Crime and Policing Bill

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Committee (13th Day)

Northern Ireland legislative consent granted, Scottish and Welsh legislative consent sought. Relevant documents: 33rd and 41st Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee, 11th Report from the Constitution Committee and 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

11:18

Amendment 435

Moved by

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

435: After Clause 166, insert the following new Clause—
“Police covenant: mandatory reporting on suicide and attempted suicide(1) The Secretary of State must ensure the collection and publication of data on suicide and attempted suicide among police officers and police staff for the purposes of supporting mental health and wellbeing under the police covenant (see section 1 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022).(2) Each police force in England and Wales must collect and submit annually to the Secretary of State—(a) the number of confirmed suicides by serving police officers and police staff;(b) the number of attempted suicides by serving police officers and police staff;(c) contextual information, where reasonably available, including duty status, length of service, role, rank, known occupational stressors, and access to mental health support. (3) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, and annually thereafter, lay a report before Parliament (to be known as the “Police Covenant Mental Health Report”) which must include, but is not limited to—(a) national and force-level data trends,(b) analysis of occupational contributory factors,(c) assessment of the adequacy, usage and evidence-based outcomes of mental health and suicide prevention provisions under the police covenant,(d) recommendations to address identified risks, and(e) a statement from the Chief Medical Officer for England.(4) The report under subsection (3) must—(a) be published and disseminated to all police personnel;(b) include commentary from the College of Policing on compliance, data quality and best practice at force level;(c) include contributions from staff representative bodies and trade unions.(5) Anonymised data, disaggregated by force area, must be published, subject to data protection and safeguarding.(6) Each Chief Constable must, at the end of every calendar year, provide a statement to the Secretary of State certifying that the requirements under this section have been met by their police force.(7) Where a Chief Constable fails to provide a certification under subsection (6) without reasonable excuse, the Secretary of State must notify HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services.(8) The Inspectorate must have regard to a notification under subsection (7) in the course of its inspection of that police force under the police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) programme.(9) The Secretary of State must establish an independent advisory board, to be known as the “Police Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Advisory Board”.(10) The Board must consist of persons with expertise in clinical care, occupational health, staff representation and academic research.(11) The functions of the Board are to—(a) advise the Secretary of State on guidance relating to suicide prevention and mental health in the police workforce,(b) set standards for the collection and reporting of relevant data, and(c) review and make recommendations on force-level responses to risks identified through data and inspections.(12) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of the Police Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Advisory Board, including provision about—(a) the Board’s procedures,(b) its terms of reference, and(c) its reporting duties.(13) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about—(a) data collection standards,(b) statutory guidance,(c) audit mechanisms, and(d) such further oversight as may be considered necessary.(14) In this section, “police officer” and “police staff” have the same meanings as in section 1 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.”

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support and move the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, to which I have added my name. I also support the other two amendments in this group. The reason for the amendments is that the Police Federation of England and Wales is concerned because it believes—but is not sure—that there is an increased rate of suicide among police officers, and it has a similar concern around police staff. For those noble Lords who do not know, about two-thirds of police work is done by police officers and about a third by employees who are police staff.

The Police Federation was concerned because it intuitively thought that the numbers were rising, so it sent out FoI requests to each of the 43 forces—in fact, there are also three non-Home Office forces. Unfortunately, it got only 34 replies, which has not helped it in determining whether there is a real problem. It could be worried for no cause, but at the moment it is struggling to establish the facts. The difficulty is that it cannot get hold of the data. I am really concerned about this, because it seems to me that it should not be that difficult.

I suspect that, even if the numbers of suicides are increasing, there are probably not going to be hundreds, even among a workforce of a quarter of a million. It is probably a relatively small number—probably tens rather than hundreds. Even for the biggest organisations, you would think that they would be able to find this data. For the smallest forces, surely they can remember the individuals. Some of the smaller forces we heard about in the police reforms announced yesterday have about 1,000 people, so there are not going to be so many that small forces could not remember whom this shocking thing had happened to. Police officers and police staff are generally relatively young people. They do not tend to die when they are in service, and when they die through suicide, it is a terrible shock for everybody involved.

There would be complications in gathering the data. As the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, proposes, it would be helpful to get the data not only about those who have committed suicide but also about those who have attempted it. Establishing whether a death is a suicide or not relies on a coroner; that is the only absolute way in which we can say that there has definitely been a suicide. Sometimes, to be fair, coroners are sympathetic. They realise that this can feel to the family like a judgment, and often they will find any way that they can, in law, to find an alternative, so getting hold of the data can be difficult.

Of course, who can say what an attempted suicide is? There is no absolute proof of that. I suspect that the occupational health units in each of the 43 forces have some data. Because that is medical data, however, they cannot always share it with the employer. If it is relevant just to that person but is not relevant to their employment; it is a confidential issue and, if the individual wants it kept secret, then that is entirely up to them, and the occupational health units might not be able to share it.

It is vital to get this data for a couple of reasons. One is to establish patterns, if there are patterns; for example, does it affect certain roles? We know already that it is an awful job for certain officers and staff who view, for example, child abuse images as part of their general work. To have to sustain that work over months and years, even with all the welfare support that they get, might make it an area that we would be worried about if we saw that there was an increase in the number of suicides; likewise, among firearms officers or dog handlers, male or female—the role does not really matter. We just need to understand what it is, obviously, to try to prevent it.

What worries me about not being able to get hold of this data—it ought to be possible to get at least some of it—is what it says about the relationship with the chief officers, the Police Federation and the unions. There is a statutory requirement for the chiefs to meet personally with the head of the federation every quarter, and to meet with the unions. I am sure my colleagues will also explain that. Beyond that formal requirement, we also meet them informally, usually about once a month. Chiefs should be meeting their federation reps at times such as bravery awards, and there are various other internal mechanisms.

If they are concerned, it is hard to imagine that they have not mentioned it. If they have mentioned it, why have they not got a response? Why has it ended up with FoI requests, three-quarters of which have been badly answered? In fact, some of those who did not reply were the biggest forces of all. Sometimes people take it that 30-odd out of 40-odd forces is three-quarters; it is three-quarters of the forces, but some of the forces are very big and some are very small, so we do not have any representative data.

My final point is for the Home Office. There are, broadly, two amendments here. One is very detailed from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, about not only how the data is gathered but what is done with it afterwards. My amendment just says that the Home Office might want to collect this data. I wonder whether the Home Office has asked for it and also been refused; perhaps the Home Office could be interested as well.

It is important for two reasons. First, when people are committing suicide in their employment, it matters that we establish whether it is their employment that is causing it, or there is something else that the employer has absolutely nothing to do with. The employer might have been able to help had they had some sensitivity to the problems that their staff are facing. Secondly, policing is about care. Those who serve must look after each other. My test is always that at 3 am, when everybody else has gone home, you cannot call the police if you have a problem, so you must rely on your colleagues.

It is vital for any employer to care for their staff because they want better performance, and to make sure that their staff can do what they are paying them a salary for. But in policing and the emergency services in particular, you must rely on each other and look after each other. If that is not done properly, or if there is anything we could do to help a person, but they then take their own life and we could have noticed, it is probably the worst example, and, surely, we would all want to do something about that. It matters for many reasons and that is why I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, and have tabled my own. I beg to move Amendment 435.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 435 and, of course, I support Amendment 438A from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, in this group. I remind the Committee that I served as the elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland for five years between 2016 and 2021. I welcome this initiative by the Police Federation of England and Wales. I am proud to say that its present chair, Tiff Lynch, is a Leicestershire police officer, whom I can call a friend.

As Police and Crime Commissioner, I was responsible for the well-being—this is true of all Police and Crime Commissioners but perhaps not widely known—of only one person: the chief constable. However, as any Police and Crime Commissioner would be, I was concerned in a broader sense with the well-being of all those who worked for Leicestershire Police, whether officers or staff. During my time, one senior officer took his own life in obviously tragic circumstances and, since I left office, there has been another suicide, this time of a very recently retired senior officer.

I am afraid to say that over the last 30 years there have been four senior officer suicides in that force. I do not have any information concerning police staff, but I remember clearly, and will not easily forget, the deep and lasting distress caused to all at police headquarters and in the community beyond by the death of the officer who took his own life in my time.

I must confess to not knowing at the time that all police forces were not compelled by law to pass on information about suicide or attempted suicide. I imagine I presumed that they were compelled to do so. It is surely obvious—it certainly is to me—that there should be mandatory reporting. I cannot for the life of me understand why that has not been the position until now. That is why I support these amendments and urge the Minister, with his great knowledge of policing matters, to express the Government’s acceptance of the principle behind these amendments.

It almost goes without saying that police staff who perform such a vital and necessary role can be subject to enormous pressures that we sometimes do not even know about and are rightly included in the mandatory reporting. This is a reform that should not be delayed. The Bill is a useful vehicle for bringing in what should have been there a long time ago.

11:30

[Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, following on from what both noble Lords have said. Policing is a difficult, dangerous and stressful task. I have for many years referred to police officers as the men and women who are the dustbin collectors of society. They will go where other people do not want to go. I take my information source beyond those whom the noble Lords have mentioned. My son did 32 years in the police service. He has just retired as a senior detective, running one of the most difficult parts of the Metropolitan Police, and he now has a very senior role in government. Over the last two to three years, he and his friends have reported how people are either thinking about committing suicide or have attempted suicide, and in his command over about 18 months two committed suicide.

Whether and how you deal with a suicide is a difficult question. It is sensitive information. People shy away from it, understandably, but there is no doubt that we have a suicide problem in policing. My 30 years’ experience of Northern Ireland was in taking people into the most difficult situation in policing that has ever been undertaken—more of that later, no doubt, at the public inquiry, with what has been disclosed recently. Out of 28 people, all hand-picked, who went into Northern Ireland on the so-called Stevens 1, four of them never came back to policing. Two of them were thinking of committing suicide and I referred them to the force medical officer. Those people never reached the statistics.

Like my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, I was an inspector of constabulary for nearly two years, inspecting many forces across the country, from the largest to the smallest. One of the most important roles of the inspectorate in that case—we have discussed this—was that we went and looked at the sickness rates of a force. If we found that the sickness rates were very high, performance and morale were low. We would dig deeper, but it was difficult to find out where suicide played a role or if it played a role at all. We have a problem here and I say to the Minister, who is always supportive, that this may well be a nudge in the right direction.

