Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 411, because it brings clarity and accountability to the exceptional power in Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This is not a call to strengthen police powers; it is a call to describe them accurately, so the public understand their narrow scope and the safeguards that constrain them.

Section 60 is triggered only when

“a police officer of or above the rank of inspector reasonably believes”

one of a small number of factors: that incidents of violence may take place in a locality; that a weapon used in a recent incident is being carried locally; or that people are carrying weapons without good reason; and that there has already been an incident of serious violence. The statute requires the authorisation to be for

“any place within that locality for a specified period not exceeding 24 hours”.

These are tight operational limits.

Changing the definition from “serious violence” to “violence” keeps all the safeguards that make this power exceptional rather than just routine: the inspector-level threshold; the written and recorded authorisation; the geographic and temporal limits; the ability to seize weapons; and the requirement to provide records to those stopped. Those are not peripheral details; they are the legal guardrails that protect civil liberties while enabling targeted public safety action.

I simply ask: where is the dividing line between violence and serious violence? If someone gets stabbed multiple times and it is life-threatening, we would all agree that is serious violence, but what about the person who gets stabbed once and suffers a non-life-threatening cut? Is that merely violence and so does not count? That is why we have to change this definition to any violence, no matter how serious it may be called. This is not a wide-ranging opening of the stop and search powers applying everywhere for all time. Using “violence” in operational documents with an explicit cross-reference to the Section 60 triggers reduces confusion with broader strategic programmes labelled “serious violence”. It prevents the normalisation of suspicionless searches and makes it easier for Parliament, oversight bodies and the public to scrutinise each authorisation against the statutory test.

This amendment is modest, practical and proportionate. It highlights the statutory safeguards and does not remove any of them, but it gives the police a sensible power to save lives and prevent injury where they think that there may be more violence. I urge the Committee and the Minister to support Amendment 411.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the wording as it is in the Bill. The word “serious” is quite important. Stop and search, particularly in the London area, has been abused. You are supposed to stop somebody because of “reasonable” grounds to suspect, but as somebody who was stopped and searched six times, and every time I did not have anything they thought I would have, I see it as a sort of overpolicing.

It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is not here, because when he became the chief police officer in this place, he realised that some of this was not working and was antagonising communities, not delivering the result that was expected. The Bill is worded in terms of “serious”; the amendment tries to lower the threshold. As the intention of the Bill is to stop serious crime, “serious” to me is quite important. I do not support the amendment and would like to retain the wording in the Bill.