Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this is already proving to be a crucial debate in the passage of this Bill. I support Amendment 416E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. Sadly, my noble friend Lord Strasburger is unable to be with us to support the amendment, which he has signed, but I hope that I reflect his views in speaking today.

Non-crime hate incidents, although born from the well-intentioned Macpherson report in 1993—which the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, called “an honourable start”—have morphed into a mechanism that frequently harasses and silences legitimate debate. In doing so, they consume prodigious quantities of police time, as we have heard—time that is desperately needed to investigate the crimes that we have discussed throughout Committee. Non-crime hate incidents, which started from benign motivations in 1993, have morphed into an ugly and frequently used technique for harassing and silencing somebody whose views the complainant does not like. In the process, prodigious quantities of police time are being wasted on non-criminal matters, meaning that real crimes that would otherwise be investigated are being ignored.

The seeds of what has gone wrong were sown by the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry concluded that a racist incident should be defined as being

“any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”.

In essence, that means that anyone—whether involved in an incident or not, whether a reasonable person or otherwise—would be able to determine that an incident, no matter how harmless, was racist in nature. The inquiry went on to recommend that

“the term ‘racist incident’ must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment”.

It is remarkable that the inquiry concluded that incidents which are not criminal offences as defined by Parliament should be investigated by the police with equal vigour as those which are criminal offences. That raises fundamental questions about the purpose of the police and what their priorities should be, particularly in a world of potentially limitless demand and highly constrained resource.

Nevertheless, Macpherson’s recommendations relating to racist incidents and their recording were rapidly accepted and implemented by the police and government. Following a 2006 review by Sir Adrian Fulford, a shared definition of hate crimes and non-crime hate incidents was adopted across the criminal justice system, including by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. This expanded the recording of NCHIs beyond purely racist incidents to cover all those characteristics that are covered by hate crime legislation in England and Wales—race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Key to the expansion of alleged NCHIs was the creation, in 2014, of the College of Policing’s Hate Crime Operational Guidance for police forces. Perhaps recognising that the guidance was likely to cause grave concerns to many, the College of Policing made a pre-emptive defence of their policy, saying:

“The recording of, and response to, non-crime hate incidents does not have universal support in society. Some people use this as evidence to accuse the police of becoming ‘the thought police’, trying to control what citizens think or believe, rather than what they do”.


The guidance goes on to say, in relation to hate incidents:

“Where any person, including police personnel, reports a hate incident which would not be the primary responsibility of another agency, it must be recorded regardless of whether or not they are the victim, and irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element”.


The use of “must” in the guidance leaves no latitude for police discretion or the balancing of rights exercise, which would be necessary in considering the subject’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

With the advent of social media, the number of NCHIs being recorded has rocketed. Policy Exchange reported in 2024 that over 13,000 are being logged annually in England and Wales, consuming 60,000 police hours a year. Some keyboard warriors with an axe to grind have made a full-time occupation out of submitting prolific quantities of NCHI complaints with little or no justification. These include a disgraced former policeman who prodigiously exploits the system to frequently harass his political opponents. Some incidents have hit the press, such as when Graham Linehan, the co-creator of “Father Ted”, was arrested on the tarmac at Heathrow over an NCHI.

However, many victims of spurious NCHIs are not even aware that a complaint has been logged against their name. One campaigner found out only when the complainant launched a judicial review of the police’s refusal to take the matter further. As we have heard, the impact of having an unproven NCHI secretly logged against your name can be severe and mean that you are refused a visa to visit certain countries, including America, or that you fail an enhanced DBS check for a job in areas such as education or health.

Freedom of information requests to 43 police forces found zero examples of NCHIs preventing crime. The Metropolitan Police announced last October that it has stopped investigating NCHIs entirely. Last month, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing reported to the Government that NCHIs are “not fit for purpose”.