Some of us, as old men do, have dinner parties or meet up for a glass now and again, and the information that I am getting from my old colleagues and current colleagues, who I have to keep in contact with because of the activities that we are now about to be involved in in relation to Northern Ireland, is that there is a problem. I can understand why some chiefs would shy away from that. We have a police commissioner here who did a superb job—not many of them do or did, but he did—and if you listen to what my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe has to say and to my information, we need to do something.

Maybe this amendment is too long and complex for it to stand the test of examination, but there is an amendment further on, submitted by my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, which is short, sharp and to the point. It holds the kernel of what we are dealing with. I support the amendments, including the final amendment, whichever way my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe wants to go. Let us have a look at it. What is there to hide behind these figures? Why has this survey come back with very little information in it? Speaking as a chief constable, a commissioner and an HMI, I think that that is not good enough. I do not believe that the Home Office should be treated in such a way.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

I, too, support the shortest of all the amendments. My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe’s Amendment 438A gets to what needs to happen without a lot of description. I have always felt that brevity is the best answer to a problem, because you know what is being asked for. I want to congratulate him on putting in this amendment. Every organisation will face this question of suicide and, if there is a way of collecting the data and working out why, that is necessary. I believe that the duty of candour is not simply about the way the police treat citizens; it is also about the way the organisation treats the police service. There must be a duty of candour from the chief officer and, of course, the Home Office has a part to play. I support this wonderful short amendment, because that is what needs to happen. With a much longer amendment, I am afraid that what is simple will be lost in quite a lot of detail, which is not what we want.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches there is strong support for Amendments 435 and 438A, which would finally shine a light on one of the most sensitive and least discussed aspects of police welfare: suicide and attempted suicide among officers and staff. This is not about apportioning blame; it is about creating conditions in which people can seek help early and leaders cannot look away. Nearly two years ago I sought this very information and was assured that work was happening to collate it. Yet no figures have emerged, leaving families, colleagues and policymakers in the dark, still awaiting clarity and transparency. These amendments would ensure that bereaved families do not feel that their loss has been silently absorbed and they would confront the lingering stigma around mental ill health in policing.

Policing demands a particular duty of care that transcends the ordinary employer-employee relationship, as the state requires officers to face repeated trauma that is unparalleled in any other walk of life. We are now operating in what many describe as a crisis policing model, where officers spend most of their time dealing with the darkest parts of human experience with far fewer opportunities to balance that with visible neighbourhood-based work. In the past, time spent on community policing would lift them out of the dark place. Today, that release valve is much weaker. Much of the informal support that once existed has disappeared. Officers used to have shared spaces where they could decompress together at the end of a shift, but those communal areas have largely gone. From staff sifting through distressing online material every day to front-line officers facing the increasing likelihood of physical assault, the psychological strain is relentless. This feeds a siege mentality in a service that still struggles to recognise emotion and is not naturally open.

Policing remains an environment where taking paternity leave can invite mockery and where the burden can fall especially heavily on women and minority officers amid unreported discrimination. In too many forces, officers still fear that admitting vulnerability will derail their career progression. If Parliament seeks people to shoulder that burden on our behalf, it must insist on collecting basic information. Tracking suicides and attempted suicides would pinpoint hotspots and high-risk groups, enabling proactive measures such as resilience training, peer support and routine psychological screening. I urge the Minister to take these amendments back to the Home Office and consider bringing forward concrete proposals on Report.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for bringing this matter to the attention of the Committee. The noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, and I know all too well the stresses and strains of policing. It is vital that more is done to support our officers. I approach these amendments from the fact that it is impossible to address what we do not measure and, at this moment, policing has almost no reliable national mechanism for measuring accurately the total number of police suicides.

Data from the Police Federation of England and Wales shows that more than 100 police officers and staff have died by suicide between 2022 and 2025, with at least 70 officer deaths and over 200 attempted suicides in that period. Those figures are likely undercounts because there is no statutory requirement for forces to record such events. The federation has also revealed troubling trends in how these incidents are linked with organisational stresses—notably, that 47 of 70 suicides and 173 of 236 attempted suicides that it has identified between 2022 and 2025 involved officers under investigation for misconduct or criminal allegations. That is not simply a statistic; it is a human tragedy that echoes through families, colleagues and communities.

As has been said, police forces are not required to record suicide or attempted suicide, meaning that the true scale of the problem is hidden from view and national suicide statistics do not treat policing as a risk occupation, as they should. Without a statutory duty to record and report, we are asking police leaders to act in good faith alone, with widely inconsistent results. Two of the largest police forces in England and Wales reportedly could not provide their own figures when the federation asked. The amendments would end that inconsistency by placing responsibility for data collection and publication on a statutory footing.

The amendments are not a step taken in isolation from policing leadership. The National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing are already committed to suicide prevention across the service. They have jointly endorsed a national consensus statement on working together to prevent suicide in the police service in England and Wales, acknowledging the importance of reducing stigma and improving well-being. The College of Policing also leads on national suicide prevention guidance and professional practice, emphasising the duty of forces to recognise inherent risk factors associated with police work and to promote supportive interventions. However, guidance and consensus alone cannot ensure consistent national reporting or create the accountability that comes from an annual report, laid before Parliament, which analyses trends, contributory factors and the effectiveness of support mechanisms under the police covenant.

Requiring chief constables to certify compliance and linking non-compliance to inspection through HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services will ensure that this is not simply a bureaucratic exercise but a real driver for change. However, without consistent mandatory data, these efforts lack the firm foundation needed to evaluate progress and target interventions where they are most needed. We on these Benches fully support the amendments.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for highlighting the amendments that he has put before the Committee today and to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, although he is not in his place, who tabled two of the amendments.

The importance of collecting accurate and consistent data for police officer and staff suicide is certainly relevant. I note particularly that the noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend Lord Bach have a significant senior level of experience in these areas. I am grateful also for the comments of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, and I recognise and note the strong support from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, from the Opposition Benches for the proposals in the amendments.

Every life lost to suicide is a tremendous tragedy and, when that person is part of our police workforce, that loss is even deeper because those officers, as has been said, walk towards danger and see things that everyday citizens do not see. It is only fair that we support them with the same care and commitment that they show to us.

It may help the Committee to know that last year I met the Police Federation chair, Tiff Lynch, when she raised these matters with me. I have to say that this is an issue. We must do our utmost to protect and support police officers and this Government agree that understanding the scale and nature of the problem is essential. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, it is important that we understand whether any levels of suicide are linked specifically to a policing role or linked to factors outside of policing that policing may or may not exacerbate, as well as what measures can be taken, as in any walk of life, to help to support and encourage individuals who have mental health challenges or experiences that drive them to suicide. That is why we as a Government are actively considering the best options for achieving that, both in legislation and via non-legislative routes, so that we can deliver meaningful and sustainable improvements without creating unnecessary burdens.

11:45

I was struck that the survey undertaken by the Police Federation did not receive a significant response. It was a large response but not a significant one, given the nature of the issue that was raised. The Government are currently working, through the National Police Wellbeing Service and the National Police Chief Medical Officer, to strengthen existing data collection and to improve the consistency and timeliness of information across forces, and we are now requesting more data than ever before.

Is that enough? I can inform the mover of the amendment today that the Policing Minister, Sarah Jones MP, is considering further options for mandating that data collection, including potentially strengthening the police covenant and—this is an important point for all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate—the potential for legislation, if that proves necessary.

Noble Lords will understand that this is a matter for discussion. We need to consult stakeholders: the National Police Chiefs’ Council needs to be engaged, as does the Police Federation. Last week my honourable friend the Minister, Sarah Jones MP, convened a roundtable of stakeholders to examine the best routes forward to achieve the objectives that the amendments have highlighted today. That roundtable will take place shortly and it will discuss how we improve data collection and whether we need legislation to force that data collection. I hope that that is a considered approach to this vital issue that has been raised in Committee today. Alongside that, there are existing mechanisms, including the police covenant clinical governance group and the National Police Chiefs’ Council suicide prevention steering group, which provide robust oversight, expert guidance and continuous improvement in suicide prevention and mental health support in the police service.

However, it is clear from the Committee’s debate today and from the amendments that, while good data matters, data alone, as I think all noble Lords will accept, does not save lives. We need to look at how we can support the workforce, including through mandatory training on trauma and on suicide prevention, and by introducing an overarching mandatory well-being standards service for policing. In the reform White Paper that was published yesterday in the House of Commons, which we may get a chance to discuss in this House later this week, those issues are central.

As I have said, the Government are committed to getting this right. We want to look at a range of options and ensure that the changes genuinely strengthen existing frameworks and do not develop too much bureaucracy. The objective of the amendments to get data from police forces, which can look at what the reasons are and how we can help to prevent those potential suicides or the risk of suicides, is extremely important.

I hope that, having heard what I have said, the noble Lord will today withdraw the amendment in Committee. Obviously, I will keep the House updated on the outcomes of the roundtable that has been organised. I will just say that the Committee amendment is helpful but the roundtable was an initiative that the Government were doing prior to this stage of the Bill and one that I know we want to see through. We want to get this right because it is important and I am grateful to noble Lords for raising the issue today. However, I ask them, at this stage at least, not to press the amendments, given what I have said.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I thank the Minister for such a constructive response and of course I thank everyone for their support. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, made a point that I had not made in my speech but that I want to amplify: in collecting the data, we should consider people for at least 12 months after retirement. He mentioned one particular case, but we can all perhaps imagine others and, if there is a link, that would be interesting to look at.

I hope we do not have to end up with legislation, because, in a way, that would be an admission of failure. There are far better ways of achieving it without that, or the bureaucracy that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, mentioned. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, for his usual powerful support for this and for saying it is common sense that this needs sorting out—there was no challenge on that from the Minister. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for their wholehearted support.

A couple of important things have through in the debate. First, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned the potential link to misconduct processes. If that is an issue, we need to understand why. We had an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, on a previous Committee day about potential deadlines or timelines for how long these things take; that cannot be unconnected. Whatever it is, we need to understand what it is about.

There is a second very important HR issue: are we recruiting people who understand the nature of the job they are about to embark on? Are we sharing the nature of the challenges? Are we supporting them at the beginning if they have things that they are not sure about? It is important, for the reasons we have all talked about, to make sure that this happens. I am really reassured about the round table. It would be really helpful if, by Report, we had a definite route forward, because I can see there are various routes.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Can I raise one point with the noble Lord? It seems to me—certainly from reflecting on my own police service—that one of the issues regarding suicide simply was the fact that police managers were unable to identify the issues when they arose. I wonder whether he, as a former commissioner and part of the inspectorate, has a view on that.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, makes a really good point: are we training our managers and supervisors to recognise the signs? For good reasons, occupational health units keep all this data together privately. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, mentioned a referral to the medical officer to see whether there was a problem; I wonder how many referrals are coming back the other way to let the manager know that this person might have an issue, not necessary to talk about suicide but to say there is a stress issue and they may need some support. Has it become a one-way valve that protects their privacy but reduces their safety? There are many facets to it that I hope the round table might address. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment and thank the Government for their response.

