Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

The Bill rightly focuses on ensuring that the criminals who ensnare children for their own ends, forcing them to commit serious crimes and destroying lives, will now face the full force of the law. As will the ringleaders, who believe themselves safe behind gated communities, making a fortune from broken lives. But please let us not lose sight of the children who are trapped by the gangs. Let us recognise that they have been groomed and ensure that there is a consistent definition and approach to give these children the opportunity to fully escape their abuse. In hope, I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare several interests. I am a co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Slavery and vice-chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown. She has done a brilliant first amendment and I am delighted to support her. I played a very small part in the Modern Slavery Act: I was involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny and an earlier report that persuaded the then Home Secretary, now the noble Baroness, Lady May, to put the Bill in place.

Exploitation of children is in the Modern Slavery Act, but it is rather masked and has not been taken seriously, particularly by the police. Perhaps more importantly—this is one thing that the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, did not say—under the Act, a child who is exploited cannot consent to exploitation and cannot commit an offence. That is absolutely crucial, and it probably ought to be expressed again in primary legislation.

I enormously admire a great deal of what this Government are trying to do. I went on behalf of Action for Children to a very useful meeting with Diana Johnson and Jess Phillips, where I got the impression that they were going to move forward on this. But what is offered in this Bill does not really meet the need. To put into guidance what was put in primary legislation 10 years ago seems to make it less important. I ask the Minister to reflect on why you would want to put into guidance something that was expressed, not as well, in primary legislation 10 years ago.

The time has come to deal with county lines. A great deal of work has been done by the National Crime Agency. At long last, at least some magistrates’ courts realise that children who are ferrying drugs around the country—and cash, nowadays, as well as drink and various other things—are in fact victims and not perpetrators. But it is not fully known. The police do not seem to understand it. We need to explain, through primary legislation, to whoever is now in charge of modern slavery in the police that we are talking about child exploitation, of which modern slavery is a component. There is no doubt that these children are enslaved, but I suspect that, in this country, the word “exploitation” is rather easier to understand—and it is time it was there.

This amendment is brilliant. It could perhaps be improved in certain ways, but it asks the Government to do something really practical which, when I went to that very useful meeting, I got the impression they were going to do.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Brown of Silvertown, but she may not need much support, having received the much-coveted gold star from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who, I am very proud to say, supports a later amendment of mine on raising the age of criminal responsibility—which, I am ashamed to say, is barbarically only 10 in England and Wales. The UN recommends that it be 14. In Scotland it is 12 and the heavens do not seem to have fallen.

I have a couple of specific points to make in support of my noble friend’s amendment. If I may, I will be as bold as to predict what my noble friend the Minister and his advisers might be about to say in response. If they are about to say that my noble friend’s definition is unnecessary because the definition can be taken from the offence itself in Clause 40, I would like to get in first with two points to counter that. If I am pessimistic and wrong, so be it. Noble Lords know that I do not mind looking a fool.

The first point, which has already been made clearly by my noble friend Lady Brown, is that we need a definition that is about not just a specific criminal offence but interagency working and interventions across services, well in advance of any investigation or prosecution for a criminal offence.

I do not think the second point has been made yet. If the Committee compares the elements of my noble friend’s definition with the definition of the criminal offence in the Bill, it will see that the Government’s approach misses something very important that is to be found in my noble friend’s definition: enabling the child, not just causing the child, to engage in criminal conduct. That addition is important because “causing” is a harder thing to prove and a greater step in grooming. Currently, the Government’s definition is

“causing the child to commit an offence”,

or, indeed, “facilitating” somebody else to cause the child to commit the offence.

To prove causation in law is a serious matter. Enabling—making it easy, making the tools of the trade available, providing the opportunity—is a lower threshold, which is appropriate in the context of children. My noble friend made the point that currently in law they are treated as victims but also as perpetrators, and sometimes it is a matter of luck as to whether you will find the adult and the public service who will take the proper approach, in my view, of always treating the child as a child and as a victim, and not criminalising them. This is the point about “enabling”.