NCHIs must go. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, stated during our debates on the seventh day in Committee that the College of Policing is reviewing this guidance and that we would see this review before Report. I hope that the Minister can confirm whether that review will address the chilling effect on free speech identified in the Miller judgment and whether he accepts that the police must prioritise actual criminality over the recording of NCHIs.

I support this amendment as a necessary check on the expansion of the surveillance state. When will the Government act to abolish NCHIs? If the Minister cannot answer that question, we will have to return to this matter on Report.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my declaration in the register of interests that I am chair of the College of Policing.

As I said at Second Reading, we need to remember that there were benign reasons for the introduction of this regime over three decades ago; what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said in this regard was helpful. The purpose was to ensure that the police would pursue intelligence that could build a pattern of behaviour that would result in harm to an individual. That was the case not just in relation to the dreadful murder of Stephen Lawrence but subsequently in the case of Fiona Pilkington, where a repeated pattern of anti-social behaviour had been ignored. It was not criminal behaviour—it fell below that threshold—but it nevertheless resulted in a tragic loss of life.

Nevertheless, as has been noted, there has been considerable change over that three decades, with the advent of social media, smartphones and a much more contested policy space in many of the areas relating to hate crimes or alleged hate crimes. There is the risk of a number of consequences. Those have been drawn attention to by noble Lords, but they include the chilling effect on free speech, the tying up of resources unnecessarily —I will come to that—and, I suggest, at least as serious, damage to the reputation of the police, if it is perceived that they are prioritising the wrong things and getting themselves involved in matters that they should not be.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interest declared in the register as chair of the College of Policing.

For our police service, founded on the principle of consent, to be effective, the trust and confidence of the communities they serve is essential. But the proportion of the public who believe the police are doing a good job has fallen precipitously in the last few years. There are multiple causes, but I believe this Bill and the Government’s focus on rebuilding neighbourhood policing will be a very important step towards improving confidence.

We place immense demands on the police service. In recent years, there has been a shift of priorities and resources towards dealing with crimes of harm and important issues such as violence against women and girls—issues which simply were not on the agenda before. Combined with funding and other pressures, we have seen in some forces a failure to attend to the basic standards of service which the public expect, such as action following shoplifting, burglaries or mobile phone theft. It is, I believe, the failure to attend to these basics which exacerbates criticism of the police for overreach, for getting involved in things we do not want them to be doing and in particular in relation to police action which it is felt intrudes upon free speech.

Non-crime hate incidents have become a kind of lightning rod for criticism of the service, and a number of high-profile cases of ill-judged police intervention have undoubtedly damaged confidence. NCHIs were born out of the landmark Stephen Lawrence inquiry as a means to support police to monitor incidents linked to hate or hostility, with the purpose of preventing future crimes, supporting investigations and protecting the most vulnerable in our communities. Recent events, such as the horrific attacks on the Manchester synagogue and the Peacehaven mosque, should remind us that dealing with hate crime remains as vital in 2025 as it did over a quarter a century ago.

It is essential that policing continues to have the ability to monitor hate and hostility within our communities. What could not have been envisaged at the time of the Lawrence inquiry was the growth of the internet, the advent of smartphones and social media, and how these have transformed how people interact with each other. The rapid expansion of the online space, coupled with increasingly polarised public discourse, has resulted in forces grappling with the challenge of balancing free speech with monitoring community tension in both physical and online spaces to prevent crime and protect people from harm.

Not all perceived hate reported to police requires a police response or police incident record. The requirement to record should be shaped by necessity, proportionality and legality. There have been high-profile instances where policing has struggled with all three. That is why I called in this Chamber for a rebalancing of the system. At my instigation, the college, together with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and with the support of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Government, set up a review of the entire system of non-crime hate incidents. The review has found that the current approach and use of non-crime hate incidents is not fit for purpose, and there is a need for broad reform to ensure that policing can focus on genuine harm and risk within communities. The recording of hurt feelings and differing views should not continue. A report has just been sent to Ministers, and I am sure that they will respond in due course.