Amendment 435 withdrawn.

Amendment 436

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

436: After Clause 166, insert the following new Clause—
“Police enforcement data(1) Police forces in England and Wales must publish annual data on the enforcement of the following offences—(a) shoplifting,(b) offences involving a blade,(c) phone theft,(d) fare dodging on public transport, and(e) offences involving bicycles and e-scooters.(2) In this section, “enforcement” means the investigation and collection of evidence in preparation for a prosecution.”

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 436, I will also speak to my Amendment 437. I thank my noble friend Lord Jackson for his support on the crucial issue of police force publication of enforcement data and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for supporting my proposed review of police paperwork or its online equivalent.

As I explained at Second Reading, I have discovered in my long career in business and in government that enforcement of the law is as important as the rules and regulations themselves. This is as true for neighbourhood policing as it is for serious crime, and far too little is being done. I also believe in the power of comparative statistics as a driver of performance and success. As I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, during the Sentencing Bill debate, good leadership and management —the manager of a store or the prison governor—is the best predictor of success. I believe the same will be the case in the police, although I would be interested to hear from the Minister at what level that is true in the police structure.

However, it is not possible to identify and promote the best without comparative data. Hence, my amendment takes five areas of public concern, which we have already debated and which the Great British public care about: shoplifting, offences involving a blade, phone theft, fare dodging on public transport, and offences involving bicycles and e-scooters. It would require police forces individually to publish annual data—so not a great burden—on the investigation and collection of evidence in preparation for a prosecution. It needs to be accessible, so the public and parliamentarians can see it and hold police forces to account. They will also be able to see how others are doing and learn from their success.

The amendment would, I suspect, help to reveal the scale of wasted effort. Many cases of burglary, shoplifting and theft are not pursued, despite good evidence from the victim, because of the bureaucracy and even indifference of the system, and the poor IT integration between the CPS and the courts, which we have discussed on other occasions. It would help to focus on the right things, away from prosecutions for tweets and back to the Peelite principle that the police need to be part of the community they serve. The sunlight of publicity would help to drive necessary change. I say to the Minister that data helps people to do the right thing and to take timely and sensible action. I would be interested to know from the Minister how much of the data proposed in my amendment is already collected and how accurate it is, so that we can assess how difficult the change would be.

Amendment 437 seeks to tackle the huge bureaucracy that the police services have become, with energetic police women and men weighed down by requirements. The effect is to drain resource from the front line and our pavements. Indeed, the Bill will just add to such requirements, rather than the reverse. Unfortunately, we cannot solve the problem today, which is why I propose a review of police paperwork, which needs to be led by an outsider with a passion for cutting red tape and looking to experience elsewhere, such as lean thinking in business, which we found very useful in the supermarket sphere—another huge employer of well-trained and decent people. The review could also look at the IT and AI systems linking the police to the courts, the CPS and other enforcement bodies. I believe there is huge scope to reduce and simplify paperwork and its online equivalent.

The Minister may know that there is already a Police Federation campaign known, curiously, as #SimplifyDG6. It aims to tackle the bureaucracy around disclosure, which sees both uniformed and detective officers tied up for hours. Police officers are required to redact files that go to the CPS in order for it to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to charge an offender. The federation believes that a data bubble, allowing unredacted information to be exchanged between the police and the CPS before a charging decision, would free up thousands of policing hours every year. Redactions could then be completed by the police if a person is to be charged. I know from my business experience that taking a proper look at such processes can yield huge productivity savings.

I hope the Minister will look at the proposals in our amendment seriously and not just refer me to the police reform package announced yesterday. The Wild West of street crime is here today but, as the Government have made clear, their reforms will take years to bring in. They will also increase and not decrease paperwork.

There are bad apples in the police, like everywhere. However, the idea of regularly requiring a licence to practice for every police constable is not necessary and will reduce efficiency, cost a fortune and lead to a mushrooming of accreditation and training paperwork, or its online filing, linked to the proposed well-being and development checks and career pathways. Licensed professions are generally for areas where there are specific and clear academic requirements, such as medical doctors or accountants. I do not believe it makes sense and could undermine one of the great advantages of the police—I speak from the experience of having a son in the Met—that it attracts intelligent and brave people to the dangerous task described so well by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, who, sadly, is no longer in his place.

These policemen do not necessarily have, need or want the paperwork credentials of other important professions. We need common sense, not credentialism. That is the way ahead. On the face of it, this approach feels mistaken, although I recognise that there will be extensive consultation on the changes in the White Paper. But this is all the more reason for our proposed review of paperwork and bureaucracy. I beg to move.

12:00

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, as ever, to support my noble friend in her Amendments 436 and 437. She is an expert in intellectual property, but she might want to copyright the term “Wild West of street crime”, as we have got used to it.

Amendment 436 goes to the heart of a police accountability. That is the wider issue here. It seeks to put on a statutory footing the imperative to provide timely data in respect of enforcement, openness and transparency. It is not necessarily about interfering in the operational effectiveness or decision-making of the police, but it is about openness, transparency and restoring the faith and trust that taxpayers should have in their local police. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is not in his place. I am sure he discharged his duties commendably in Leicestershire, but, frankly, the police and crime commissioner model has not worked. I speak as someone who used my maiden speech in the other place in June 2005 to call for elected police commissioners. I am afraid that it has been a damp squib. The relationship between senior police officers and the commissioners, to whom they should have had accountability, has not worked out in the way it should have done. I applaud the Government for the decision to discontinue that.

We see egregious examples of apparent two-tier policing. Robert Peel is probably turning in his grave now when he looks at the antics of the chief constable of the West Midlands, who colluded with Islamist thugs and their representative, the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Perry Barr, in preventing Jewish fans from attending a game in our second city. He also lied twice to a parliamentary committee, seemingly with impunity. He has now left the service with a large taxpayer-funded pension.

The question is: do the police actually care what elected politicians and Ministers think? I am not sure that is the case. There have been lots of cases of alleged two-tier policing. More recently, one has to look only at the comparison between the policing of the Palestinian hate marchers in our capital from October 2023 and, for instance, the banning of a Walk with Jesus rally in east London or the heavy-handed policing of farmers protesting at the Government’s tax policies at the end of last year. This is not a political issue. It is an issue of the undermining of policing by consent and that is bad news for all of us.

Data is needed for the justice system, particularly the police force, both to work effectively and so that they can be scrutinised by lawmakers and the public. Public perception of our police matters. We want our police to be perceived positively by the public based on evidence that they are doing their jobs well. Public perception of the police is currently low, and crime rates appear to be high. Data on enforcement would both be a motivation for effective policing and help them to be held accountable—and, more importantly, give an accurate public image.

We currently have a crisis on our hands in respect of law enforcement in England and Wales. Knife crime in England and Wales rose by 78% between 2013 and 2023; even when the population growth was factored in, this was still a 68.3% rise. In 2024, 31.5% of all robberies committed in London’s Met police area involved stealing mobile phones—this increased from 21.6% in 2021. Noble Lords will know that the Committee considered my amendment on the theft of mobile phones, ably introduced my noble friend, earlier this month. In-person theft offences—which, according to Policy Exchange, is where an item is stolen from a person but, unlike a robbery, no force is used or threatened—the percentage of cases is even higher and represents between 68.5% and 72.6% of offences during the last four years. London has faced a dramatic surge in theft from the person offences: a 170% increase in the three years up to 2024. Also, there were nearly 95,000 shoplifting offences in the year to June 2025, a 38% increase on the previous year.

This amendment is about enforcement data. The police are not always effective in dealing with these crimes. In the year to March 2025, the Met solved 5% of burglaries and robberies reported to it. It solved less than 1.5% of reported bike thefts and less than 8% of shoplifting offences. In 2024, only 0.6% of theft from the person offences were solved. This declined from just 1.1% in 2021. Public perception of the police is becoming worse. In 2022, 50% of Londoners thought that their local police were doing a good job; in 2025, that had dropped to 45%.

Police forces across England and Wales should publish data annually on the enforcement of offences so that the public and lawmakers know how successfully crimes are being policed. The public also deserve to know this information. If the rate of crime is increasing, so then should the rate of enforcement. We must support the Peelite principle of policing by consent. We need to collect, collate and analyse data to restore public confidence. That is why we need to support my noble friend’s amendment, as I have today. I hope the Minister will give consideration to what is essentially a cross-party amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I totally support Amendment 436 on the collection of enforcement data; the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, have explained well why I do. But I am rising to speak to Amendment 437 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, calling for a review of police paperwork. I will just explain why. I have put my name on a number of amendments that require more data collection, which might sound contradictory. But we need more granular and accurate data, while ensuring that data is streamlined and necessary, rather than collected just for the sake of it. In that sense, there is no contradiction.

The review of paperwork is necessary to identify and cut out all the endless and needless form-filling that police officers are forced to do. Whenever you talk to rank and file police officers, one of the most voluble frustrations that they voice is the ever-growing regime of paperwork and bureaucracy. They complain that they did not sign up to become pen-pushers and this is hardly what they envisaged when they joined the force.

More seriously, we have just heard a very moving debate on the mental health challenges faced by some police officers. I do not want to be glib, but when you talk to police officers, they will often say that they are tearing their hair out and completely demoralised because of the amount of bureaucracy that they face—so it is worth bearing that in mind.

The impressive multiplication of the number of forms the police have to fill out could be interpreted as indicative of the scientification or the professionalisation of police work, as the bureaucratic regime’s apologists would have us believe. I think the duplication of information, which is often banal, indicates a stifling bureaucratisation of policing and a trend that is reiterated by officers as impeding their ability to respond to crime or engage in proactive crime solving.

I want to use an example from some years ago. I was a victim of a very nasty, unpleasant mugging. I reported it to the police, as one does, and they were hyperactive in their response. I got a very nice letter reassuring me that they were there for me as a victim. got a form to fill in, asking whether I had had the right kind of support as a victim. I even had a follow-up phone call to find out why I had not filled out my form and to make sure I was okay. The problem was that at no point did anyone visit me in the sense of attempting to apprehend the person who had committed the mugging. That never came up. It was all about my feelings about being a victim of crime, rather than solving the crime. Imagine how much paperwork went into that. I was bemused, but infuriated as well.

