Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments, to which I have put my name. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has made such an eloquent speech in relation to youth justice, I will concentrate on the police because the arguments are identical. The reason I say they are identical is that the three commissions that have looked at this issue—commissions made up not of politicians interested in hanging on to power but of individuals who have experience and expertise in the systems—have all recommended the devolution of youth justice and the devolution of the police. The first was Sir Paul Silk, the distinguished clerk; then I chaired a Commission on Justice in Wales, which reported in October 2019; and then there was the report of Dr Rowan Williams and Professor Laura McAllister. All recommended the same thing.

In view of the pressing need for a debate to occur at 4 pm—it may be a minute or two early—I refer to paragraphs of the report that we wrote. The police are dealt with at paragraphs 4.77 to 4.151, and youth justice is dealt with at paragraphs 4.181 to 4.195. I give those paragraph numbers in the hope that someone in the Home Office might read them. One of the problems of the report that the commission I chaired submitted is that no one has ever answered it. I assume it has never been answered because it is unanswerable. It is therefore important, in the light of the forthcoming paper on the police, that this point is grappled with.

The two fundamental arguments have been outlined by both the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. First, if you devolve everything else, you have to devolve police and justice. They are integral to the proper management of a system. Secondly, there is the democratic argument that if Wales is paying the greater part of what it costs, there should be accountability—certainly greater accountability than that enjoyed by the Mayors of Manchester and London. At the moment, the accountability is the other way around.

Where this is so important is that the view used to be expressed that the people of Wales really were not up to governing themselves. That was the 19th-century and early 20th-century view and, thank goodness, is gone. But now one asks: what is the argument against devolution? It is very difficult to see what it is. It will be a testing point as to what will happen on the publication of this White Paper.

The Government are abolishing police and crime commissioners. I express no view as to whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it forces the Government to grapple with what happens in Wales. Are they going to set up some elaborate structure to avoid devolution, or are they going to face up to devolution? We shall know the answer to this in the forthcoming White Paper. I hope that the Home Office officials, when they have read the paragraphs to which I have referred, will see that there is one unanswerable response to this question: devolution. On the other hand, if they set up some elaborate structure, no longer will it be said, “Well, the Welsh aren’t quite up to running their own police force”. It might be said, “There are other reasons why politicians don’t like giving up power in London. They want to hang on”. One has already seen reflected in remarks made in and across Wales that it is about time that these important powers were transferred to Wales to make the Government coherent, rather than hanging on to them and to power for what I hope I have wrongly understood—or been told—are purely party-political reasons. I hope that is not the case, but the proof will be in the pudding of the police White Paper.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are grateful to the noble Lady Baroness, Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for tabling Amendments 433 and 434, and to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for adding his name to Amendment 434. These amendments relate to the devolution of policing and youth justice to Wales.

My noble friend Lady Humphreys has signed both amendments as they agree with Lib Dem policy and our ambitions for Wales, but, unfortunately, she cannot be in her place today. Our manifesto for the general election in 2024 promised to:

“Deliver a fair deal for the people of Wales by … Devolving powers over youth justice, probation services, prisons and policing to allow Wales to create an effective, liberal, community-based approach to policing and tackling crime”.


To the disappointment of many in Wales, the issue of devolving justice to Wales was absent from Labour’s general election manifesto, despite Keir Starmer committing a year before, in 2023, to introducing a take back control Bill to devolve new powers to communities from Westminster. This commitment appears to apply to England only, and gradually, over the months since the election of the Labour Government, their lack of ambition for Wales has become more apparent.

After the State Opening of Parliament in 2024, there was no new mention of new powers for Wales in the King’s Speech. In July 2025, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said that the UK Government could row back on its promises on the devolution of probation and youth justice, despite the Welsh Government beginning the groundwork to prepare for what they believed to be a realistic project.