But while I believe change is vital to restore public confidence and ensure that free speech is protected, I would counsel against laying all the problems of policing at the door of non-crime hate incidents. The police are not spending all their time policing tweets. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has pointed out that non-crime hate incidents account for 0.05% of the calls they respond to. A number of the high-profile and controversial cases about the policing of social media comment relate to hate crimes—offences that Parliament created for good reason. If we want to revisit those criminal offences, then that is a debate that we should have here, but in the meantime the police have a duty to uphold the law.

We can and should expect that the police will act proportionately, without fear or favour, and use common sense and professional judgment in the investigation of crimes. That judgment was obviously lacking in some recent cases. Therefore, a second key initiative that I and the college’s chief executive, Sir Andy Marsh, have instigated will be new guidance on the exercise of that discretion, so that we can ensure that common-sense decisions are taken and that confidence in the police service is not undermined.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, earlier this week, this House earnestly discussed in Oral Questions how to reduce suicides. Suicide has not been a crime for over six decades, but we still think that it is wrong and we still try to prevent it—until today. Today, we consider crossing the Rubicon. We debate not how to prevent suicide but how to facilitate it with the support and resources of the state.

We are told that the purpose of the Bill is to prevent terrible suffering, but there is nothing in the Bill that says this. The essential condition is that someone must be terminally ill, not that they are suffering. We are told that there are safeguards. In the House of Commons, the Bill’s proponents relied on what we were told was an internationally unique safeguard, the authority of a High Court judge. Then that unique but inconvenient safeguard was dropped. We are told that only the terminally ill will be permitted to be helped to end their lives, but if you believe that personal autonomy, the right to choose death, is the overarching principle, why should the law logically stop at the terminally ill? What about the terminally miserable? Why should it not be their right, or anyone’s right, to be helped to die?

I am afraid we already know how the elderly are too often regarded in our society as a burden or a nuisance. We are less inclined than other cultures to care for our elderly in our own homes and more inclined to place them in care—“They’ll be happier there”; “They’ll be better off there”. In these daily acts of purported compassion is betrayed how some will deal with the unwanted elderly if they can. It is not hard to see how, with just a small slip down the slope, the elderly will be dispatched. Of course, it will be “their choice”, as they will not want to “get in the way” or be a “burden”. When the vulnerable are encouraged towards the view that it is better for them to die, the Orwellian-named assisted dying service will be there to step in.

The stories we have heard about the suffering of the terminally ill are heart-rending and we cannot fail to be moved by them, but that is surely a reason to invest more in palliative care, not to commit resources to assisting suicide, and we cannot responsibly legislate simply because we are moved. In truth, we cannot legislate away suffering. No so-called safeguard will persuade me that this Bill is safe or right. Indeed, the very need for safeguards—for instance, against coercion—should warn us of the profound danger to which we are about to expose the elderly and the vulnerable. I cannot support this Bill, and I fear for the consequence if it passes.

Non-crime Hate Incidents

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I would never resist a meeting with my noble friend Lord Mann, and he can have one. I always say that it is better to have an open door than to have one kicked down.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of Member’s interests as chair of the College of Policing. Did not the recording of non-crime hate incidents have its genesis in the Macpherson review, as the noble Lord, Lord Austin, said? But that was a quarter of a century ago and since then, we have had the expansion of hate crime laws, the explosion of social media and the very heavily contested space of online comment. Is it not right for the Home Secretary to call for a common-sense approach to this? We may need a rebalancing, so that the police can focus on the job they are meant to do and not be drawn into the policing of mere disputes, which is bad for public confidence in the service.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I hope the noble Lord does not take this the wrong way, but I pay tribute to him for his work as chair of the College of Policing.

I have tried to say to the House that non-crime hate incidents are there to provide background information. They are not necessarily leading to prosecution or to crime, but the background information can be effective in building up a picture of potential areas where crime may well exist, because people will overstep the mark into criminal activity. We will try to look at that in the round, and as part of the review of police performance, that will be taken into account.