We would like this review to ask how paperwork has proliferated. Certain people argue that the process-driven approach to policing is created by risk aversion—the police covering their own backs, potentially. It might be that it is an obsession with communication. There is certainly a lot of press releasing done, tweets put out and so on. The main thing is that we have to get to the bottom of what is creating it. I think—there will be a discussion on this on a later group—that a lot of the work generated does not have anything to do with core policing. When I talk to police officers I know, they say they are engaged in a wide range of activity related to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, which are also bureaucratic in terms of the kind of things that they have to do. We heard about non-crime hate incidents on a previous group. How many hours are spent investigating those? There is also a great deal of paperwork being generated by that, and hopefully we have seen the back of them.

Perhaps this amendment is kicking at an open door. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister because the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has made similar points. It seems that cutting red tape is a part of what the Home Office is trying to do, so I am delighted about that.

I have a couple of reservations. I am slightly worried that the solution for cutting red tape that has been put forward is a greater use of AI. I am all for sensible use of technology, but I note that West Midlands Police recently took a shortcut and cut back on a lot of hours of paperwork that would have been wasted in a proper investigation in relation to the Maccabi Tel Aviv football game with Aston Villa. The problem with that shortcut and paper-saving exercise was that as a consequence it came up with a non-existent football match to justify the banning of the Israeli fans, as we know. Recent research by businesses has shown that for every 10 hours apparently saved by the use of AI, four hours are used checking errors and fact-checking AI output. They have had to bring in extra staff to do that particular type of work.

Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville- Rolfe, on her reservations about the licensing of police officers. I am afraid that fills me with horror. Credentialism is notorious for being more bureaucratisation. If you want any evidence, just look at the university sector and what is happening on that in certain sectors.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 437 calls for a review of the volume of paperwork that police officers must complete in the course of their duties. This is one of the most persistent frustrations voiced by front-line officers. Despite the introduction of a new digital case file system, the use of automatic redaction tools and simplified disclosure guidance, the core problem remains: a combination of the pre-charge full file requirement and an onerous disclosure regime. We share the noble Baroness’s concerns, but we do not believe a review is the answer. The evidence is already on the table, as are the solutions.

12:15

While prosecutors must have what they need to make sound decisions, police leaders believe that a more proportionate approach would allow officers to submit skeletal pre-charge files containing only the essential evidence in straightforward cases. Additionally, to stream- line disclosure they have suggested a secure data bubble, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, allowing unredacted material to be shared confidentially between the police and the CPS for charging purposes. A modest, targeted change to the Data Protection Act or UK GDPR would make that possible. What is now required is not yet another review but the political will to better align the police and the CPS, freeing officers to focus on fighting crime rather than filling in forms.

On Amendment 436, we agree that while the public are acutely aware of the prevalence of these offences, too often they have no sense of whether such offences are investigated, still less prosecuted in their local area. Better information on enforcement of everyday offences would support accountability and make it much harder for forces to hide behind national averages. In doing so, we must be careful to avoid imposing yet more rigid reporting duties on already overstretched officers.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for tabling her two amendments. I begin with Amendment 436, co-signed by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I strongly support my noble friend’s efforts to ensure that release statistics are as rigorous and useful as possible. These releases are pivotal to both the police and the public—the police so that they are aware of the types of crimes they are likely to encounter, and the public so that they can judge the performance of police forces for themselves.

As it stands, there is not a standard, reliable measurement of crime rates and statistics. The current accredited metric used by the Office for National Statistics is the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is helpful in giving an indication of certain crime rates but cannot be described as a foolproof operational tool. It uses an interviewer-administered face-to-face survey, which immediately makes the recounting of crime a choice on behalf of the victim, who may, for whatever reason, decide not to disclose it. It reports only crimes committed against over-16s and excludes crimes against the general public, the state, tourists and residents of institutions.

I understand that this is done so that the survey is unaffected by police reporting or recording changes, but it also creates a crime reporting system deeply affected by human discretion that can similarly not serve as a trustworthy basis. The least we can do is ask that the police are required to record data on the enforcement of offences simultaneously to the Crime Survey for England and Wales releases. It would provide a metric to judge police performance, as it would demonstrate the estimated number of crimes committed compared with those investigated by police forces.

This leads me to my noble friend’s second amendment, also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. Investigations into committed crimes must lead to prosecutions, or else there is little point in maintaining a justice system. Between 2020 and 2024, more than 30,000 prosecutions collapsed. A large proportion of these came from the mishandling or loss of evidence by police. The storage and retention of evidence is an area in desperate need of modernising. It has been described as overwhelming by serving officers and has too often resulted in injustice for victims. The first step in solving this issue is a thorough review of the system as it currently exists before setting out a blueprint of reform. The amendment in question would provide for this, so I wholly support it and I hope the Minister does too. I look forward to his reply.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her continued interest in improving transparency and accountability in policing. She will know that I am outcome-focused myself, and that I try to ensure that we get outcomes. I note the support from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Davies of Gower, for Amendment 436.

The Government have taken significant steps to improve the visibility of police performance. I draw noble Baroness’s attention to the newly established police performance framework. That framework, supported by the Home Office’s police performance unit, provides a robust mechanism for monitoring enforcement activities across all 43 current police forces in England and Wales. This includes the priority offences that the noble Baroness mentioned, such as shoplifting, knife crime and theft.

The noble Baroness mentioned the White Paper; I will respond by trailing some of the announcements that were made in the White Paper yesterday. A key one was that the Home Office will this year introduce an initial sector-facing police performance dashboard that will enable chief constables and local policing bodies to analyse the transparent, high quality and operationally significant data that all three Back-Bench speakers sought. This will empower forces to deliver improvements through strengthening their understanding of where they are performing well and where they can learn from practice in other forces to improve. The framework has been designed to be flexible, and there will be a midpoint review in middle of 2027-28 to allow for the inclusion of any new priorities that might be brought forward. The Government believe that this is an appropriate mechanism for considering additional offence categories, rather than—with due respect to the noble Baroness— mandating them in primary legislation.

I took to heart the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that requiring police forces to publish enforcement data on a fixed list of offences might add burdens and administrative duplication, particularly when many of these offences are already captured through a range of other mechanisms, and contradict the later amendments to reduce police bureaucracy. That is an important factor to bear in mind when we consider this proposal.

Furthermore, the police and the CPS are required to comply with the Director of Public Prosecutions guidance on charging, which applies to all offences where a criminal charge may be instituted. This guidance ensures that investigations meet evidential and public interest tests before prosecution. Compliance for that is monitored through an internal assessment framework between the police and the CPS that is crime agnostic and used only for management purposes. A statutory duty to publish enforcement data for selected offences might duplicate those arrangements and divert resources from front-line policing.

In summary on Amendment 436, yes, we need to improve, but we have put in place some mechanisms. We will monitor those mechanisms and, I hope, return to them in due course, without the legislative requirement proposed by the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness’s Amendment 437 goes to the heart of the core issue of productive use of police time. I again note the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for this amendment. The 2023 Police Activity Survey, provided by the Home Office, gave us significant insights into how police time is used. We are planning to repeat that survey this year, and I hope it will again help us to understand a bit more about the policing landscape.

The 2023 productivity review, sponsored by the College of Policing’s Centre for Police Productivity, prioritised the rollout of productivity-enhancing capabilities, such as the use of AI and robotic process automation, to reduce the time spent on administration. I know that there are concerns about AI, and I have heard them raised today in Committee. However, when properly used, AI can reduce bureaucracy. In Autumn 2024, we launched the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme to explore how we can improve productivity and efficiency savings.

Yesterday, the Government published the policing White Paper, From Local to National: A New Model for Policing—I have a copy to hand for ease of reference. In that White Paper is a comprehensive package of reforms that address the issues in the noble Baroness’s amendment. I refer her to paragraph 91, which says:

“Another area of extensive paperwork in policing comes from the requirements of the criminal justice system. In the months ahead we will work with the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service (alongside the Attorney General’s Office) to examine changes that could reduce the burden on policing. As part of this work, we will look at a number of areas including the disclosure regime and redaction, the use of out of court resolutions, charging and joint police-prosecution performance metrics. We will do this alongside consideration of any new or emerging evidence, such as the implications of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations for criminal court reform”.


We therefore recognise that that is an important issue.

I also refer the noble Baroness to paragraph 293, which says:

“It is expected that in its first year Police.AI will focus on some of the biggest administrative burdens facing policing – including disclosure, analysis of CCTV footage, production of case files, crime recording and classification and translating and transcribing documents. This will free up 6 million policing hours each year”.


The Government are therefore focused on those issues, so I am not convinced that we need a legislative solution to deal with them. With this having been put in the White Paper—it is a brand-new document, and Members will want to have a chance to reflect upon it—the direction of travel is self-evidently there. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand that the core issues on which she is calling for a review are addressed in the document that I have just referred to the Committee.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am old enough to remember the last time that we looked at regional police forces. That was under the Minister’s erstwhile colleague, the right honourable Charles Clarke, I think, in 2008-09. There is some merit in the argument for amalgamating large forces. However, will the Minister confirm that AI is also important in supporting hyper-local community policing? A burglary takes place in the Met area every 11 minutes, and, tragically, a rape takes place every 54 minutes. There are big discrepancies between, say, Bexley, Richmond, Kingston and central London. Will the Minister ensure that Ministers are cognisant of the need to use AI to reinforce community policing, as well as the mergers of police forces at a very large level?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that. I refer him to the first line of paragraph 281 of the policing White Paper, which says:

“In policing, getting the right information into the right hands at the right time can mean the difference between life and death”.


That is absolutely right, as is the point that the noble Lord made. AI, particularly how it develops over the next few years, will be critical in distilling information that can be used by police to investigate, capture and understand crime performance in any area. We have some significant expertise in the Home Office that is looking at those issues, and the direction of travel has been set in the White Paper.

In addition to the forces of good using AI, criminals are themselves looking at how they can use AI to better defraud people, so we need to be ahead of the game on that as well. In the White Paper, we are looking at AI in respect of both challenges. We are looking at how it is used by bad actors, and at how we can reduce, collect and analyse information and dissect trends in a much speedier way and take out physical paperwork. The noble Lord makes a very valid point about how that can be used at a local level, as well as on a national trend basis.

