Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Keen of Elie Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I first extend my thanks to all noble Lords for their contributions to this Second Reading debate but in particular to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, for the clarity of her opening, for which I am sure we are all grateful.

My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier opined, correctly, that passing laws is not a solution. That reflected an observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, about the plague of everyday crime that already exists. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, also made the point about the need for neighbourhood policing. It might be observed that, in the period from 2010 to 2023, neighbourhood crime in England and Wales fell very substantially. That progress was hard won through local policing, prevention and firm sentencing, rather than the creation of new laws.

Of course, many of the measures in the Bill will not be effective if police funding, police numbers and police priorities cannot keep pace. The National Police Chiefs’ Council recently observed that the Lord Chancellor’s plan for police funding will result in a shortfall in England and Wales of £1.2 billion. Police forces have had to rely on borrowing to achieve the necessary delivery of services. Rather worryingly, it has been estimated that the cost of debt servicing in respect of these liabilities is projected to rise by 50% in the next three years, so we are creating a snowball of underfunding. No additional funding is available to manage the potential increase in the number of offenders coming on to our streets as the result of early release or the reduction in spending on in-prison education, all of which is liable to impact and increase recidivism.

All that said, we welcome and support many of the provisions in the Bill. This Bill follows the Criminal Justice Bill, which was introduced by the previous Government and fell after the last election. Indeed, about one-third of the clauses in the current Bill are essentially the same as those in the previous Bill. Unfortunately, this Government have left out much and introduced a watering down of much of the previous Bill’s intent, and that is what I will address.

I will begin with those provisions that should have been added back to the Bill and were the subject of proposed amendments in the other place. The Government claim to be tough on crime but have consistently resisted amendments in the other place that sought to bolster the Bill’s provisions. They are reluctant to put into statute more robust sentence guidance and have rather ducked responsibility by referring repeatedly to their proposals for a review. In particular, the Government are unwilling to introduce tougher sentencing in respect of persistent retail crime offenders; a number of noble Lords addressed that in the context of it being a social blight in many areas today. In the other place, amendments were proposed to introduce mandatory sentencing for courts dealing with repeat retail crime offenders and to introduce the requirement for the electronic tagging of repeat offenders. The response from the Government in the other place was that

“sentencing in individual cases is a matter for our independent judiciary”.—[Official Report, Commons, Crime and Policing Bill Committee, 3/4/25; col. 211.]

With the greatest of respect, I believe that that response is as empty as it is true.

Further, the Government will not commit to introducing appropriate penalties to protect farmers and tradespeople, a point that was touched on by some noble Lords. In the other place, we moved an amendment to the equipment theft Act, to ensure that fines made under the Act reflected the cost of replacing equipment stolen from farmers and tradespeople. We also proposed an amendment to the Sentencing Act 2020 to make the theft of tools from tradespeople an aggravating factor. Why should it be aggravating? That is because of the double loss. The tradesman not only loses his tools; he loses the means to carry on his trade. Can the Minister explain why such provisions will not be the subject of this Bill? It indicates an unwillingness by the Government to address these issues head on, while they instead talk of a review.

Furthermore, the Government in the other place would not commit on the maximum penalty for possession of an offensive weapon with intent to commit unlawful violence, despite their manifesto promise to reduce knife crime substantially. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, particularly in the wake of the Southport attack, argued that the proposed sentence of four years was far too low, and yet, in the other place, the Government have resisted a proposal to raise the maximum penalty for such heinous crimes from four years to 14 years. The Minister said in the other place that they will “conduct a review”.

Further, the Government have resisted an amendment to make child murder a stand-alone aggravating factor in sentencing guidelines. They have once again ceded responsibility to a separate body, rather than taking any action. In this instance, they suggest that there should be a review by the Law Commission. Perhaps the Government will then review the reviews. Normally, we expect to find that a review is a message that something is going to be placed in the long grass. It appears that, so far, the long grass is becoming unduly crowded.

I move on to some of the more pragmatic options that were recommended in the other place in order to address the issue of crime. It had been proposed that there should be an expansion of police powers of stop and search, but again that was resisted by the Government in the other place. I find this difficult to reconcile with their manifesto promise to crack down on the knife crime epidemic. The proposed amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was to lower the threshold required for stop and search, albeit it would still require a perception with regard to violence. I ask the Minister to explain the logic of not embracing that simple step in order to attempt to address the knife crime epidemic.

Furthermore, in the other place, the Government were presented with two pragmatic amendments to crack down on the issue of tipping offences. That would have involved, first, making a third party responsible, where there is vicarious liability, imposing statutory guidance that the cost of removing the fly-tipping should be reflected in the penalty and that, in some instances, it should be possible to impose driving points on those who engaged in the fly-tipping. The Government’s response was to say that they would consult with Defra—I thought Defra was a part of the Government. It does not seem to me that in this instance the Government are really willing to face up to the hard need for appropriate penalties in respect to these crimes. I invite the Minister to explain why the matter should be deferred in that way.

I turn to the need for police action. In the other place, an amendment would have required that there should be regular reporting on police presence, on stop and search, and on live facial recognition in areas with the highest levels of serious crime. I regret that the Government should have resisted that, because if the public are meant to have faith in these proposals, they are surely going to be interested in knowing whether they are actually working. I invite consideration of that matter by the Government as we go on to Committee.

Some of the issues around sexual crimes and sexual abuse were touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. It was proposed that, with regard to the offence of spiking, which is so obviously related to sexual offences, there should be a test of recklessness rather than intent. When you consider the nature of the crime, it seems perfectly sensible that recklessness should be the appropriate test. The Government have argued that adding recklessness to the relevant statutory test would create confusion. I would welcome the Minister’s explanation as to what confusion he anticipates that simple amendment to the test would create. Those are the matters that we must immediately consider for amendment going forward, if we are to introduce proper teeth to these proposals.

Finally, I will address a further matter that should be removed by virtue of this Bill. It has been touched on already by the noble Lord, Lord Young: non-crime hate incidents. They have a chilling effect on free speech. They divert precious police time away from tackling very real crimes. Indeed, it is reported that over 13,000 of these non-crime hate incidents are now being logged each year, consuming an estimated 60,000 hours of police time. It is time, in my respectful submission, for that to be properly addressed, not by a review but by a proper consideration of the policy that lies behind this. We find ourselves in line with the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Young, that this should be addressed in the Bill.

This Bill is intended to be a step forward in addressing crime and policing. Unfortunately, it also risks being two steps back. The Government should not persistently avoid hard and necessary decisions by deferring to wide, non-specific powers of sentencing or the wish for review after review. We can act now to significantly improve our means to tackle crime and to determine specific policies on punishment, as the original Conservative Bill intended. I hope that we can raise the present Bill to that necessary standard. The Bill has much to commend it, but it has much more to improve.