Noble Lords have raised queries about the consequences of the decision taken by the Government in November last year to abolish police and crime commissioners—a decision that those of us on these Benches applauded. At the time, noble Lords from Wales were concerned about the lack of clarity on the Government’s plans for the transference of the PCCs’ functions to Wales. The assumption was that the functions would transfer to mayors in England and to the Senedd in Wales. However, far from providing clarity, the answers they received amounted to pure obfuscation. Now we learn, in what could be described as a slap in the face to the Senedd, that the functions of the PCCs are to be transferred to a new board, placing the Welsh Parliament on the same level as a non-mayoral authority in England.

On these Benches we understand the difficulties so ably clarified by the noble and learned Lord in his contribution to the Sentencing Bill of devolving just one part of a system. But where has English Labour’s ambition for Wales disappeared to? For all the platitudes about mutual respect and co-operative working, the disrespect is beginning to show, sadly. Where is the recognition that Wales has been ready for the devolution of the justice system for the last 25 years at least, and where is the road map for our two nations to achieve that together?

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[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, we oppose Amendments 433 and 434, which seek to devolve policing and youth justice to Wales. Let me be clear: I make no observations on the principle of devolution for its own sake, but these amendments would make profound constitutional and operational changes. They are presented without convincing evidence that devolution of policing or youth justice would improve outcomes for victims, communities or young people themselves.

Policing and youth justice are not isolated administrative functions—

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

May I ask the noble Lord whether his staff have read the report that contains all the evidence? To say that this is put forward without evidence is not correct.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I cannot answer that from the Dispatch Box, I am afraid; nor do I have many staff.

Policing and youth justice are not isolated administrative functions. They sit at the heart of a single, integrated criminal justice system spanning England and Wales. Police forces operate across borders daily; so too with the criminal justice system. Intelligence sharing, counterterrorism, and serious organised crime and public order policing all rely on consistent legal frameworks, operational standards and accountability structures. Fragmenting those arrangements would introduce complexity, duplication and risk at precisely the moment when policing faces unprecedented pressures.

Policing in Wales is already delivered locally, is locally accountable and is responsible to Welsh communities. Police and crime commissioners in Wales set priorities based on local need. Chief constables in Wales are not directed from Whitehall on day-to-day policing. What is proposed is not so much localism but the creation of a new layer of political control over policing.

The amendments ask your Lordships’ House to place policing and youth justice under the control of the Welsh Government. This has been run by Labour continuously since devolution began. It is therefore legitimate to ask what that Government’s track record tells us about their capacity to take on these serious responsibilities. In area after area of devolved public policy, Labour-run Wales has failed to deliver. Educational outcomes in Wales have fallen behind those in the rest of the United Kingdom on many international measures. Health waiting times are persistently worse than in England. Major infrastructure projects have been delayed or mismanaged. Those are not ideological assertions; they are documented outcomes of more than two decades of one-party dominance and failure.

When systems fail in devolved areas, the response of the Welsh Government has often been to blame Westminster rather than to reflect on their own actions or inactions. If policing and youth justice were devolved, who would be blamed if and when crime rose, youth reoffending increased or serious failures occurred? Experience suggests that accountability would become more opaque, not clearer and more robust. Constitutional change should be driven by clear evidence of benefit, not by political symbolism. It has not yet been demonstrated how these proposals would reduce crime, improve public confidence or deliver better outcomes for young offenders; nor has it been shown that fragmentation would be avoided and how cross-border crime would be tackled more effectively, or failures remedied. For these reasons, we cannot support the amendments.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There are significant differences between the positions in Scotland and Wales. Scotland has its own legal system, prison system and policing system; it has had that for some time. In Wales, we have a very integrated England and Wales court system and a cross-border, east-west relationship. For example, the regional organised crime centre that services the area of north Wales where I live is a cross-border co-operation on a cross-border issue.

We have looked at the noble and learned Lord’s points and reports and, from my perspective, attempting to separate elements of the offender management system from the wider criminal justice system would in practice be extremely complicated. It would lose some of the economies of scale that we have in the current arrangements, and it would put a jagged edge on an entirely new and complex interface. I know that the noble and learned Lord has looked at those issues, but that is the view of the UK Government. The UK Government recognise the importance of Welsh partnership structures such as the Policing Partnership Board for Wales and the Police Liaison Unit, but ultimately the Government have no plans to devolve policing in Wales at this moment.