The points that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is making are very valid. When I was last doing the job of Police Minister in 2009-10, which was a long time ago, we had a review at the Police Federation’s urging. We have tried to reduce paperwork, because it is critical. Police officers should use technology to amass information on how we can prevent crime, bring prosecutions through the CPS and understand trends in local areas, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has said. That is the direction of travel in the White Paper. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

12:30

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think this has been a constructive discussion with a good tone. I thank the Minister for his comments, including on the new dashboard and the plan to review that again in 2027-28, and other mechanisms such as the policy activity review and things that have been proposed in the White Paper. I will look at all that before deciding how we come back to this important subject on Report.

I would warn against relying too much on AI. I am a huge fan of using AI to improve justice systems. But it is also important to look at the underlying processes themselves before turning them into AI or tech processes. You need to use the lean thinking that I mentioned, which I have experience of from the private sector, because that helps you to do things much better.

Having said that, I am very, very grateful for the wide support for this area; I thank in particular my noble friend Lord Jackson for reminding us of some of the numbers, especially in London. We heard about the collapse of cases and other difficulties which we need to tackle together. We heard about the importance of improving public perception of police activity. Good, streamlined, clear data could help drive a better perception of what the police are doing and what they are trying to do, and so improve public confidence.

On paperwork, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is right to question some of the things that the police are required to do and to record, and I feel that a review, going slightly beyond what is in the White Paper, could actually help us with that. That would help our very energetic Home Secretary to do the right things to try to reduce bureaucracy, which I know is the Government’s intention.

Although we agreed on several things, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and I tend to do, including the need for the data bubble between the police and the CPS, I think a review might help to make things happen. When I was a Minister, I used to resist reviews, again and again. But occasionally I had to agree to them and I actually found, where I managed to stay as Minister for a reasonable period, that they were incredibly useful in driving the department to be more effective and proactive. The truth is that we need the right sort of data, and we need to reduce paperwork to release resources for front-line policing. Luckily, in this debate, we have all got the same objective. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 436 withdrawn.

Amendments 437 to 438A not moved.

Amendment 438B

Moved by

[Baroness Cash]

438B: After Clause 166, insert the following new Clause—
“Recording of biological sex in police data(1) Every police force in England and Wales must, in respect of any individual who is arrested, charged with an offence, or issued with a caution or penalty notice, record the biological sex of that individual.(2) For the purposes of this Act, “biological sex” means—(a) the male or female sex recorded at birth, or(b) where a Gender Recognition Certificate has been issued under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the sex recorded on that certificate.(3) Where official documents presented at the point of arrest do not reflect the biological sex as defined in subsection (2), the discrepancy must be noted separately. (4) The Secretary of State must issue guidance to ensure consistency of recording and to prevent reliance on administrative records altered on the basis of self-identification alone.”

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 438B, the wording of which is intended to be replaced by Amendment 438EF. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for supporting this amendment. I am also grateful to the Minister for reminding us about the general direction of travel taken by the Government in this area: the views expressed by the Home Secretary and others over the last six months about improving data collection and, again, in the White Paper, the objective to make data collection more consistent nationally. All of that is extremely welcome.

Sex is a foundational principle in crime. By that I mean the sex of an individual is a primary determinant of both offending patterns and victimisation risks. So, it is a crucial piece of information in terms of the overall justice system at every point. For example, 98% of recorded rape offenders are male, and roughly nine in 10 suspects in serious violent offences are male, and those proportions have remained significantly consistent over time. This information underpins offender profiling, multi-agency public protection arrangements, domestic abuse risk models, custody practice and the Government’s own crime strategies, as we have just been hearing. If sex were not a material variable, none of those systems would function as they do.

Despite this, at the moment there is no consistent national standard for what sex means in police recording systems. In some forces it means biological sex, in others it may reflect self-declared gender. In others, the two are conflated or left ambiguous. In some systems, records can be altered without clear audit. The same offender committing the same offence can therefore be recorded differently depending on the force or the system. That produces incoherent national datasets, undermines comparability between forces and also degrades—talking about AI and information collection—trend analysis.

This is a massive problem, because police data is the entry point for the entire criminal justice system. It feeds directly into that risk assessment, offender management, safeguarding decisions, prison allocation, probation supervision and national crime statistics. If the data is unstable at the point of entry, everything downstream is compromised. It is not just my view; this concern has been reinforced by repeated warnings from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and the Office for National Statistics, which have consistently found that police-recorded crime data is highly sensitive to inconsistent recording practices.

Where the system is already struggling with data quality, it is incredibly important that the core variables are clear, standardised and grounded in the facts. It is not a hypothetical situation and we know that Scotland has already tested the alternative and made the necessary changes. For several years, Police Scotland, like forces in England and Wales, was recording sex in the basis—at times—of self-declared gender, including for suspects in sexual offences. The result was that biological males charged with rape could be recorded as female, rendering national statistics unreliable and damaging overall public confidence in the system. After sustained scrutiny, it announced in October 2025 that biological sex would be recorded for crime and policing purposes, with any transgender status recorded separately where relevant. Operational reality forced that correction, which has been welcomed by the public.

The independent experts have also supported that measure. The Government-commissioned review led by Alice Sullivan found that public bodies, including justice agencies, have allowed sex to be redefined or replaced, which degrades the data quality. The conclusion is very clear in her review. In all areas, including crime, sex should mean biological sex, and, where gender identity is recorded, it should be recorded separately, not substituted. Murray Blackburn Mackenzie’s analysis showed that, once sex recording drifts from biological reality, crime statistics become unreliable, contested and incapable of supporting sound policy or public trust. When one thinks about the very small numbers of women in the numbers I have just related in respect of violent offences, for example, one can see that wrong data could massively skew this.

The same issue arises in offender risk. Official Ministry of Justice analysis shows that men who identify as women have offending profiles aligned with the male offender population; trans women and men have the same offending profile, including for violent and sexual offences. To be absolutely clear, I am not suggesting that trans women are in any way more inclined than the average man to commit offences, but in population profiles, the same rate of offences is perpetuated within that population—male pattern violence does not change through identity declaration. When men are recorded as female in police data, male violence is understated, female offending is overstated and risk analysis is distorted. This really matters for repeat offender analysis, escalation risk and, most importantly, safeguarding.

We have already seen the consequences of ignoring biological sex in custodial settings. In England, we have had assaults occurring through the placement of men in the female prison estate. The Government responded to this by tightening allocation rules, explicitly re-anchoring decisions in biological sex and risk assessment. That policy recognises the basic truth that biological sex is a material safeguarding factor in criminal justice. That is a well-established principle among criminologists. Police data is the upstream source for those decisions.

This matters massively for the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy. That strategy relies on police-recorded crime data to measure prevalent trends and progress. It rests on two empirical facts. Women and girls are disproportionately the victims of certain crimes—I hope there is no one in this House who would dispute that—and those crimes are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men. If police data cannot reliably identify male offenders because sex has been replaced by gender identity then progress cannot be measured and accountability collapses.

There is nothing in this amendment that would alter how the police should interact with transgender people or that would prevent gender identity being recorded separately where operationally relevant. It does not seek to change how individuals are treated. It simply seeks to ensure that biological sex is not lost or overwritten, because all the evidence shows that it matters. A criminal justice system that cannot accurately record the sex of offenders simply cannot accurately analyse male violence or protect women effectively. That is why I beg to move this amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have enthusiastically added my name to Amendment 438B, now replaced by Amendment 438EF, on the recording of biological sex in police data to prevent reliance in administrative records on self-identification and so on. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, has laid out the arguments with great clarity and precision, and I appreciate that. In the past, I have tabled similar amendments to previous Bills. Unfortunately, my attempts were far less elegantly argued than hers, but they were rebuffed, as though I was motivated by some ideological attempt at undermining inclusion policies. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that I want ideology out of data and data collection.

I think there is a slightly different atmosphere now, and I hope that we can have this discussion. Since then, the Supreme Court’s clarity on equality law in the distinct category of biological sex in relation to single-sex provision gives us an important marker. We have had the Sullivan review, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology under Rishi Sunak’s Government. Its themes were broadly welcomed, I think, by the present Government, which are to identify obstacles to accurate data collection and research on sex and gender in public bodies and in the research system and to set out good practice.

I state at this point that we owe huge thanks to Professor Alice Sullivan for her 226-page review. It was a real work of public service. It found that the recording of sex and gender across the justice system and police forces is highly inconsistent and in a muddle, and therefore is not reliable. This matters, because anything that erases biological sex or confuses biological sex in official data in relation to crime is problematic. Many of the policies in the Bill, if they are to be effective, rely on evidence, and that evidence must therefore be based on reliable data.

12:45

I got interested in this issue some time ago, when talking to academics in criminology and in research. It is important for their research that official crime data, such as recorded crime, is accurate. Policymakers and researchers need accurate data to analyse patterns of offending, to allow interventions to be developed, and for resources to be targeted effectively. Importantly, criminal justice data needs to be credible and consistent. However, the conflation of sex and gender compromises official trustworthiness, quality and the value of data for policy and for researchers in academia, as well as for a public understanding of the facts in relation to crime. This point is increasingly key, as trust in criminal justice is no longer to be taken for granted.

The data is anything but consistent, as we know. Police forces differ from area to area, recording crime statistics variously—some by biological sex and others by concept, based on the ever-fluid and subjective ideas around gender identity. That has led to confusion and a conflation of sex and gender. The details of how police forces in England and Wales have recorded suspects’ sex in crime and reporting was revealed a few years ago by freedom of information access requests put forward by women’s rights campaigning organisations. They showed that many police forces record suspects’ gender identity rather than sex registered at birth, frequently on the basis of self-identification, and that has led to the muddle. Some forces even stated that they record the sex of a suspect who identifies as non-binary with the term “indeterminate” or “unspecified”. This is not accurate data collection.

Of the 26 forces that answered freedom of information questions, only one stated that it recorded biological sex clearly. Twenty-two forces recorded gender identity, 20 on the basis of self-ID. Of the 17 forces that answered the specific question on how rape suspects’ sex was recorded, 14 recorded via gender identity, with over 50% doing so on the basis of self-identification. These data recording decisions made by individual police forces affect the criminal justice system in a wide range of ways, not just in terms of data. That is because data collected by police forces are transferred to other data management systems, including the police national computer, one of the main sources of information for disclosure and barring checks. The annual data requirement provided to the Home Office for research and statistical purposes and the magistrates’ and Crown Court case management systems all use this data, but it is unreliable.

