Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I too support all the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, but I shall speak particularly to Amendment 298.

As other noble Lords have pointed out, these nudification apps are horrific and bring untold harm to the women and men who are victims of them. They are so prevalent in schools that they are effectively normalised, shocking and shaming thousands of children on a daily basis, as my noble friend Lady Boycott has just pointed out. This week, Ofcom fined the app Nudify for failing to implement the mandatory age-verification measures under the OSA. Amendment 298, if accepted, would increase the pressure on Ofcom and the Government to close down all nudification apps, for children and adults alike.

As with the AI companion amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Kidron, which was debated last week, this is yet another new technology that was not foreseen in the Online Safety Act. Despite your Lordships’ best efforts to future-proof protections for users, new functionalities and technologies will always be created that will need your Lordships’ attention. Nudification apps are just the latest in what will be a long line of new tech harms.

The problem is that, at the moment, there is a voluntary agreement for the big app stores not to sell nudification apps, but they are still being downloaded and are freely available on smaller app stores. Unfortunately, I do not believe voluntary protections by the tech companies work. Your Lordships have to look only at the Bletchley summit agreement in which tech companies signed up voluntarily to publishing the safety testing of new AI models prior to their release. Unfortunately, this has not happened in many instances, and in some egregious cases there is a failure to comply with this commitment.

Some AI models appear to have mundane uses but can subsequently be adapted for the purpose of nudification. These need to be safety tested to ensure that they cannot create harms—in this case, nudification—and, as has just been explained, the present voluntary agreement is not creating adequate protection. This amendment would go a long way to remedy this lacuna in the law and make the digital space safer for millions of people. I hope that it will be the first step in the Government bringing forward far-reaching AI safety legislation. I hope that the Minister listens to the voices from across the Committee and responds favourably to the proposal in the amendment for the creation of an offence of possession of nudification software.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support all these amendments for the reasons which have been given, and do not propose therefore to go through them. I want to give one extreme example of what happens when people watch a pornographic film and go on and carry out what the film did. I happen to have dealt with the case of one of the Bulger killers. I was told that they had watched a pornographic film belonging to the father of one of the two boys and then went out immediately and did exactly what the film did. That is why they killed the Bulger child. They followed the pornographic film. It did not, of course, stop them being convicted of murder. If that can happen to 10 year-olds then a large number of people are absolutely vulnerable to doing exactly what they watch. That is yet another reason why we should support these amendments. We have on the Front Bench, among the Ministers, those who are really caring. I hope, therefore, that they will not only listen to us but do something.

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Although every case will turn on its own facts, where someone spikes another person as a joke or part of a prank, we consider that this is covered by the new offence, as that person will have the intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy. In criminal law, there is a difference between the legal concept of intention and the different, non-legal concept of motive. The motive of the defendant might be to play a joke, but we anticipate with confidence that the courts will readily find that the intention was to injure, aggrieve or annoy. We are fortified in this by the fact that there is case law—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I was spiked at the age of 16 at a dance by a cousin of the hosts where I was staying. He said afterwards, “I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t intend to hurt anyone”. So there are such situations—having listened to what the Minister said, I note that no one could prove that he had been anything other than rather silly. He was in his 20s and was probably drunk. He filled an orange juice jug with gin, and I spent two days in bed.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am extremely sorry to hear about that experience. As ever, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, for whom the entire Committee has great respect.

As I was about to say, the Government are fortified in our belief that the concept of intention would be proved by the fact that there is case law that establishes that, where ecstasy was administered to another to “loosen them up”, that amounted to an intent to injure—intention being separate from the motive. The fact is that defendants say all sorts of things about what they did or did not mean; it will be for the tribunal of fact, looking at what happened, to see whether it can be sure that the intention was as specified in the statute.

We are confident that the types of behaviour that should be criminalised are already captured. Once again, I go back to the important point I set out at the beginning of this group: this new spiking offence aims to simplify the legal framework and to make enforcement straightforward. We do not want to do anything that risks undermining that by overcomplicating the offence.