Noble Lords mentioned the decision announced on 13 November last year to abolish police and crime commissioners. We have put in that plan, and it will require legislation at some point to give effect to those proposals. There will be further discussion in the forthcoming White Paper on them, but we have committed to work with the Welsh Government and other stakeholders to ensure that new arrangements provide strong and effective police governance for Wales, while recognising the unique nature of those Welsh arrangements.

Having said that, on the Labour Government’s commitment that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned, we are working with the Welsh Government to undertake a programme of work on the Labour Government’s 2024 manifesto commitments around youth justice, which goes to the heart of one of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness. In light of the manifesto commitment, we are trying to ensure that the youth justice system delivers effectively for the people of Wales. We are undertaking a programme of work to meet that aspect of the manifesto commitment, which meets in part the objectives of the noble Lords who spoke to these amendments.

I am conscious of time, and I am sorry that this is a speedy debate pending the debate that is due any moment now. We can return to this on Report, as the noble Baroness may do, but the view of the Government to date is as I have outlined.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

First, I do not want the Minister to answer this now, but I would be very grateful if he would look again at the funding for the police in Wales. Unless I am mistaken, Manchester and London do not have a Government who make a grant to policing as the Welsh Government do. Secondly, the argument has been put forward, but the arguments that we have put contrary to all this have never been answered—and I hope they will be answered in the police White Paper. If the argument is a good argument, it stands or falls by its strength. The Government in London have never had the courage—and those who seek political advantage have stood behind that lack of courage in failing to answer independent views that have been expressed.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government will answer those questions, and they can make a very robust case for why devolution of policing should not happen. As I have said, we are exploring the issue of devolution of youth justice with the Welsh Senedd and the Welsh Government, and in the forthcoming police White Paper we will look at what the governance systems should be in consultation with the Welsh Senedd, police and crime commissioners and the police chiefs in Wales. That is a further debate. The noble Baroness has opportunities on Report to table amendments to get a fuller debate, and there will have to be legislation capacity at some point around the objectives set in the announcement on 13 November and in the forthcoming White Paper, which is coming very shortly. In the light of all that, and given the time that we have now, which is far too short to debate this in full—and I would like to do that at some point with the noble Baroness—I ask her to withdraw the amendment.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

It is important to recognise the very important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, in relation to the problems of gangs in London, but I do not believe that that should be the reason why we should not make a change.

There are three things one can say very quickly. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has dealt at length with the enormous improvement in understanding the development of the mind and the enormous scientific advances that have been made. Across the criminal justice system, we generally are very bad at adapting to science.

Secondly, it is right to pay tribute to the Youth Justice Service across England and Wales. It has improved, and we now deal with youth crime and young people in a much more humane and civilised manner than we did 20 years ago. The number in places like Feltham has fallen enormously, and thank goodness it has. I do not know how many of your Lordships have been there, but it is a terrible place, and you do not want to send people there, particularly young people.

Thirdly, this was an issue I looked at when chairing the Commission on Justice in Wales. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, that he is not to worry: I am not making a devolution point now, but I will come back to that at Report. However, I will say that the commission that examined this issue was firmly of the view that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 12, having heard a lot of evidence. It seems to me that this is something we cannot kick into the long grass again. We must recognise change, and we should make it now.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord may recall from his days at the Bar that the juvenile courts were very sensitive to their role; that the judge and the counsel did not wear wigs; that the young offender was not kept in the dock, but was placed alongside his lawyers, and so forth. So we have, stretching back a long way, been very sensitive when trying juveniles.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

We have indeed.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, as a former trustee of UNICEF, I rise to support Amendment 469, so clearly presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and signed and spoken to by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. Internationally, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is recognised as 12, and UNICEF has always been clear that it should be 14. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, said, and understand his concerns about the very large number of young people and children being groomed and pulled into criminal gangs. He is right to say that we need more concerted support in terms of police, education and youth work intervention, but it is not the children’s—younger children’s—fault that they have ended up there. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, recognised that heinous crimes needed to be marked in a certain way, but both also commented on the fact that we needed to understand that these were children. I am really grateful for the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.

