, and the Army had to be put on standby to support the Met.

Firearms officers go through intensive training, including in how to respond in high-pressure situations. These are dedicated people with a strong desire to protect the public and serve their communities. Tangye said:

“But each time an AFO attends a scene, they face an uncomfortable truth: if I get this wrong I could be jailed. In my 30-year career I never once met an officer who wanted to ‘bag’ a scalp; no-one who hoped for the chance to use their gun to bring down a criminal. Most of us weren’t even keen on firearms at all. If you were a weapons enthusiast, you would be viewed with great suspicion by your force and probably removed”.


Authorised firearms officers, or AFOs, he said,

“shouldn’t have to do their jobs in fear of being jailed, or in fear of their careers, their lives, being ruined”.

The Police Federation also shares these concerns: that firearm officers,

“even when they follow the tactics and training they have received, will face significant struggles and hardships over what are usually split-second decisions taken by them in dangerous and fast-moving situations”.

Firearms officers need to be protected in primary legislation to make sure it is certain that they will be treated fairly when they have to make a very difficult decision. This amendment from the noble Lord is not a “get out of jail free” card; it still holds them to account for their actions. It means that officers who do their job properly, who make a decision that would be impossible for most people in this Chamber to comprehend, are protected under the law, and on that basis, I strongly support the amendment.