Amendment 356B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, proposes to expand the scope of prohibited conduct under domestic abuse protection orders. Although I appreciate the motive underpinning this amendment, these orders already allow courts to impose any conditions that they consider both necessary and proportionate to protect victims from domestic abuse. Put simply, setting out a prescriptive list risks narrowing the flexibility and discouraging conditions that are tailored to the conditions of the offender. The police statutory guidance already includes examples, such as prohibiting direct or indirect contact and restricting online harassment, but we are happy to update this guidance to include the additional behaviours mentioned.

This has been a long speech, and I hope your Lordships will forgive me. My intention has been to explain to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and all other noble Lords, for whom I have great regard, why the Government cannot support these amendments today. For the reasons I have set out, I invite them not to press their amendments, but I hope they will join me in supporting government Amendments 300 to 307, which I commend to the Committee.

Sentencing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene on this matter, but I wonder what thought has been given by the Ministry of Justice to simplification. The Sentencing Code is now a very lengthy document. The way in which the title of the clause has been put is very sensible: it says that there is a presumption for a suspended sentence. However, one goes on to read the entirety of this text, with the words “the court must … unless”, and then there is a whole series of exceptions to that order. Why do we have to have complexity?

There are two strong reasons against it. First, there will not be parliamentary time to alter this if we get it wrong. Secondly, it is much better to leave this to the guidance of the Sentencing Council. If the Bill could say “the Sentencing Council will provide guidelines to bring about that there should be a presumption against short sentences”, would that not achieve what we want without language? I heavily criticise the parliamentary draftsmen for this unnecessary complexity. Can we go not go back to the Victorian age and do things simply? I know these words are likely to fall on deaf ears, but it would be so much better if we had simple sentencing legislation and left it to the Sentencing Council, which can adjust it as we see whether it works, because one thing experience shows is that we try one type of sentence and, a few years later, we want to tinker with it.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as a judge who did not sit very often in crime but had to do it from time to time, I have been listening with increasing dismay to what has been discussed in these increasingly elaborate proposals. I hope that the Minister will listen to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, because that was the first bit of absolute good sense, whether we need to call it Victorian or just remind ourselves that the Victorians did a lot of things extremely well. At the end of this discussion and throughout this Bill, could we not do three things: simplify, trust the judges, and trust the Sentencing Council to do a lot of what is going to be, at the moment, in primary legislation?

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that I was not a co-author of this Bill; it is entirely the responsibility of the Government. I was merely saying I had a similar view: that prison numbers could come down and we could be safer. That was the discussion I had with the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, after the Bill was announced. If it had been my Bill, there would have been something in it about a 10% or 20% reduction in the Sentencing Council guideline targets for maximum or minimum sentences. In my view, there have been two causes of prison numbers going up: the lack of the ability to get parole, which has been addressed by the Bill, and the grade inflation in sentences, which has had nothing done to it. Unless someone would like to correct me, no political party has gone into any election promising lower sentences. Has anybody ever said that?

Separation Centres: Terrorist Offenders

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My noble friend is right to raise this question. One of the things that surprises me going round prisons now compared with 25 years ago is how much more violence there is on our wings. That is probably due to a combination of the amount of drugs in our prisons and the number of people with severe mental health issues, but also people serving very long sentences.

We are investing in protecting our staff. As my noble friend said, our staff do an amazing job, often in very difficult and dangerous situations. That is why we have invested £15 million in 10,000 personal body armour jackets and suits. We are also training 500 staff in how to use Tasers. Every other week, I speak to prison leaders. Last week, I spoke to the governors of the long-term high-security estate, who told me how much reassurance the staff have had from the fact they are now getting investment in this extra protection.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Does the Prison Service have sufficient resources for the mental health issues it has to deal with?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am not an expert in healthcare, but I am an expert in prisons. I see prisoners getting incredible levels of support, often in regimes that are running hot. My personal assessment is that prisoners are getting very good care within a system that is struggling, so we need to make sure that we have a much more stable prison environment. That is why it is very difficult to run everything, to get people out of their cells and to give people the support that they need when we literally have no space left.