Your Lordships’ House has been discussing this for many, many years and as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, she was campaigning on this long before she came into Your Lordships’ House. Now is the time; we need change. We need to do that because there is so much evidence now.

In 2011, Nicholas Mackintosh, who chaired the Royal Society study on brain development, told the BBC then that there was

“incontrovertible evidence that the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence”,

and that some regions of the brain, responsible for decision-making and impulse control, do not mature fully

“until at least the age of 20”.

That Royal Society report cited the

“concern of some neuroscientists that the … age of criminal responsibility in the UK is set too low”.

We are still discussing it today.

UNICEF’s view is that 14 should be the minimum age, using scientific research as a base, but it is very specific that no country should have the age below 12. This places England, Wales and Northern Ireland in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is bad enough, but the real problem is a court system that assumes that children have capacity to make decisions when all the research shows that that is not reliable. It is wrong for a Government to assert that any interference with a child’s human rights can be justified.

UNICEF says in its excellent guidance note on youth offending published in 2022, that children under the minimum age of criminal responsibility,

“should not be considered (alleged) child offenders but, first and foremost, children in need of special protection”.

It says that offending behaviour by such children

“is often the result of poverty, family violence and/or homelessness … their involvement in offending behaviour is an indicator of potential vulnerability that has to be addressed by the social welfare system. Special protection measures for children … should address the root causes of their behaviour and support their parents/caregivers. The measures should be tailored to the child’s needs and circumstances and based on a comprehensive and interdisciplinary assessment of the child’s familial, educational and social circumstances”.

That matches the advice of the medical specialists too. Frankly, it is time that the Government stepped up and took the brave decision that we need to recognise that we are out of kilter with the rest of Europe and, frankly, most of the world.

Prosecuting children and holding them in young offender institutions does not give them the time and space to learn how to live their lives differently. We have heard from both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about how the arrangements work for children in specialist secure accommodation. We can still use those systems but without giving children the label of being a criminal when, clearly, they are not capable of making the right decisions.

I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Dholakia, who has been campaigning on this particular issue for decades before he came into your Lordships’ House in 1997. His Private Member’s Bill in 2017 resulted in a wide public discussion. It is a shame that, nine years on, we have not progressed further. Let us do so now.

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I add briefly to this debate. When the matter came before your Lordships’ House with the passage of the CHIS Bill towards the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, whether to move from the use of CHISs and their conduct being looked at ex post facto to it being looked at in advance was hotly debated. It is a difficult subject to debate in an open Chamber. We all accept that CHISs are necessary, but it is impossible to go into the details of those cases here. Further, it is important to concentrate not on what happened prior to 2020, although such cases are illustrative of the abuses that can occur; we are concerned with what has happened since 2021 and how well the Act is working.

As things stand at present, I cannot really add much to what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said. My experience of this area of CHISs is that we have learned an enormous amount from Northern Ireland. We ignore at our peril what the judiciary and those who have experience of Northern Ireland tell us. That peril is that we need to be absolutely clear that the system we have of authorising when CHISs engage in criminal activity is subject to rigorous scrutiny. What disturbs me, and why I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is that the key to the new system was prompt, effective and detailed scrutiny, reported to the best extent possible, of the way in which the system is operating.

On what the noble Baroness has said, I have looked at these reports myself. They are necessarily vague—they have to be, because you cannot put the information into the public domain—but they are delayed. I hope that the Minister will look very seriously at this and maybe meet some of us so that we can see the reality. Is this system working? If it is not working, we must revert either to the old system or to what is proposed in this amendment. It is key to public confidence in the police that we do not have a repeat of what happened in the matters that are the subject of the inquiry that has been spoken about—though this amendment has absolutely nothing to do with that—that the CHISs operate properly, and that anything that goes wrong is properly dealt with. We cannot have another scandal on the scale of that which has been investigated for the past 10 or 12 years—I have lost count of time.

