Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Katz Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for bringing back her Amendment 398. We broadly supported the intention behind her amendment in Committee, and we echo that today. It is of course not acceptable that there has been no independent review of the quality of the more than £400 million spent annually on training for eight years, and the statistics on police officer experience and unsolved crimes bear witness to that fact.

I am grateful that, since our debate in Committee, the Government have brought forward a White Paper that covers many aspects of policing, including training. That is a welcome step, but perhaps the Minister could outline some more specifics on the form that this reform will take? I am conscious that the College of Policing is still working on precise proposals, but an update would be very much appreciated. It is a positive sign that the Government recognise this gap in our policing and seem to be acting on it. As such, while we support the noble Baroness’s intention, we believe that letting the Government carry out their work is a more practical next step.

As we noted in Committee, while we also support the noble Baroness’s intention in Amendment 399 to provide the best possible care to those with mental health problems, we cannot support this specific measure. The Government made it clear in the Mental Health Act last year that they want to reduce the role of police in mental health decisions. We broadly support that. It reflects the belief that health workers, not the police, are the right officials to deal with mental health issues. Any police training must not blur this clear distinction. That said, I understand that police officers are often the first responders to situations concerning mental health patients, so I acknowledge the complexity of the issue and would welcome the Minister underlining the Government’s position on this in his reply.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for these amendments, which bring us back to the important issue of police training.

Amendment 398 would require the Home Secretary to commission an independent review of police training. As your Lordships’ House will be aware, the College of Policing is responsible for setting national training standards, including the police curriculum and accreditations for specialist roles. Our police reform White Paper set out our commitment to develop a licence to practise for policing. It will seek to create a unified system that brings together mandatory training with consistent professional development and well-being support.

As we work with the sector, we will examine the existing training landscape and look to the findings of the police leadership commission, led by my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord, Lord Herbert. We will also consider how this model can build on the accreditations and licensing already delivered by the College of Policing in specialist operational areas.

As has been noted, both this evening and in Committee, the College of Policing is also developing a national strategic training panel, which will provide further sector-led insight into existing training. We would not want to pre-empt the outcomes of this work or create a burden of extensive reviews for the sector when much activity is under way through police reform. We therefore do not believe it necessary for the Home Secretary to commission an independent review of police officer training and development, as proposed in Amendment 398. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, as these issues have been examined comprehensively through existing work. I can assure her that it is a key element of our police reform agenda. Having published the White Paper, we will obviously progress that at the appropriate time and produce further reforms that may be necessary, which there will be further opportunities for your Lordships’ House and the other place to debate at length, whether through a legislative vehicle or not.

I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, was rather dismissive of introducing the licence to practise. Officers deserve a clear and consistent structure to empower them to learn, train and develop as skilled professionals. Once implemented, a licence model will provide greater assurance that the police have the correct training and well-being support to do their jobs and that there are regular reviews to ensure that they meet national standards. We recognise that we will not be able to introduce a licensing model overnight, but we have set out the first steps for a licensing model, including mandatory leadership standards and a strong performance management framework.

Amendment 399 seeks to ensure that police officers have the training required to deal with people suffering through a mental health crisis. As I indicated, the setting of standards and the provision of mandatory and non-mandatory training material is a matter for the College of Policing. It provides core learning standards, which includes the initial training for officers under the Police Constable Entry Programme. This underpins initial learning levels around autism, learning disabilities, mental health, neurodiversity and other vulnerabilities. Through forces utilising this established training, officers are taught to assess vulnerability and amend their approaches as required to understand how best to communicate with those who are vulnerable for whatever reason, and to understand how to support people exhibiting these needs to comprehend these powers in law and continue to amass specialist knowledge to work with other relevant agencies to help individuals.

We consider it impractical to expect, or indeed require, police officers to become experts in the entire range of mental health and vulnerability conditions, including autism and learning disabilities. Instead, the College of Policing rightly seeks to equip them to make rational decisions in a wide range of circumstances, and to treat people fairly and with humanity at all times.

I have said this a number of times: all forces are operationally independent of government. To seek to impose requirements on mandatory training risks undermining that very principle. Furthermore, each force has unique situations—different pressures, priorities, demographics and needs. To mandate that a small rural force must undertake the same training as a large urban force will not give it the flexibility it needs to best serve its local communities. Furthermore, the College of Policing is best placed to draw on its expertise to determine the relevant standards and training that the police require.

The training already provided equips officers with the knowledge to recognise indicators of mental health and learning disabilities; to communicate with and support people exhibiting such indicators; to understand their police powers; and to develop specialist knowledge to work with other agencies to help individuals. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, this is not about replacing real experts and mental health workers, in the NHS and other agencies, who are best placed to provide that specialist knowledge and expertise.

I hope that, on the basis of these comments and the work already under way, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his response. I do not think it matters who is responsible for training. What matters is that training is appropriate and that officers are trained.