It is also important to have the right facilities. The medical facilities in some of the new prisons we have built that I have seen are excellent and appropriate. We are dealing with people who are often very ill. The life expectancy of someone in a prison is much lower on average than someone who has not been to prison. We need to do all we can to support people with their mental health and other health issues.

Financial Provision on Divorce

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I too am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has put forward this Question. I support much of what the noble Lord, Lord Patten, said about the importance of children and the fact that they are, in many ways, not properly recognised when we look at financial provision.

I spent most of my life at the Bar and in three tiers of the judiciary, in family disputes over children and the division of financial assets. I was a divorce registrar when the 1973 legislation became law—see how long I have been in this. Most of the financial disputes I tried were with couples either, if lucky, with a house and a few other assets or with no property owned and only debts. One important aspect of financial dispute cases that do not settle is often the high degree of emotion in the background. Rather like in child disputes, the parties are fighting the issues of the broken relationship in the context of the court cases.

The Law Commission’s excellent scoping report correctly identified the extent to which big-money cases have distorted the approach to the usual divorce case. I am largely out of touch, having retired many years ago, but I recognise in the scoping report much of what I dealt with. The issues have not changed very much. It seems clear—from the report, from the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton, and from what I have heard from practitioners—that some substantial adjustment to the existing law now needs to be provided by Parliament. I was attracted to some extent by the Law Commission’s “codification-plus”, but I fear it would need “plus, plus, plus” to achieve enough certainty, together with a residual discretion.

Both the Scottish and the New Zealand legislation would, with additions—many of which are proposed by academics—probably meet what is needed. I do not entirely support the divorce Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, because in my view it is too rigid. There are frequent situations that her Bill, if it became law, would not provide for; there is not sufficient flexibility. I would like to see more certainty, with enough discretion for the judge to meet the more unusual needs of certain spouses and partners. I very much support prenups, so long as a judge can retain a discretion to help a spouse or partner, male or female, who develops a serious medical problem such as MS, Parkinson’s or indeed dementia.

One major issue came up again and again in the cases I tried. With couples with children owning a flat or a house and no other assets, what should happen to the house after the mother—generally the mother—and the children have had it during the childhood? I do not know the answer to this. We used to say that, after the children reached 18 or 21, it was sold. Nowadays, that is said not to be a good idea, but I am not sure what is better.

I am particularly concerned about the longish marriage: the wife who does not work—the husband says she does not need to—or who takes a very small job, and he then leaves her. She is middle-aged or elderly; how does she cope? Quite simply, to cut off maintenance after five years or so would not allow for that sort of case.

I am interested in the idea of cohabitants, but I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that we should not start on that line until we have dealt with divorce and financial provision; it would disturb that.

I would very much like to see any legislation that this Government are brave enough to introduce being treated as all-party. Pre-legislative scrutiny would help, in my view, and I hope that it would reduce the number of amendments.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am afraid that I will disappoint the noble Baroness. This is a manifesto commitment, and it will happen. We will issue our consultation by spring next year.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I am very grateful to the Minister. The one thing that the House has agreed on this evening is prenups. It would be very simple to introduce prenups, and it would not cause any difficulty for anything else. It would not stop the Government looking at cohabitation with divorce. Prenups is a special situation, and I have become convinced that they would be entirely sensible.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

It is very difficult to resist the noble and learned Baroness, with all her experience, but I am afraid that I will have to do so.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, who is greatly admired and respected, not just because of her expertise and experience. The points she raised were supported across the House by almost all noble Lords. It is frustrating that the previous Government did not give a full response to the Law Commission’s 2014 recommendations on nuptial agreements. As we are working towards our consultation, we are carefully considering this issue. It will be taken into account, to ensure that we have a consistent framework, which will be designed mainly to put children at the centre of what happens when relationships break down.

Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is part of the IPP team, and we have a meeting later this week where we will be able to discuss things in detail with a number of noble Lords from across the House. One topic that is very dear to my heart is IPP prisoners. Whenever I go to a prison, I always seek out an IPP prisoner; I sit in their cell, and I ask them why they are there, what they are doing to get out and what we can do to support them to get out. But their risk is often far more complex. The reasons why they went to prison in the first place, while it may have been far too long ago, often mean that we need to manage them very safely in the community too. It is something of which I am well aware, and I look forward to further conversations with the noble Lord.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as a result of the right reverend Prelate’s question, can I ask the Minister to what extent probation officers are trained to understand the distinction between minor matters that may not need recall and those that do?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Baroness asks a very good question because, in my view, probation officers do the heavy lifting in the justice system. For too long, they have had too much work in their case loads. Some of that is to do with training and some with introducing technology to ensure that they have more time face to face with offenders. I have an internal review on training going on at the moment, similar to that which I did on prisons before I came into the House, and I assure all noble Lords that, if we are going to fix the problem in our prisons, we need to support our probation staff to do the job that they signed up to do when they joined the service.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The Ministry of Justice has increased the CCRC’s budget year on year since 2020-21. The budget for 2025-26 has been set at £10.1 million, which is an increase of 38% since 2021-22. We recognise the need for increased resource, a recommendation made by the report to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, put his name. That report made other recommendations, which will be taken into account in the review that will be undertaken.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, someone who works for me may have been unjustly sent to prison well over 10 years ago. Is it not time that the entire commission is set aside and new people appointed, with everything done as a matter of some urgency?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The noble and learned Baroness is right to say that there is concern with the CCRC. The Lord Chancellor has recognised that and has put in place the framework, if I can put it like that, to consider change, which may be radical change—we wait to see. There certainly are concerns with the operation of that body.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his wise words and his analysis. Of course I acknowledge the point he made about resources. I earlier pointed to the discrepancy between youth and adult pre-sentence reports. The fact of the matter is that it is a resource issue. This is one very specific example, but the noble and learned Lord’s general point is absolutely right.

The other point the noble and learned Lord made about the interdependence of judges and the political leadership, if I can put it like that, as well as the independence, was also right. Protecting that is very important. Nevertheless, we believe that this example of the way different ethnic groups should be addressed within sentencing guidance is a policy issue. That is why my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has acted as she has in introducing this specific and targeted Bill. Nevertheless, the more general point that the noble and learned Lord makes about the importance of partnership and discussion is right. I thank him for making those points.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, may I respectfully agree with every word that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, and ask a practical question? We have heard that there are likely to be more probation officers and more resources. Does that mean that judges and magistrates will have the opportunity to ask for more pre-sentencing reports?

Prenuptial Agreements

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I too am a patron of the Marriage Foundation and a former family judge who tried a lot of financial cases. I have to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, that I am one of two Court of Appeal judges who managed to persuade them that there should be leave to appeal in family cases. But my experience in the past was that Court of Appeal family judges fairly regularly disagreed with High Court judges. So it is not a question of marking your own work: you are marking the work of somebody else in the same subject—therefore, with a great deal of experience.

I am very much in support of the idea of prenups becoming part of legislation. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has brought this debate. It is useful that we discuss this, and I hope it will put some degree of pressure on the Government to start thinking seriously about doing something useful. I entirely agree with the suggestion that there is no reason why this relatively simple part could not become part of the law without waiting for a much more complex situation in relation to the rest of family financial affairs—which, as has already been said, can be very complicated.

However, I have two concerns. I respectfully disagree with the right reverend Prelate on the idea that there should not be legislation, but he has made a significant point. There are two issues about which I would be concerned if prenups became part of the law without a degree of discretion for the court. Perhaps, as a judge, I have more faith in the judiciary than either of the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton: that does not entirely surprise me.

The two issues are these. The first is the point so well made by the right reverend Prelate: when the agreement is made, there has to be transparency. You have to put on the table what you have and what you do not have because, from cases I have tried, I know that debts can be as important as assets. Before you enter an agreement, you need to know the state of affairs of both the intending spouses. If one side does not come clean, and it becomes obvious on divorce that there has been non-disclosure and a serious lack of transparency—I am talking not about £10,000 but about millions—or, in a family that does not have much money, that one has money stowed away somewhere that has only just come to light, in such a situation, the judge must have a discretion to put the matter right.