Accurate statistics are vital for evidence-based criminal justice policy, or there can be serious consequences and unintended outcomes. Professor Sullivan found that it is quite possible that, if somebody who has been arrested has legally changed their gender and not informed the police, they could be released or otherwise dealt with before any link to their previous offending history is known. That can lead to confusion and to an outcome that nobody wants, and it is because we are not collecting data accurately.

As we have heard, but let me stress, there are different offending patterns between males and females, which the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, explained. Males commit the large majority of offences per se, and some offence categories are only very rarely committed by females, such as sexual offences or violent crime in particular. That means that, even if only a small number of natal males who identify as female are recorded as women, that skews the female sex offending statistics in a misleading way.

In 2021, a “File on 4 Investigates” programme on BBC Rado 4 used freedom of information requests to police forces and declared, as a consequence of the information received, that there had been a huge spike in female-perpetrated child sexual abuse. There were hysterical headlines on women who abuse, with all sorts of academic discussions on the rise of female paedophilia. But it all went a bit quiet when everybody realised that this was based on statistics that conflated sex and gender, and that perhaps this new crime epidemic was not quite as it seemed. It could have been, but we do not know because the statistics are not reliable. That is a real problem.

I urge the Minister to accept the amendment. Professor Alice Sullivan has done the hard work for the Government in her review, setting out good practice guidance: the default target of any sex questions should be biological sex; sex and gender identity are distinct concepts; questions which combine sex and gender in one question should not be asked, and the word “gender” should be avoided in question wording, as it has multiple distinct meanings from the traditional but now corrupted synonym for sex because of gender identity as an ideology.

We all agree that we need reliable data and, by the way, that should and can include data on gender reassignment as a separate protected characteristic, even on self-ID in terms of keeping that information. It should not be the basis on which we collect crime data in relation to the different sexes, although it is important to acknowledge that it is possible that transgender people, or those who identify as transgender, might well be the victims of crime more regularly, or they may be the perpetrators. I am happy to know that information as well, but not through the conflation of sex and gender in the bottom-line collecting of crime statistics.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I just looked about my person at my identification documents and found my House of Lords pass, which at least at this point does not record my birth sex. I suppose “Baroness” might arguably do the trick—or not, I do not know. I suspect it would not be enough for the supporters of these two amendments. I also looked in my handbag, and my two bank cards do not record anything approximating my biological sex.

In an earlier group, I heard noble Lords opposite speak very compellingly about what the police are up against and how they are tearing their hair out because of the bureaucracy. Last week, I agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in particular and other noble Lords opposite when they spoke to an amendment to ensure that, were there to be digital ID, the police could not demand that information on request in the street. A number of noble Lords made very strong and passionate speeches on that issue.

I wonder about the workability and the wider consequences of the amendment, were it to be added to primary legislation. It is very broad in scope, dealing with anybody who is subject to arrest or a charge or caution for any offence. It would place a firm obligation on the police to record the person’s birth sex and any discrepancy between that and what the person identifies as or what is on any documents that they present. How on earth is this to work without, I suspect, far more intrusive searching than is necessary for every offence, from a minor public order protest offence to shoplifting to insider trading? In each scenario, the police would be required to make a determination of the person’s biological sex, requiring a fairly intrusive examination and challenging and questioning. That would be quite a traumatic and degrading experience for anyone and might be disproportionate to the offence being investigated.

I agree that crime can be highly gendered; we know that because all we have learned about violence against women and girls, but I fail to see that this kind of determination is necessary at the point of arrest for insider dealing or even for a protest offence. And, if we are talking about headaches for the police, I can imagine in a large protest every arrestee being briefed by their comrades and colleagues deliberately to identify in a mischievous way just to give the police a headache.

I ask noble Lords to think again about the contradictions in the positions that they are taking on this very long Bill. Workability, proportionality and whether this kind of intrusion into the lives of not just people who have changed sex or are transexual but of anybody who is subject to arrest and charge, particularly a woman with short hair, for example. I am reading stories about women who have had mastectomies for breast cancer being challenged in gym changing rooms because of the way they look.

I ask noble Lords to think about the wider consequences and the proportionality of what they propose.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. All of us who care about the safety, security, integrity and autonomy of women are also concerned about, for instance, a so-called trans-inclusive strip search policy which allows, for instance, a 6 foot 4 inch man who self-identifies as a woman to search a very vulnerable young woman at a police station. That is an issue of great concern, and were we to adopt this amendment, it might be ameliorated.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but that is a separate issue—it is about who is allocated to which duty at the police station, and it is perfectly reasonable for the police themselves to organise who conducts a strip search and who conducts a strip search on whom. That is not what the first or second version of the amendment is about; it is about an obligation on the police to make a determination of the biological sex of anybody they are arresting, charging or cautioning. It comes from noble Lords who, as I understand it, oppose compulsory digital ID that could conceivably require some determination at the point of registration. I applauded those compelling speeches last week from noble Lords about that being too much of an intrusion on the citizen who is innocent until proved guilty at the point of encounter with the police. How are the police going to do this?

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I have never spoken in this Chamber on digital ID; I want to make that clear for the record, because the noble Baroness used the plural in talking about all those present. I also want to come back on her very emotional intervention, for which I am grateful as she clearly feels very passionately about this. Most of us have more confidence in the police than she may be demonstrating, because a lot of this is common sense, as the public at large understand. Some 50% of the population are women and girls, and they deserve to be protected. The number of people we are referring to is very small, but among that number are some really bad actors. This is a foundational principle of our criminal justice system, so how does she square the emotional circle in saying that this is not possible without infringing rights?

13:00

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

As a woman, I have often been called emotional in debate, but that is the nature of the patriarchy. I did not mean to be emotional; I am just trying to ask about the practicality of this proposed obligation on the police to be the determiners of the biological sex of a person they arrest, not for sex offences but for any offence. I heard in some of the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for example on the importance of knowing as much about a prisoner as possible, an argument for making a clear determination in a prison setting, because one needs to determine who should be imprisoned with whom. I understand that. I can certainly envisage this being highly proportionate and relevant for arrest and investigation for sex offences, but that is not the breadth of this proposal. This is for any arrest, charge, caution or suspect, which would be overbroad and a complete administrative and practical nightmare for police officers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Can the noble Baroness clarify a couple of things? First, does she recognise any problems at all about the data as it is presently collected—in different forms by different police forces, and then used as national crime data as though it is reliable and consistent? Does she have any qualms? I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, would be happy to work with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, as great legal minds working together, emotionally or non-emotionally, on better wording. I can understand that, but the import of this is the data.

Secondly, the noble Baroness rightly points out that many of us are committed to campaigning against violence against women and girls. How can we reliably know how many women and girls are victims of such violence or who the perpetrators of that violence are? We cannot just assert it unless we have reliable statistical data. That is the point of the Sullivan review, which I hope she would show some respect towards even if she is not quite clear that she supports this amendment.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

To be clear, a perpetrator is someone who is convicted, not anyone who is arrested. As I tried to suggest in response to the comments about incarceration, it is much easier to justify greater intrusion at the point of conviction, particularly if someone is going to prison. I do not think this is about drafting; it is about the practical policy the amendments are proposing. How on earth is it viable to put this obligation to be the determiner and decision-maker over somebody’s biological sex? Is it reasonable to put that on every constable? I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench, because he served as a police officer for many years and with some distinction. He may know better than I whether this will be welcome for police officers in their everyday duties, for every arrest and every offence.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has been courageously raising these issues of gender identity and sex, over many years and before it was fashionable, through the prism of wishing to protect the safety and security of women. I applaud her for that. I also thank my noble friend Lady Cash, who speaks with great professional expertise and experience.

Notwithstanding the passionate case put by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, it is surely the case that policy, particularly when we are dealing with sensitive issues such as crime data and violence against women and girls, which is rightly a government priority, should be formulated and delivered on the basis of robust, peer-reviewed, empirical evidence. Who can logically argue against that? That is what the amendment is principally about.

We have heard about the Sullivan standard. The context in which we are working in putting forward this amendment is that sex is a protected characteristic and the Equality Act 2010 has been clarified by the Supreme Court. It is extremely disappointing that the Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, continues to obfuscate and delay proper timely guidance being issued by a number of bodies in respect of, for instance, access to single-sex spaces. The Supreme Court stated plainly that under the Equality Act, “sex” refers to the material reality of being female or male. That determines how single-sex spaces function in a mixed-sex society, from women’s changing rooms to prison, and justifies excluding men where doing so is necessary and proportionate. That remains the case, which is why this amendment is very important. It is in that context that it would hopefully be incorporated into the legislation.

As we know, the Sullivan review was commissioned in February 2024 with the aims of identifying obstacles to accurate data collection and research on sex and gender identity in public bodies and the research system, and setting out good practice guidance for how to collect data on sex and gender identity. Sullivan recommended that:

“Data on sex should be collected by default in all research and data collection commissioned by government and quasi-governmental organisations … The default target of any sex question should be sex (in other words, biological sex, natal sex, sex at birth). Questions which combine sex with gender identity, including gender identity as recognised by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) have a mixed target”.


She also recommended that:

“The Home Secretary should issue a mandatory Annual Data Requirement (ADR) requiring the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales and the British Transport Police (BTP) to record data on sex in all relevant administrative systems. Relatedly, police forces should cease the practice of allowing changes to be made to individual sex markers on the Police National Computer (PNC)”.


This is about public trust. That is why my noble friend is quite right to refer to the situation of Police Scotland, which in November 2025 moved officially to record the biological sex of all suspects. The chief constable stated that it will ensure that

“by recording accurately biological sex, our crime data is accurate”.

The Scottish experience proves that it is possible to maintain a respect-based approach in person, using preferred pronouns in custody, while ensuring that the official record reflects the material facts needed for “statistical rigour”. The deputy chief constable of Police Scotland, Alan Speirs, confirmed that recent legal rulings provide the necessary clarity that “sex” in law refers to biology. This gives police the mandate to record it as such without infringing on the Human Rights Act or the Equality Act.

If police forces do the wrong thing on this, it can result in calamitous situations. I declare my interest as a member, at least for the next month, of the British Transport Police Authority. The British Transport Police, without any proper guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council or Ministers, decided unilaterally in autumn 2024 to launch a transitioning and non-binary search guidance policy, which meant that even individuals without a GRC were permitted to search anyone, including a woman, provided that the person doing the searching, for instance, said that they were a woman—even though they were a biological man.

That advice was quickly rescinded. I argued, as a member of the authority, that it was a disastrous mistake. It cost many thousands of tax pounds in legal fees that the force has had to pay as a result. The organisation Sex Matters launched a possible judicial review against that decision. It took the focus away from policing, front-line activities and operational efforts in order to engage in virtue signalling on the basis of the preferences of the chief constable and the senior officers at the British Transport Police. It did not do anything about the 11% clear-up rate for offences of violence against women and girls that, unfortunately, remains prevalent on the transport network in this country.

