Crime and Policing Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, we support the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. He has hit the nail on the head with this amendment about the intent to supply electronic devices for car theft, which has become an epidemic in this country. Data assessed by colleagues in the other House revealed that, in 2024, 75% of vehicle thefts were unsolved and only 2% resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed, with 95,000 cases being unsolved. In November 2025, a BBC report showed that keyless car theft devices used by criminals can be found online and retail for around £20,000. According to that report, video guides and devices can be easily found online, allowing access to high-end cars such as Jaguars and Range Rovers and upwards. The Bill provides an offence for owning such a device. This amendment would address the potential loophole for those supplying the device.

I wait with interest to hear the Minister’s response. Motorists are taxed to the hilt, and pay road charges and congestion charges. I do not think it is unreasonable that the Government try to do something to protect motorists’ vehicles. All the money goes in—we pay our road taxes and our insurance. The numbers are staggering, with 95,000 cases last year unsolved. If you own a reasonably priced car, after working hard, there should be something to protect you from the people supplying the equipment rather just than the person using the equipment. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support my noble friend’s amendment, which seeks to fill a lacuna in Bill. It seems that the Government and my noble friend will be very close in what they trying to achieve, which is to remove these devices from sale and use and to make it more difficult for the criminals.

When the Minister responds, can he take the opportunity to say a word or two about enforcement? As the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, said, these devices are advertised for sale online. I think the Committee would like to know what efforts the authorities will take to try to pursue proactively those suppliers—we heard an awful lot in another Bill about smashing the gangs. The Committee would benefit from some explanation of how this provision will be used. Clearly, if a criminal in a stolen motor vehicle has a device on them when they are arrested, that is pretty straightforward: they are on their way to do that. However, I am interested in tackling the root of the problem and the pursuit of the individuals who are supplying these devices. What measures can be taken to prevent that at source? I would be very grateful to know.

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 365 after Clause 117, which would increase penalties for those who deliberately avoid paying rail fares. Deliberate fare evasion undermines the integrity of our railway and costs taxpayers and passengers hundreds of millions each year. We must be firm in protecting revenue that funds services and investment.

However, there is another side to this issue that we cannot ignore. Recent reviews and watchdog recommendations show a system that is complex, inconsistent and at times unfair to passengers who make genuine mistakes. The passenger watchdog has called for a national yellow card warning for first-time errors and a central railcard database to prevent innocent people being prosecuted for technical or administrative errors. I always book advance tickets on the train; they are slightly cheaper than the full-fare ones. A few weeks ago, business here finished early, so I got to Euston early and caught an earlier train than I had booked. When I produced my ticket, I said to the manager, “I’m on an earlier train. Is that all right?” He said, “I’ll let you off on this occasion”. I think what he meant was that he would let me off paying the full fare because I was on an earlier train. But I have heard of people, with a ticket that they have paid for, being accused of fare evasion for being on the train at the wrong time. That is a perfect example of where the yellow card system should be used.

The Office of Rail and Road was asked to review revenue protection practices precisely because enforcement has been uneven and opaque. We have seen the consequences of those failures. Thousands of prosecutions were quashed after courts found that operators had used inappropriate fast-track procedures and many passengers faced the threat of criminal records for minor errors. These are not abstract concerns; they are real harms to livelihoods and trust in the system.

I support the principle of tougher penalties for deliberate evasion, but only if there are clear safeguards. Those safeguards should be: a statutory first-warning step; a consistent published test before any prosecution; improved point-of-sale information and standardised enforcement guidance for all the different train operators; and mandatory staff training and data sharing to identify repeat offenders rather than punishing honest mistakes. I understand that the Government have accepted the ORR’s recommendations and must now legislate to ensure that enforcement is proportionate and transparent.