My noble friend the Minister is very experienced in these matters. Whatever he comes back with, I would like him and his advisers to consider the question of the lower threshold of enabling, not just causing. If there is to be a further compromise that includes some element of my noble friend Lady Brown’s amendment, I hope that that is taken on board.

The most formative time in my professional life was as a Home Office lawyer. I know what it is like to work on big Bills and to defend them as originally crafted and drafted. But it is wise, especially in this House, to take good advice and to bend a little when it might improve legislation for the benefit of victims.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for further pressing me on the issue. I have tried to explain to the Committee where the Government are on this. We always reflect on debates in Committee, because there are always opportunities for my noble friend and others to bring matters back on Report. I am giving the Committee today the Government’s view that the definition in Clause 40, plus the guidance issued under Clause 60, will be sufficient to cover the objective of ensuring that we have this offence on the statute book and monitored and enforced by authorities.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I have just remembered that we will have further discussions on police training in later groups in Committee today, but the White Paper will deal with a whole range of matters on improving police performance.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

If the Minister can bear one more intervention, would he be good enough to take back the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown? I cannot quite understand why that amendment is not listed nearer to Clause 40, because it would have been helpful to look at the two together, as has not been done to any great extent. I say politely to the Minister that I prefer the noble Baroness’s interpretation of exploitation.

The other point I want to make is that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is absolutely right—it is a point I have not made, but I am well aware of it—that at the age of 18, people who may have been victims become perpetrators. Some of them become perpetrators because they have no choice, but others—the young thugs she spoke about—are genuine perpetrators. Therefore, to specify the age of 18 in Clause 40 may be misleading.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the further pressure on this issue from the Cross Benches. My job is to set out to the Committee the Government’s view on these amendments, which I am trying to do. The measures in Clause 40 and the guidance in Clause 60 are sufficient to meet the objectives of my noble friend and, at the same time, to ensure—let us not forget this—that this offence goes on to the statute book for the first time. It will have a big impact on county line gangs and on defining further criminal child exploitation. I have put the Government’s view; we will obviously reflect on what my noble friend has said and I am happy to meet her, with other colleagues, outside the Committee to discuss that explanation further. I recognise the great motivation my noble friend had in bringing this to the Committee. I hope she will reflect on what I have said and withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was very happy to add my name, alongside that of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, to this amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who indicated that he wanted to speak before me. He has done sterling service by saying a great deal of what I was going to say, so I will not bore your Lordships with that.

I have one or two confessions. On Methodism, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that I come from several generations of Methodist ministers—the Reverends MacDonald—one of whom was one of John Wesley’s original disciples. At some point, my family slightly lost the plot and became lapsed Anglicans, like I suspect a lot of your Lordships.

If the Minister is kind enough to mention me again in his response, in promoting me to an Earl, he is doing a disservice to the direct descendant of Lord John Russell, an ex-Prime Minister. I call in evidence a letter that my grandfather and the grandfather of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, wrote to the editor of the Times in 1961, saying: “Dear Sir, we would like to point out that neither of us is the other. Yours, Russell, Russell of Liverpool”. I had to say the same thing to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, when she also inadvertently promoted me.

I again point out that this proposed new clause has the absolute support of Professor Jay, who has looked into this issue in more detail than any of the rest of us. I am a great believer that, when trying to argue the case for something, we should not talk about it in abstract or general terms but try to personalise it by talking about a real-life case which perhaps indicates the virtue of having an order such as this. Therefore, I will give a real-life example from the work done by Action for Children.

There is a 16 year-old young man with ADHD who is experiencing significant criminal exploitation, including daily cannabis use, coercion through drug debt and regular threats of violence. His engagement with support services, unsurprisingly, is somewhat inconsistent and is often influenced by the level of control and threats of violence exerted by the exploiters. The police have already made him subject to a youth referral order for drug and weapon offences, but law enforcement has deprioritised his case due to a perceived lack of co-operation. In the circumstances the young man finds himself in, a lack of co-operation with law enforcement is perhaps somewhat understandable. Recent incidents that have occurred to this young man include a violent attack on his home by individuals linked to his exploitation. One of his perpetrators is housed in the same residential block of flats as him, which must be somewhat unpleasant. The young person remains fearful for his and his mother’s safety, but he is unwilling to disclose information, which currently limits statutory intervention options.