I cannot understand how any noble Lord, on the basis of tackling crime and the objective of having the data available to allocate resources properly, can realistically argue against the amendment because it has the background of the Sullivan review and Ministers’ acceptance of the Supreme Court ruling in 2025. On that basis, the Ministers should look benignly on the amendment, because it is not onerous and draconian; it is realistic, fact-based and based on empirical research. Therefore, it should be adopted because, if nothing else, it would greatly improve the efficacy of this largely important Bill, which we on this side support. It would mean that police officers could properly address the issues with the facts behind them, rather than the ideological absolutism that unfortunately marked much of the debate and the hostility to collecting data in the criminal justice system on the basis of gender identity rather than sex. It is a good amendment, and I hope that the Ministers will be able to support it.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a great legal mind, I am afraid; I am not even a legal mind. Many people would argue that I am not a great mind either, so I have questions rather than a dictatorial philosophy.

The contrast between the original amendment and the one before us is quite revealing. “Biological” was taken out of the title, yet the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said she thought that biological sex was a material fact, so why was it taken out of the heading?

There was a very interesting reference to the gender recognition certificates, which I took a little bit of comfort from. Then, in the amendment before us, that reference was deleted. My second question is: is the reference to “official documents” being “proffered” regarded as the substitute? I would be very grateful for that clarification.

Perhaps the noble Lord on the Front Bench could answer this in his summing up: what assurances can we have that anyone accused is not forced out, even if the particular allegation is not related to sex and sexuality? How can we avoid people having to come out against their will?

I am still not sure why this issue is regarded as so vital. I am sorry, but there seems to be a lack of proportionality about this whole debate in the massive challenges that our police forces have today. Is it really that vital? I am not terribly convinced about that. I have questions more than anything, but I feel there is some disproportionality on this whole subject.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, I will not detain the Committee—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

The noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

The noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate.

13:15

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for all the contributions to this, as usual, heated debate about recording data. I will focus mainly on data in my response from these Benches.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for starting by quoting some data sources, but neither she nor the amendment acknowledges the existing police guidance about capturing demographic data and annual data requirement 153, all the work already being done by the National Police Chiefs’ Council to review these policies following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, and its desire to develop a national standard for recording protected characteristics. In November last year, an equality impact assessment for the Law Enforcement Data Service noted:

“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender”.


It is vital that data collection by public bodies has a clearly defined purpose and scope, and that staff have the right training and guidance to deliver services that support and accommodate all service users.

In addition, the Home Office produces the annual data requirement, which sets out requests and requirements for data that police forces should collect and report to the Home Office. Some are mandatory, some are voluntary. Requirement 153, which I referred to earlier, is voluntary and details how forces should capture demographic data

“in a consistent way by aligning it to ONS census 2021”.

This sets out that data about sex

“should be recorded in line with information on … birth certificate or gender recognition certificate”.

At the moment, it is not clear how widely this has been adopted.

Since 1974, the police national computer has been the main database of criminal records and is used by front-line officers from all police forces in the UK to understand who they are interacting with. In 2016, the Home Office established the national law enforcement data programme to replace the PNC and PND with the Law Enforcement Data Service or LEDS—sorry, another acronym. That will replace the existing PNC capability across all police forces this coming March.

The equality impact assessment for LEDS was published in November 2025 and considered how the programme would impact on those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. The EIA states:

“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender. Where a person does wish this to be acknowledged then LEDS user can add an Information Marker”.


The EIA notes that the NPCC is undertaking a policy review following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, which

“aims to strike a balance that is both lawful and respectful of all individuals involved”—

that is a quote from the judgment—and that

“LEDS is being built to configure new policies as they take effect”.

The EIA also notes that a working group on national protected characteristics data recording standards was established by the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Coordination Committee and the NPCC diversity, equality and inclusion lead. It is important to note, as has been mentioned by others, that the Supreme Court judgment in the case of For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers considered the definition of “woman” only for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.

In addition to that, I have found an FoI dated May 2025 and the ONS response on a question about the collection of data. It gives a somewhat detailed response to about 10 different questions on how many people who have undertaken gender reassignment have been convicted of certain offences or groups of offences. Under the category of collection of data for gender identity, which is different from the sex registered at birth category, it says:

“We have to be robust enough to provide reliable estimates”.


It cannot provide reliable estimates. Why? Because the numbers are so low. As I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, knows, as she has been quoting data quite a bit, if you cannot rely on the data because it is low compared with the millions of women across the country, it becomes a problem to be able to include it. Why? Because the data will not show, or, if it is pulled out separately, individuals will become identifiable to the public. That is the fundamental problem.

So, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment. The National Police Chiefs’ Council is already undertaking work to review policies in light of the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court judgment was limited in considering the meaning of “sex” for the purposes of the Equality Act, not for wider legislation or policy. Frankly, it is unclear how this amendment would be practically workable; front-line police forces would be asked to challenge information provided about an individual’s sex. It is also unclear how the amendment would be consistent with data protection legislation, the Gender Recognition Act, and, indeed, Article 8 rights to a private life.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

It is Front-Bench speeches.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

It is Front-Bench speeches.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

The noble Lord has the right to speak in Committee, of course. Conventionally, we tend not to hear from Back-Benchers after the Front Benches have started winding, but of course he has the right.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Katz. I will make three very brief points. The first is that the Supreme Court judgment had a logic behind it, and it is very difficult to see how that logic does not roll out across a whole bunch of issues such as this one. So this amendment relates very strongly to that Supreme Court judgment.

The second point is that the three noble Baronesses talking against the amendment were trying to say, “Well, what point would it have?” Yet the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, stated that there had been reports that the amount of crime, including violent crime, committed by females had increased, and that this had caused some kind of minor moral panic in society. Now, we know that women—biological women—have far lower rates of offending than men, whether non-violent or violent. Our understanding of the role of women in society is very much driven by that understanding of the civilising impact of womanhood on society. It is fundamental to our ideas of how society works.

If we are persuaded by false data that the role of women is changing—that women are becoming more violent, that women are becoming more criminal—our view of society will be very different. That would be unfortunate, if it is false.

Finally, the objections made by the noble Baronesses to this amendment, other than those of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, did not fundamentally dispute the premises but merely argued about the practicability—indeed, as did some of the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. If we are to talk about practicability, first, we have the evidence that Scotland has already implemented this, so arguments against practicability fall away.

The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti —that you are putting an onus on a policeman to respond to somebody claiming a particular sex or gender, when in fact that may not be correct—was given the lie by her own statement that there are lots of people who are happy to come to a police station and confuse things by deliberately giving the wrong information. Basically, she is saying that, when a policeman is confronted by a six-foot bloke who says that he is a woman, it is difficult to confront that person. This is set against the very correct concern she had about a woman with short hair or whatever who looks a bit man-like, as many do, being challenged on saying that she is a woman.

If they can sort that out in Scotland, they can sort that out in the UK. But, in the meantime, which would you prefer: that data is falsified and moral panics emerge, or that police have a slightly bigger onus to try to ascertain the true biological sex of an individual?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Cash both for bringing forward this amendment and for the clarity with which she set out the problem that it seeks to address. I speak in support of the amendment. It is fundamental to our safety and justice system that police data is accurate and fit for purpose.

I am grateful for the warm words that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, spoke about me. I hope that I will not disappoint her too much when I say that sex is not an incidental characteristic in policing or criminal justice: it is a foundational variable. Patterns of offending, particularly in relation to serious violence, sexual offences, domestic abuse and repeat high-harm crime are profoundly sex-disaggregated.

I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, that police forces depend on this data to analyse trends, assess risk, deploy safeguarding interventions and evaluate whether strategies, including those endorsed by your Lordships’ House, are actually working. If police records cannot reliably distinguish males from females, risk assessment collapses, trend analysis becomes unreliable and the very legislation that we pass to make the public safer is frustrated.

We have already seen what happens when biological sex is replaced with self-declared gender identity. As has already been mentioned, in Scotland, Police Scotland permitted suspects’ sex to be recorded on the basis of self-identification, including in serious sexual offences. The consequences were predictable and serious: incoherent statistics, loss of public confidence and an inability to analyse male violence accurately. After sustained scrutiny, Police Scotland reversed that policy in October 2025 and confirmed that biological sex would be recorded, with transgender status noted separately where relevant. That reversal was driven by operational reality, not ideology, and it offers a clear lesson for England and Wales.

Independent expert evidence reinforces this point. The Government-commissioned review led by Professor Alice Sullivan was unequivocal: sex should mean biological sex and, where gender identity is relevant, it should be recorded separately, not substituted. Similar conclusions have been reached by independent analysis examining the consequences of degraded data across public bodies. Once sex data is compromised, statistics become contested, safeguarding weakens and public trust is eroded.

There are also real-world safeguarding implications. Ministry of Justice analysis shows that trans-identified male offenders exhibit offending patterns aligned with the male population, including for violent and sexual crimes. Recording such individuals as female underestimates male violence, artificially inflates female offending and distorts risk analysis.

We have already seen the downstream consequences in the prison estate, where serious safeguarding failures led the Government to tighten allocation rules. Biological sex is a material risk factor; police data is upstream of all this and, if it is wrong at the point of arrest or charge, the entire system is compromised.

There is a theme running through many of our debates today: good policing is inextricably linked to good data. The Government have acknowledged this. Biological sex is just one of the data variables that must be recorded for accurate policing, so I wholeheartedly support my noble friend’s amendment and I hope the Minister will, too.

13:30

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for her Amendment 438B and the subsequent Amendment 438EF, which seek to mandate the collection of sex data on perpetrators of crime. I thank everybody who spoke with some force and passion on a debate that certainly was not dry and simply about data. We heard the views of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and the opposition Front Benches.

Before I go any further, as referred to by a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, we are absolutely resolute in our goal, expressed in the violence against women and girls strategy published before Christmas, to halve violence against women and girls over the decade. We recognise that it takes a whole-government, indeed a whole-society, approach, but we are resolute in doing that and the issues that we are discussing in this group are germane to that effort.

However, there are already powers available to the Home Secretary to obtain data from police forces. The question is whether these are adequate. Section 44 of the Police Act 1996 gives the Home Secretary powers to obtain relevant data from chief constables. This power, which noble Lords have mentioned in the debate on this group, is exercised through an annual data requirement which sets out what data should be recorded and provided to the Home Office. Such data is routinely published as official statistics to provide a window on the work of government and the police service.