In short, tough penalties and fairness are not mutually exclusive. We can deter deliberate evasion while protecting innocent travellers, but only if this amendment is paired with the reforms that the ORR and passenger bodies have recommended. I urge the Minister to support the amendment on that basis and to press the Government to enshrine these other safeguards in law.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra has made a very pragmatic speech on the difficulties of fare evasion and the extraordinary complexities of the ticketing and fares system in the UK. Of course, I note that the Government are legislating in this area as part of the broader GB Railways Bill that is coming down the tracks, as it were. I really do not believe that there is a single individual in the United Kingdom who could answer 20 questions about the cheapest fare from A to B crossing C and get it right. It is an extraordinary system, and I quite agree that many people are making inadvertent errors, which should absolutely be taken into consideration.

Equally, the Minister will have heard me talking about enforcement on many occasions throughout the passage of the Bill. The law is brought very quickly into disrepute if the laws that law-abiding people see as absolutely necessary are avoided by a determined criminal element. We have all seen it. We have all seen it on the Tube, with people barging through, tailgating and hopping over the barriers. I have seen two officials of London Underground at Green Park station late in the evening, chatting to one another—someone comes barging past and they do absolutely nothing. If that continues, then I suggest we get ourselves into a very difficult situation indeed. So, when the Minister comes to respond, I ask that he talks about enforcement and about the attitude of the police to combat this serious issue which robs the railways and London Underground of hundreds of millions of pounds and is unsustainable.

I think that, on the ticketing issue and the fare issues, the answer really lies in technology. I think that apps have made this much more straightforward. It is absolutely a task for computers to find the best ticket from A to B, but there are plenty of people who do not use those, who are not particularly computer literate and who prefer a paper ticket. So, it is perhaps more complex than it seems from the outside, but I really think we have to put more effort on enforcement in this difficult area.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, briefly, because very good points have been made, I am tempted to say, yes, we need to increase penalties or threaten people with prison, because fare dodging does drive me mad, particularly on the Tube. It is partly the brazen, quite violent and intimidatory way that it happens for ordinary people: you are pushed out of the way and you just do not know what to do. We are not all Robert Jenrick with a camera: you want to intervene, you want to say something, you want to have something happen, but it does not happen. What has occurred is a normalisation of anti-social behaviour. The difficulty is whether we can legislate against that, because it seems to me that, partly at least, this is cultural and we have a situation where members of the public look away.

But I do think there is a problem with staffing. Whether TfL staff in particular are intimidated or whether they are indifferent, it is hard to tell, but I can assure noble Lords that they are not intervening very much. Despite the fact that this has had a lot of publicity recently, I have seen that it carries on, it seems to me, all the time. Even if you talk to the staff, they look the other way. It is one of those things: you do not want to be a grass and so on—by “you” I do not mean the noble Viscount—but I can see people feeling “I don’t necessarily want to go and report on that person, and I’m not sure what to do”. In other words, the public are stymied and are not quite sure how to respond. It is ironic, because we are constantly told that we should respect public-facing staff, and that is absolutely right, but if the public-facing staff do not respect us as members of the public, it makes it difficult. So, I am not convinced, despite the good intentions of this amendment, that it is the solution, because I am fed up with laws being added to the statute book that nobody enforces—it seems to me to bring the law into disrepute.

I want to add a note about the difficulties of buying tickets on national rail and knowing whether you are using the right ticket. I can assure noble Lords that I have made mistakes, but one reason that you can make a mistake is if you have a ticket for a fixed time and the train is late and you get on another train, you can actually be reprimanded for being on the wrong train when in fact it has just arrived at the time that the train that you were going to get should have arrived or has not arrived. I will not bore noble Lords with the details, but anyone who has travelled on trains regularly will know what I am talking about—and then to be sneered at by a member of staff. It seems to me that the danger here is that the innocent could indeed find themselves at the receiving end of a more draconian enforcement, whereas the culprit, as it were, gets away with it.

I also want to draw attention to the dangers of fast-track court processes. I really hate this single justice procedure, and it is worth noting that TfL are the people who use it most to prosecute people. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made the point that you can appeal to magistrates. Well, not in that instance, because you are not in the courtroom; it is all happening behind your back. I just worry about injustice occurring. On the other hand, I would like to hear from the Government what strategy they have: not relying on one person with a video camera to expose this, but a campaign about fare dodging would do no harm, because it is public money and the public get very irritated by it. I do not think we need an amendment, but I would not mind some action being taken.