Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, although this Bill is extremely wide-ranging, as has been pointed out, and plainly lacks focus, we have had an interesting and diffuse debate and we can discern something now of the Government’s central aims: first, to help halve violence against women and girls; secondly, to protect children from criminal exploitation and abuse, on which my noble friends Lady Benjamin, Lady Hamwee and Lady Featherstone, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Cash, and others spoke so compellingly; and then to cut street violence, particularly knife crime, to reduce anti-social behaviour and to increase neighbourhood policing and public confidence in the police. On these Benches, we support all these aims. However, as it stands, the Bill risks many unforeseen and undesirable consequences.

Broadly, we will seek to ensure that the Bill does not unjustifiably reduce citizens’ rights and liberties; that it should not unnecessarily create new or duplicatory offences; that it will keep the law up to date with new technology, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones explained; that it will enhance police effectiveness and community confidence, and will not increase pressure on the police or local authorities; and, generally, that it will not make managing the criminal justice system more difficult, either by increasing court backlogs or making it harder for courts to handle their workload effectively and justly, or by increasing the prison population when our aim is to reduce reoffending, reverse sentence inflation and rehabilitate more offenders in the community.

I can make only a few points. The detail we will leave to 11 days in Committee, and we may need even more for proper consideration of the many expected amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, predicted.

I turn first to the protection of citizens’ rights, particularly the right to peaceful protest. Whatever our differing views on the horrors in the Middle East, many have been frankly shocked that the Terrorism Act was deployed in the proscription of Palestine Action, whether or not that was sanctioned by the legislation. Many hundreds of protesters face prosecution for offences labelled as “terrorist” for taking part in protests in an entirely non-violent way. Such prosecutions may prevent them finding employment or travelling to the States, as my noble friend Lady Miller pointed out, or indeed the EU when the European travel authorisation scheme is launched next year. These are not groundless scare stories; they are points made by the Government and senior officers to deter attendance at these protests. We will be seeking stronger statutory protection for the right to peaceful protest and a review of the threshold for so-called “terrorist offences”.

I am concerned that the generally very clear and helpful opening by the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt—for which I thank her—revealed on these issues a lack of balance in government. The speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and my noble friends Lord Strasburger and Lady Miller, and numbers of others, provided a welcome counterweight.

We also worry about the indiscriminate use of live facial recognition, as my noble friend Lord Strasburger explained. While it may have uses—for example, in connection with retail theft, car break-ins, bag snatches and other street crime—I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, and others that its use needs careful review and control. Unsafeguarded access to DVLA information, or electronic information on which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, spoke, presents similar risks. So, while agreeing with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, we do not always go along with his approach to police access to personal information. However, I suggest that the concept of stewarded public interest data trusts—introduced, for example, in Canada, Australia and Belgium—offers balance on these privacy issues and deserves serious consideration. We must not slide inadvertently, carelessly or by stealth towards being a surveillance state.

The respect order proposals are not risk-free. Although making these orders will be for the courts, applications for them will be largely for our underresourced police and local authorities. How confident can the Government be of their usefulness? Will not the financial and administrative burden of securing these orders, organising their supervision and then policing and punishing their breach, outweigh their effectiveness in reducing crime and anti-social behaviour? Are the procedures robust in respecting citizens’ liberties? Before respect orders are made, there must be wide consultation on the guidance and an independent review of existing powers.

The Bill will create many new offences. I started in preparation to count them but ran out of steam. A number of them duplicate existing offences and will make the criminal law more complicated. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, pointed out, and as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, so graphically described, supported by the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey, Lord Russell of Liverpool and others, other provisions increase existing penalties.

This mixture is generally not helpful. More prosecutions for complex new offences will tend to clog up the courts and exacerbate the appalling backlogs we so desperately need to clear. More and longer prison sentences will do nothing to reduce reoffending or its massive cost to society. We already imprison more people and for longer than other countries in western Europe. Our prisons are still overcrowded, understaffed and in many cases dilapidated, often serving more as academies of crime than as centres of reform. We should be reversing sentence inflation, relying on more and better community sentencing and focusing on rehabilitation and training. The Sentencing Bill will cover these issues, but this Bill betrays a lack of co-ordination across criminal justice issues

While opposing unnecessary new offences, I will relay the amendment I proposed to the Domestic Abuse Bill, to criminalise psychotherapists who exercise controlling or coercive behaviour over their patients, often vulnerable young adults. When I moved this amendment in 2021 with all-party support, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, who is now in a stronger position to influence these matters, argued that we had made a powerful case for change and said that he hoped the Government would, as he put it,

“set out a pathway to remedy this undeniably serious problem”.—[Official Report, 10/3/21; col. 1776.]

I hope to hold this Government to his word.

Finally, on police effectiveness and public confidence, and on pressure on the police and local authorities, my noble friend Lady Doocey rightly said that pressure on the police largely comes down to resources—for example, on drug testing and law enforcement. This Government, like the last, persistently understate both the shortage of resources for policing and the pressures on the police, which diminish both police effectiveness and public confidence. Public confidence means community confidence, which requires a genuine commitment to neighbourhood policing, which was addressed by my noble friend, and to ending racism and hate crime, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and others spoke. We will seek progress on these issues.

I add one final point on policing and police resources. The prevalent minimum, or zero, response to so-called minor crime undermines public confidence. It is said that minimal response is acceptable for crimes that are low-level and low-value. But, just as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, described, crimes such as bike theft, car break-ins, shop theft and mobile phone, watch and bag snatches are committed on an industrial scale. Such offences may often be low-value in isolation, but these are not isolated incidents; they are largely the work of multiple repeat offenders and professional gangs. Concerted efforts to ensure they are policed more effectively would do much to restore public confidence in our policing.