I spent most of last year talking to chief constables in the whole of the UK. Their view was very different from what the Minister just said. Their view was that they do not get sufficient training, that training is piecemeal and that they have virtually no training in anything to do with mental health. I do not think they were just making that up; this was something that they genuinely believed. In fact, I am pretty certain about it.

Also, HMICFRS has reported time and again that training is inconsistent, the quality is weak, there are weak checks on force-run programmes, there is poor support for new officers and obvious risks in forces marking their own homework. These gaps demand independent scrutiny. That is not similar to what the Minister just said. Training is a vital ingredient for officers. We sit in this House and in the other place, and we make rules and regulations as to what should happen. But we do not make sure that the people on the ground facing these problems every day are equipped to deal with them. That is, frankly, a disgrace. The fact that there has been no independent check on police training since 2012 is almost beyond belief. However, it is late, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments raises two significant issues for modern policing: transparency in the use of algorithmic tools and the modernisation of police data and intelligence systems.

I turn first to Amendment 400, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. We on these Benches recognise the intention behind the proposal. As policing increasingly makes use of complex digital tools, such as data analytics and algorithms, it is entirely right that questions of transparency and public confidence are taken seriously. However, as discussed in Committee, we should be mindful that policing operates in a sensitive operational environment. Any transparency framework must strike the right balance between openness on the one hand and the need to protect investigative capability and operational effectiveness on the other.

Amendment 401, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, addresses a different but equally important issue: the state of police data and intelligence systems. Few would dispute that technology within policing must keep pace with the demands of modern crime, and the challenge is not simply identifying the problem but determining the most effective mechanism to address it. Modernising policing technology is a complex and ongoing task that already involves national programmes, investment decisions and operational input from forces themselves.

For these reasons, while we recognise the important objectives behind these amendments, the question for noble Lords is whether the specific legislative approach proposed here is the most effective way of delivering them.

The amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Cash seek to require the police to record the ethnicity and sex of a suspect. These are steps that these Benches wholly support. The importance of these measures can hardly be overstated. Recording ethnicity data has been recommended by experts of all professions, parties and associations. It is a requisite for enabling police to track and measure crime trends within certain communities and serves a secondary purpose of allaying or affirming arguments and claims about offending statistics, which currently are regrettably too often reduced to conjecture. Similarly, we support the recording of sex data as part of a larger drive to secure the rights of women by delineating sex from whatever gender identity an individual assigns themselves.

We are entirely supportive, therefore, of my noble friend Lady Cash’s amendments and are grateful to other noble Lords who have spoken in support of them tonight. I hope the Minister agrees that these are issues that should be above the political divide and that these amendments will improve operational efficiency. I look forward to his response.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this wide-ranging debate on a wide-ranging group of amendments.

I begin with Amendment 400, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. I fully agree—indeed, we have cross-party consensus here—with the importance of transparency in the use of algorithmic tools by the police and acknowledge the current lack of a complete or consistent national picture of police use of AI, as has been highlighted by the noble Baroness. However, the algorithmic transparency recording standard, or ATRS, was designed for central government and arm’s-length body use and is simply not the most effective or proportionate mechanism for delivering meaningful transparency in an operational policing context.

As we announced in the policing reform White Paper, the Government are taking forward a national registry of police AI deployments. The registry will be operated by the new national centre for AI and policing, which will be launched later this spring. This police-specific registry approach will address directly the concerns raised in Committee, and again this evening, about patchy disclosure, public confidence and accountability, while respecting operational independence.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, rightly noted the importance of having a flexible approach when it comes to operational policing. Locking policing into an inflexible statutory mechanism to disclose tools under the ATRS, even as an interim measure, would risk duplicative reporting, unclear disclosure expectations and putting additional administrative burdens on forces without improving public understanding or oversight.

The policing registry is an active programme of work designed specifically to close the transparency gap. It will adopt a tiered approach to transparency. All operational AI deployments will be recorded nationally, while a robust exemptions framework will protect genuinely sensitive capabilities from public disclosure, in a similar manner to how the Freedom of Information Act operates. This approach is designed to deliver clear narratives for the public, with named officers accountable for AI deployments in their force and strong compliance incentives. The Government fully expect police forces to utilise the registry and be transparent with the public about the algorithms they are using and the steps that have been taken to ensure they are being used responsibly. This is vital to building and maintaining public consent for the use of these powerful tools.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for bringing forward this group of amendments. Together, they address a theme that will be familiar to many across the House: the need to ensure that police officers are able to focus their time on policing rather than bureaucracy.

Amendment 409D concerns the publication of enforcement data for a number of offences that have become a source of considerable public concern, including shoplifting, offences involving blades, phone theft and fare evasion. We lend our strong support to the amendment. Greater transparency around enforcement activity can only help to strengthen public confidence and provide a clearer picture of how policing resources are being deployed.

Amendment 409E addresses the volume of paperwork that officers are required to complete. In Committee, it was rightly observed that administrative burdens can too often draw officers away from the front line. A review of the scale of those requirements and how they might be simplified would therefore be a sensible and constructive step.