This is, therefore, a matter where the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness really should be investigated. I hope that the Minister will look very seriously at it. I had long discussions during the passage of the Bill in 2020 to try to ensure that we had a good system. At present, on what is available, there is no real democratic accountability and no independent scrutiny of it. We must have that, if public confidence in the police is not to suffer the kind of problems that it suffered, into which the inquiry is going on, in relation to pre-2020 events.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am so glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, have participated in this debate. Like myself, they attended the recent meeting chaired by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. It was very nice to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, the admiration for the courage of the witnesses who came to speak to us at that meeting.

In any form of covert human intelligence, there has to be deception. It is the only way that the officer of the state, whoever he or she may be, can penetrate through to get the confidence of the criminals who they are there to investigate. But there should be, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti says in her amendment, some restraint in what they get up to.

When the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, got up, he started by saying that he opposed this amendment, but it was pleasing that, by the end of his speech, he was quite neutral. That was very reassuring.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti referred to the 2011 case of R v Barkshire, which concerned an undercover police officer infiltrating a group of climate change activists. The police officer, who I will not name, indulged in a sexual relationship, for about seven years, with one of the ladies involved. It also involved the birth of a child. This police officer, according to my brief, had as many as 10 other sexual relationships during the course of his activity as an undercover officer. When it came to the court, it was said that he went “much further” than the authorisation given to him, and that he played

“a significant role in assisting, advising and supporting … the very activity for which these appellants were prosecuted”.

That is why my noble friend—I hope she notes that I am giving her full support in this amendment—is absolutely right to suggest that there should be restraint. I accept entirely the restraint which is contained in Amendment 470.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness tempts me to go into areas of the inquiry, which I will not do. The inquiry is looking at historical abuses, which we have recognised and which are appalling. In the meantime, there have been legislation and improvements by policing in the management of covert operations. I am giving the noble Baroness that assurance now that we believe there are improvements in that management but things that need to be looked at in relation to the previous operation.

The legislation that the noble Baroness is seeking to amend has also put in place a range of measures as a whole. I say to my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti that I have made clear that CHISs cannot be authorised to entrap. This amendment would impose broad and unintended constraints on intelligence gathering by CHISs where criminal conduct is a factor—for example, by preventing CHISs going along with offences that they do not instigate. I have seen the product of that type of activity by CHISs. It is extremely valuable for crime prevention and for bringing people who are committing criminal or terrorist acts to the courts.

My noble friend’s amendment would also rule out the possibility of discrediting the subject of an investigation—for example, a terrorist organisation—in cases where it is equally important to do so. My noble friend has fulfilled her duty. She is challenging the Government on these matters. Self-evidently, we are in a better place than we were many years ago. I await with interest the recommendations of the John Mitting inquiry on undercover policing and whether there are further issues for us to examine.

I want to touch on two other points. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, sort of asked for a meeting. I am always open to meeting with Peers. In my tenure in this job, I have tried to meet with anybody who has asked. But in this case, given that there is an inquiry ongoing, it would be inappropriate for me to meet with him to discuss those matters now.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I was talking not about the inquiry but about the level of supervision and what is happening in the reports under this Act. I entirely agree with the Minister that what happened in the inquiry has nothing to do with this regime. The inquiry is relevant only because it shows the horrendous consequences of not supervising the use of CHISs. All I was concerned to understand better was why there are problems with the reports being so slow and what problems are being encountered. You cannot put this into the public domain, but it would reassure, from the point of view of democratic accountability, if we saw what the problems were and whether there were other means—such as strengthening the code of conduct—to put it right. The peril here is the discrediting of the police five years down the line. That is what I am concerned to avoid.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I hear what the noble and learned Lord says. Those are operational matters for the police, in my view, but we can make some judgments on that. I will reflect on what he has said and what he has requested, but my initial gut reaction—and I would like to trust my gut, on several occasions—is that it would not be appropriate to do that. I will reflect on what he said. I am trying to complete my remarks, but I see that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, wishes to speak, and I will always give way to him.