I do not see that discretion being applied in a case where the judge is satisfied that the prenup was entered into with both sides understanding what they were going into and with sufficient transparency for it to be fair at the moment of the agreement. As has been said, it is a contract, but it has to be a contract that can be put right by the judge in extremely unfair circumstances if one of the two spouses has not played fair. So I am looking not at fairness generally but at fairness in a lack of transparency.

The second point that I am concerned about comes at the moment of divorce, or generally just after. There are circumstances which change dramatically: that was my experience when I tried cases. A couple starts marriage in a particular situation and, at the point of divorce, one of the spouses has an extreme change of circumstance. I am looking at illness. You may have a prenup that says that both of them have jobs with relatively equal incomes and neither of them has much in the way of assets, but then you get to a point, 30 or 40 years later, when one of them has multiple sclerosis and is unable to work. At that moment, are you to say that the prenup should apply to the wife, or indeed to the husband—because there is no shortage of wives who earn as much, more or even much more than their husbands? I happen to be one of those.

I can see a situation in which my husband and I made an agreement, when we both started at the Bar with relatively similar incomes, and then I made much more money and became a senior judge and he got a serious illness and could not work. Would it be fair that he should not get a penny because that is what we agreed at the moment of marriage? In my view, there has to be some possibility for this to be looked at. I also look at another situation: if a couple had had reasonable assets when they married but then one of them went bankrupt. There are extreme situations.

I am asking that the judge have a residual discretion to deal with those two instances: the moment of going into the agreement, and the moment when the agreement comes into force. I therefore do not entirely agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech, or indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, in wanting a prenup never to be changed. But I do see the idea that for the majority of people who enter into such a prenup, that should be the beginning and end of what their financial affairs should be.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

I simply want to endorse, but not repeat, the propositions of law advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I will do exactly the same. It is extremely important that magistrates should have the power to imprison as well as to fine.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I have spoken to these amendments at every stage of the Bill. One of the unfortunate outcomes of being a campaigner for online safety is the abuse that we get directly from people who do not want the online world to be safe. That abuse comes in all forms, including that which the noble Baroness is trying to criminalise. I say to the House that we must support the noble Baroness. I am so disappointed that the Government are not here with us. Support the noble Baroness.

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We support the creation of this new criminal offence. In many other aspects of law, we are looking at how to combat this evil developing in the online world, but the approach we have outlined is the best one, and I urge noble Lords not to support the noble Baroness in Amendments 5 and 6.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him about the aspect of deterrent? You may have someone—or a company—who is inordinately rich, or someone who is extremely poor, for whom, as he knows, a fine will not work because they do not have any money. There will be instances where a fine would not do but the deterrent would be the possibility of prison.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The noble and learned Baroness makes a fair point. In practice, this offence is very likely to be charged with the threat to share and other offences, which are of course imprisonable in their own right. As I said, there is no limitation to the number of offences that can be charged. We think it more appropriate that this be a fine-only offence, given the plethora of other offences which can be charged in this field.

Legal Aid: Social Welfare and Family Law

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank the noble Viscount for that question. As he will be aware, the department is going through an allocation process as a result of the recent Budget. The question of sitting hours and days will be looked at as part of that allocation review. He raised the question of an intermediate court, which I think was in the Auld report. That is being looked at, but a number of questions arise from that suggestion, which was made more than 20 years ago. I can say to the noble Viscount that it is something that is being considered.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as the Minister will know from his past life, many unrepresented litigants appear before family judges and magistrates without any legal advice. Very often, there have to be adjournments because the facts are not available because the parties are so in dispute they cannot give an accurate account. Does the Minister agree that this is not only a waste of court time but a waste of money? Early legal advice in family cases would save a great deal of money.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

Of course, I am sympathetic to the point the noble and learned Baroness makes. As she said, I have substantial experience of dealing with litigants in person in family courts. The debate about early legal advice is also being considered as part of the allocation arrangements as a result of the Budget, but I am sympathetic to the point she makes.