Finally, Amendment 409F raises the question of data sharing and the efficiency of the systems that underpin case preparation and charging decisions. As many noble Lords will know, delays and inefficiencies in the exchange of information between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service can slow down the progress of cases and place additional strain on already stretched resources.

There is a significant amount of work that goes into the redaction of police documents before they are sent to the CPS, often for the documents simply to be sent back because they are overredacted. Furthermore, many of the cases the police redact may not end up being prosecuted. It is clear that this is a significant waste of police time and money, and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is right: it would make more sense for the CPS to take charge of the redaction of documents that may enter the public domain, given that it would have a far smaller number of documents to trawl through.

Taken together, these amendments all speak to a wider objective: ensuring that the system surrounding policing work is as efficient as possible, allowing officers to focus on preventing crime, catching offenders and protecting the public. The police should be spending as much time on the front line as possible, rather than being encumbered by unnecessary paperwork. I hope that the Minister will give them careful consideration and, as always, I look forward to his response.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, we are nearly there. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for returning to these issues, which were thoroughly debated in Committee, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Davies of Gower, for their contributions to this short but nevertheless important debate. I know that the noble Baroness takes a keen interest in improving how police handle data and utilise their resources effectively. We share that objective and appreciate her constructive contribution to that discussion.

On the noble Baroness’s Amendment 409D, as announced in our police reform White Paper, the Government will introduce a police performance dashboard this year, which will allow chief constables and local policing bodies to analyse transparent and operationally significant data. This will allow forces to understand where they are performing well and where they can improve. The Home Office and the Office for National Statistics already publish extensive data, of course, on police-recorded knife crime, shoplifting and theft, and the outcomes assigned to these crimes. The published outcome data provides detailed information on what happened after a crime was recorded by the police, such as where a result is a charge or summons, out-of-court disposal, et cetera. Essentially, it links crimes to their investigative and judicial results, giving insight into how offences progress through the criminal justice system. Additional data is available through police.uk, where members of the public can access monthly crime maps and stop and search statistics. Transport authorities such as Transport for London also publish enforcement data on fare evasion. This is to say that the dashboards are still in development but will build on what we already provide in the public domain.

I know from her contributions to the Bill that the noble Baroness has concerns about how police are enforcing the law particularly around offences involving cyclists and e-scooters. The Home Office has recently established the police performance framework, which provides a strong mechanism for monitoring enforcement activity across all police forces in England and Wales. This framework is flexible and is currently scheduled for review in 2027-28. Mandating which offences the police publish enforcement data on through a fixed list in statute, as her amendment envisions, does not offer the necessary flexibility, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, noted, as to how the performance framework operates. In addition, it risks duplicating the work already being undertaken that I have outlined.

Turning to Amendment 409E, the Government have already gained valuable insight into how police time is used, through the 2023 Police Activity Survey, to which the noble Baroness referred. Given the usefulness of the results, the Home Office ran the survey again this year, with fieldwork taking place just last week. We expect to have results in the next few months and will consider how to ensure that they can enable police productivity improvements. From this activity, we expect to gain a detailed profile of how police time is used, as well as insights into productive and non-productive uses of that time. We have sponsored the Centre for Police Productivity in the College of Policing and launched the police efficiency and collaboration programme in 2024 to improve productivity and efficiency across police forces.

Furthermore, our recently published White Paper presents an array of the most significant reforms to policing for nearly 200 years. It outlines our plans to modernise the entire workforce, establish a new performance system to drive improvements in forces, strip out duplication and inefficiency and deliver £354 million of efficiency savings through a police efficiency and collaboration programme. I know that the noble Baroness is keen on efficiency savings, so I hope she welcomes that announcement.

Finally, on Amendment 409F, we support the noble Baroness’s desire to free up officer time by removing administrative burdens such as unnecessary redaction and improve the efficiency of case file preparation and the charging process. A large part of the redaction burden is driven by current disclosure practice, so we have collaborated with criminal justice partners to pilot a more proportionate approach to disclosure. The pilot, running in the Crown Prosecution Service’s south-east region, aims to reduce the redaction burden by reducing the unnecessary sharing of unused material and refocus efforts on what meets the test for disclosure. This should make case preparation more efficient and enable more timely and effective charging decisions. We are also working with policing to support the adoption of AI-enabled redaction technology. The majority of forces now have AI-enabled text redaction tools, and we are supporting those forces to adopt audiovisual multimedia redaction technology in the most efficient way.

In conclusion, we support the aims of these amendments, but given the work in train, I hope I have been able to persuade the noble Baroness that they are not necessary at this stage. However, I will be very happy to meet her request to facilitate a meeting with the most appropriate Minister, so that we can take the discussion forward. In the meantime, I invite her to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his courteous reply. The prospect of a meeting is most welcome: I will be able to clarify one or two outstanding points in relation to the material that he has kindly set out. I was glad to hear about the pilot on redaction in the south-east. I hope that, in due course, that will either solve this problem of redaction, which we and the Lib Dems agree is a big problem, or show that some sort of legislation needs to be brought forward. However, in view of the Minister’s response and the lateness of the hour, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.