The content of the annual data requirement is reviewed annually and, where new requirements are made out, it allows collections to be added or existing ones amended. However, we accept that these powers fall short of what is required. Not to presage the next group too heavily, the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, will be aware that, in December last year the Home Secretary announced that we will legislate to mandate the recording of suspects’ ethnicity data. This will happen at the earliest opportunity as part of our wider legislative proposals on police reform, which we announced in the White Paper on police reform published yesterday.

As announced in that White Paper, we are introducing key proposals to address the fragmentation of data across police forces and recording formats. In that White Paper, which I commend to your Lordships, we say that we will work with the police to introduce a number of measures around data—for instance, developing new technology to integrate data nationally; mandating national standards on data to create consistency in recording data across police forces and improve the quality of datasets; introducing a single national decision-maker with authority over key national datasets; and removing unnecessary barriers to data sharing across police forces and agencies. This will provide the necessary statutory powers to ensure the delivery of recommendation 4 of the National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and will improve the integrity of the data that the police use, collect and analyse.

Furthermore, I agree that consistent and accurate data on sex needs to be recorded, and we are carefully considering the implications of the Supreme Court ruling that clarified the definition of sex in the Equality Act.

In replying directly to my noble friend Lady Donaghy’s question about thinking about it from the individual’s perspective, and what they may or may not want to happen in terms of their gender identification, it is still fair to say that the data collected will be anonymised and treated as per current GDPR and other data protection terms. This is about collecting data for wider analysis rather than thinking about what might happen to that individual from the way that that data is collected.

I hope I have reassured the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, of the work going on in this area. In light of this and our commitment in the White Paper to bring forward legislation in the context of our wider reforms to policing, I ask that she withdraws her amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

May I just clarify one question? Could the noble Lord explain the Government’s attitude to the Sullivan review? When are they going to act on it? It is very comprehensive and I understood that the Government, particularly the Home Secretary, were perfectly positive about it but, like too many reviews, it sits there, with all that hard work, data collected and intellectual energy, and is not acted upon. If it had been, these amendments would not be necessary. Maybe the noble Lord could give us a timeline to clarify that.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, there was certainly a lot of work done. I believe that it was commissioned by the previous Government, so it overlaps from the previous Administration into ours. I am not sure that I can provide a concrete timeline from the Dispatch Box, so I would be happy to write to the noble Baroness with those details.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I am sincerely grateful to everyone who has spoken and to the winding speakers today. It is such an important question, and it is such a pleasure to have a debate like this and to engage with former colleagues and noble Peers to discuss an often emotional or passionate issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I have known each other for such a long time, but not everyone knows that. I believe that I may have referred to the noble Baroness with a pronoun during my speech, and I am very sorry if I did that; it was a lapse from knowing each other and I want to put that on the record. I am very grateful to her for speaking with her typical compassion and empathy for everyone—a testament to her time as the head of Liberty, and the principles that she has lived by ever since.

I say the same to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and I am very grateful to her for engaging in this debate and being present. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for citing the data, and noble Peers who supported the amendments. I am very grateful to everyone.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, referenced Scotland. I would like to end on that thought. There is, of course, a direction of travel by the Government, which we welcome and support, but in his response the noble Lord, Lord Katz, did not address what data is going to be collected in relation to sex. I know we are coming on to ethnicity next. I say to the Minister that this is an opportunity to grapple with this issue and to do something by accepting this amendment, which would really support the violence against women and girls strategy. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, also made some very sensible points about the common-sense approach of the police, and we have confidence in them to be able to act in a sensible way. For the record, there is no suggestion in this amendment that anyone would be embarrassed or outed. It is about the police recording the data, not publishing the data. We know that data, when the statistics are processed off it, is anonymised.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful for that last point. The point I raised was that the data is so small that if only two people had committed a certain offence in a year, they would be identifiable. That was the point the ONS made in its response to somebody else’s FoI request—I do not know whose—because of that identification and then breaching of data for the individual concerned.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

That has not concerned His Majesty’s inspectorate, the Ministry of Justice or, indeed, Professor Sullivan. In fact, they make the opposite point, which is that the small numbers of trans-identifying individuals—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Is the noble Baroness prepared to push this to a vote or withdraw? We have had the debate. There is no need to rehash the argument that we have already had.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

With enormous apologies, I was responding to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I would like to return to this subject on Report. Subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 438B withdrawn.

Amendment 438C

Moved by

[Baroness Cash]

438C: After Clause 166, insert the following new Clause—
“Recording of ethnicity in police data(1) Every police force in England and Wales must, in respect of any individual who is arrested, charged with an offence, or issued with a caution or penalty notice, record the ethnicity of that individual in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).(2) The officer must record the police-observed ethnicity of the individual using the 18-category classification employed in the most recent Census for England and Wales.(3) Where the individual voluntarily states an ethnicity, the officer must also record the self-declared ethnicity, noting any difference from the police-observed ethnicity. (4) For the purposes of criminal-justice statistics, analysis, and publication under section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, the police-observed ethnicity shall be treated as the primary record.(5) The Secretary of State must issue statutory guidance to ensure consistent recording and the uniform use of the Census ethnicity categories across all police forces.”

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry—it is me again.

I very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Katz, for the White Paper, which I have skim-read—I will admit that I have not read it closely—and I welcome again its contents and direction of travel on this. I tabled this amendment because the White Paper does not go so far as making a statutory requirement around the reporting of data. It is my position that this is an opportunity for the Government to do that and, with one simple amendment, to make this requirement and enforce this consistency across all the reporting of the amendments.

This is not a new proposal. It is the 18-category standard proposal of ethnicity, which is a framework used in the UK census, first introduced nationally in 2001 and expanded in 2011 and 2021. That includes five broad ethnic groups: white mix, multiple Asian, Asian British, black African and Caribbean, black British and other, each with broad subcategories. The College of Policing, the Home Office and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services all recommend that self-defined ethnicity, not officer-led definitions or visual categories, be used in operational and statistical recording. In policing that is known as SDE, or the self-defined ethnicity standard.

Crucially, there is no statutory obligation to use this system, no uniformity across police forces and no enforcement if it is bypassed. That is the gap that this amendment seeks to close. The current reality is a patchwork of practices. Police officers are instructed to ask for self-defined ethnicity at various stages, but compliance with that is highly variable. In many cases they substitute visual shorthand, which is crude, unreliable and not comparable with either the census or the official data. Even where self-defined ethnicity is collected, the categories used are not always aligned with the full 18-category standard set.

We have a patchwork at the moment, with forces using different ways of defining ethnicity and not uniformly communicating or building a database. The result has been quantifiable gaps in current reporting. Victims’ ethnicity is often missing, undermining the understanding of harm. In 2023, His Majesty’s Inspectorate found that in 61% of all cases where a victim was identified, ethnicity was not recorded at all. That is not a technicality; it is a collapse of visibility over who is being harmed and how.

Similarly, stop and search data is increasingly incomplete. Home Office statistics show that in stop and search records, self-defined ethnicity is missing in 20% of cases. That is one in five encounters without proper identification, and that source is the Office for Statistics Regulation. Prevent referrals are particularly shocking and show chronic underrecording. Between 2015 and 2023, police failed to record the ethnicity of more than 33,000 Prevent referrals. I cannot imagine an area of policing and national security where the ethnicity of an individual referred might be more important.

Operational consequences for victims, offenders and public oversight also manifest from these absences. Victims go unseen if ethnicity is unrecorded; they cannot have services tailored to them, and violent crime prevention cannot be prioritised. We do not understand whether different communities are underreporting crime or, indeed, overreporting. In homicide—murder—data for the year ending March 2022, only 671 victims had their ethnicity recorded; the rest were either missing or excluded—that is from the Home Office’s own data reports. Without the full self-defined ethnicity data at each stage of police contact, we cannot fulfil our obligations under the Equality Act.

The 18-category of self-defined ethnicity is the gold standard. It has been highly commended by multiple public bodies. When the police rely on visual codes or simplified lists of their own, they often misclassify individuals. They lose comparability with the census or with NHS and education data, so there is no cross- reporting across our own public bodies. They also create a very dangerous vacuum where speculation and grievance thrive—we have seen that in media reporting of issues in the last few years, where tensions in communities build and demands are made for greater transparency.

The vacuum has happened in child sexual exploitation cases. In the Casey review in June 2025, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, reported that ethnicity data was missing in two-thirds of the cases. Public debate has become polarised about grooming gangs since, with both denial and exaggeration filling the vacuum where the facts and data should have been. In Prevent referrals, where ethnicity was unrecorded in the 33,000 cases I have just mentioned, communities have accused the state of Islamophobic bias; others say that Prevent is too soft. Again, there is no data to resolve the dispute or even have an informed debate on.

In high-profile arrests, where ethnicity is omitted—the Home Secretary herself has spoken about this—social media becomes saturated with speculation, particularly from extremist or far-right actors, and forces the police into reactive disclosures. The former Met officer, Dal Babu, has said that

“there will be an expectation for police to release information on every single occasion”

because there is such intense speculation from the far-right on social media. These vacuums of information and of data are really dangerous.

My appeal to the Government is that a statutory duty to record full self-defined ethnicity at every point of contact solves these problems and gives us standardised, comparable data to analyse and act upon. The costs would be minimal but the status quo is very expensive. If we do nothing and we do not require this accurate reporting, we have operational blind spots, cross- system breakdowns, reputational damage to the police, and litigation risk. It is also extremely difficult retrospectively to rebuild community engagement or to repair crises when the damage has been done and trust has collapsed.

Police leadership supports better recording. In September 2023, Steve Hartshorn, chair of the Police Federation, said that senior officers must be held accountable for failing to record victims’ ethnicity. It is not just a data issue; it is about accountability and fairness. In August 2025 the new College of Policing guidance supported the proactive release of ethnicity and nationality data where it strengthens trust and clarifies public understanding. In December 2025 senior police officials, including Gareth Edwards of the NPCC’s vulnerability knowledge and practice programme, spoke on this. I could go on. Noble Lords will already be familiar with some of them from past reporting on this very issue of transparency and trust.

It begins with visibility, a consistent system, and a mandatory requirement to record the data. I know that the Government’s sentiments and intentions are already in this direction of travel, and this is an opportunity to make it happen. I beg to move.

Debate on Amendment 438C adjourned.

House resumed.

13:51

Sitting suspended.