If we had this order, it would enable the authorities to protect that young man and his mother by stopping him from contacting certain people. Following what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said, it would mandate him turning up to appointments with support services. It would restrict and monitor his movements to create a distance from the exploiters. In the case of serious threat of harm, or in an instance where a perpetrator is living almost next door, it would also give the authorities the ability to provide alternative accommodation to protect that young person and his family.

For all those reasons, I wish and hope that the Minister and his department will look at this very carefully. A relatively small percentage of child victims and perpetrators may be involved, but to protect them in the way we have described would be effective, proportionate and worth while.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I chair a commission on forced marriage. One of the most useful things that the Labour Government did in 2007 was create a forced marriage protection order. That was intended to deal with the perpetrators rather than the victims. However, having listened to the speeches so far, I realised that I had not thought of protection orders being for the victim rather than to prevent the victim being dealt with.

It is an admirable scheme. I was much touched by the story that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, gave to us. One thing that would make it most useful is to deal with parents. My experience is not so much in this area, but when I was a family judge, one of the problems, particularly in care cases, was the inability of the parents to manage their children. Very often, the children were very well meaning, but they absolutely would not do what their parents said. Is anybody who is a parent surprised? As a grandparent, I am even less surprised by the fact that children, if they are told to do something by a parent, will not do it—just out of bloody-mindedness, apart from anything else.

This would offer a genuine ability to look after a child who is being exploited and is extremely vulnerable, but whose parents, trying as hard as they can, cannot manage him or her. This would give them the power, apart from the authorities, to do something useful—and useful not just for the child but for the state.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome this amendment, which would provide a valuable additional tool to protect children who are criminally exploited while at the same time committing criminal acts that victimise others. The amendment seeks to address these behaviours proportionately, managing the child’s risk to others without inflicting the potentially life-changing damage of having a criminal label attached, while ensuring the child is protected from further exploitation.

A criminal exploitation protection order would be an important step towards providing an end-to-end response for children in this situation. Unlike a youth rehabilitation order, it would directly target behaviours linked to child criminal exploitation, addressing the unique power imbalances and coercion involved in those often-complex situations. I urge the Government to look closely at the proposed order, which would be an extremely worthwhile addition to the Bill and which has the full support of these Benches.

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I say to my noble friend that, while I understand the intention behind the amendments, the Government are not persuaded that restrictions on children—for the reasons that I have already outlined and due to the important question of what would happen when a breach occurs—is the right approach. I take the issue very seriously, and I hope that there can be further discussions with the Home Office and my noble friend and the noble Baroness Lady Finlay.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

It seems fairly obvious to me that if the order were breached by the child, the child would end up in the family proceedings court preferably, rather than the family criminal court. That could be done by an order, and it might not do any harm for the child. There could be some innovative thinking in the Home Office as to other ways of dealing with this. The real point being made today, if I might remind Minister, is about helping the parents. At the moment, I do not see what else can help the parents. I would be very grateful to know what the Minister thinks about that.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble and learned Baroness, with all her experience, brings forward one potential output of a breach of an order, and I accept that that is a potential output. The point I am making to my noble friend is that we want to discuss what happens to the child and the range of consequences. That is why my honourable friend the Policing Minister and my honourable friend Jess Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister, are meeting agencies in this field to look at what is going to happen. That is planned for before Christmas. There is a separate meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Although the noble and learned Baroness has brought forward one consequence, I want to look at all the issues. I am not able to accept the amendment before us because that is one of the issues that is not resolved. Therefore, although I understand the desire behind this, I ask that my noble friend withdraws her amendment today and allows for reflection to occur.