Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Levitt Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, for his Amendment 420. In general, of course, these Benches abide by the notion that policy and practice should be guided by the feedback of evidence and outcomes, and the amendment would support that objective with regard to childhood convictions and cautions. I believe the data that currently exists on this would have to be thoroughly analysed to determine whether the measure is necessary, and I hope the Minister can shed some light on that existing evidence in her response.

We have great sympathy with the general thrust of Amendments 476 to 478. I have some reservations about Amendment 476, in that we have already removed the automatic disclosure of youth cautions on DBS certificates and I am unsure whether that should be extended now to the more serious youth conditional cautions, which of course include duties alongside the original caution. But I completely understand the principle behind Amendment 477, in the name of the same noble Lords, and why the legislation as currently drafted may lead to individuals being treated as adults when they commit an offence as a juvenile—all the more so given the backlog that the courts are currently suffering and delays in the court system, as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, pointed out. Likewise, I see the rationale behind Amendment 478, which seeks to ensure that custodial sentences received by youths are removed from their criminal records after five and a half years.

On Amendment 486D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, as others have said, children of course make mistakes, and there is a spectrum of offences, where avoiding a fare payment and travelling without a ticket is certainly on the less severe end. There is plainly a case that, as first-time offences, these do not warrant a criminal conviction certificate being issued.

My only point in conclusion is to echo what my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington said: we have to be a little careful not to increase the incentives for petty crime. As he pointed out, that can perhaps lead—especially with regard to criminal gangs—to a potential for danger. With that said, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames and Lord Carter of Haslemere, and my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede for tabling Amendments 420, 476 to 478 and 486D. They form a formidable trio in terms of not just their expertise but the respect that they rightly command in your Lordships’ House.

A number of noble Lords have raised the question of the age of criminal responsibility. I hope I will be forgiven for not addressing that now; I know for certain that we will be addressing it at least twice in the days and weeks to come.

The Government acknowledge the principle that underpins these amendments—namely, that having a criminal record will have a significant impact on children and that such a record can, in some circumstances, follow them into later life as adults, again with profound consequences. That said, as I think all noble Lords agreed, it is critical that our criminal records disclosure regime strikes the right balance. On the one hand, we want to support people who have committed criminal offences, either some time ago or when they were very young, to be able to move on with their lives. But there is also a need for appropriate risk management in the public interest, as well as to safeguard the most vulnerable.

I will deal first with Amendments 420 and 476 to 478. The existing regime helps employers make informed recruitment decisions through the disclosure of appropriate and relevant information. This will mean that some serious offences, even when committed as a child, will always need to be disclosed, particularly where a person is applying to work with children or vulnerable adults. As some of your Lordships will be aware, in his recent independent review of the criminal courts, Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the Government review the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. In the Statement I made to your Lordships’ House on 2 December, I said that we will consider opportunities to simplify the criminal records regime to ensure that it is both clear and proportionate, particularly in relation to childhood offences.

I would be very happy to meet with any of your Lordships over the coming weeks to discuss this in more detail. It is of the utmost importance to the Government that we work together to ensure that we get this right. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I was very struck by the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, that this is not always as straightforward as it might appear, hence the need to make sure that we do this carefully, in a structured and thoughtful way. As I said, I would be delighted to see any of your Lordships. Given the offer made by my noble friend Lord Hanson in the previous group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and I may be seeing rather more of each other than perhaps he had intended—but it is always a pleasure on my part.

Turning to Amendment 486D, I am very surprised to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Carter, says because the Government’s view echoes what my noble friend Lord Ponsonby said: children are generally treated leniently when fare evasion occurs. This offence is most commonly dealt with by transport staff, so usually no question arises of a child acquiring a criminal record for fare evasion and similar offences. The police usually become involved only in cases of a refusal to pay for a ticket, for repeat offences or because of some other complicating factor. Even when the police become involved, this does not usually result in a prosecution taking place because the Code for Crown Prosecutors requires prosecutors to consider, as a specific public interest factor tending against prosecution, where a child is young or where it is a first offence.

Police officers can give out-of-court disposals, which allow them to respond to low-level offending proportionately and effectively. These out-of-court disposals, of which there are a variety, provide opportunities for children to make reparation and restoration to victims, and to be diverted into courses or services which can help to change their offending behaviour. Most types of out-of-court disposals are not automatically disclosed on criminal record certificates.

The Government believe that it would be very unusual for a child or young person to get a criminal conviction for this type of offence but, were that to happen, the disclosure time limits under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act are very different from those that affect adults. Rehabilitation periods for children are typically half the length of those for an adult. For example, if a court were to impose a fine for fare evasion, there would usually be a requirement that the child disclose their conviction for only six months, as opposed to the case of an adult, who would have to disclose it for a year.

For all these reasons, under the existing legislation, the Government’s view is that there is a very small chance of a child who is a first-time offender getting a criminal record for a fare evasion offence in the first place, and an equally small chance of such a conviction following them into adult life. I will, however, make inquiries and write to the noble Lord giving such statistics as I am able to find.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I am extremely grateful. To some extent mine is a probing amendment—I need more facts and evidence around this—but the Minister referred to the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The cases I spoke about were prosecuted by the train operating company. I am not really convinced that it had even heard of the Code for Crown Prosecutors; judging from all the correspondence I had with it, I do not think it had, to be honest. I believe there is something there to be investigated more closely, because I saw the evidence with my own eyes.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I do not think that I can improve on what I have said. I will make inquiries into the statistical evidence that we hold and write to the noble Lord.

I reiterate that I am very happy to meet any of your Lordships, including, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, ahead of Report to discuss these issues in more detail. In the meantime, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the support that I have had from across the Committee, and for the very detailed and helpful response from the Minister. I will gladly take up her invitation to have a discussion. It is important that the Government intend to review this area, at least in part. If we can commission a review of the sort that I have suggested, I would be very pleased to help with that. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my colleagues in the Commons very much supported Helen Grant in her campaign for this amendment. I pay particular tribute to Jess Brown-Fuller MP. It is very helpful that it has been directed to this Bill, and we on these Benches are very pleased that the Opposition have laid the amendment to this Bill.

It is getting late, and I will not speak for very long. The only other people we need to credit are Tony Hudgell and his parents. After being taken away from his birth parents, he has lived for many years with his foster parents, who he describes as his parents. He has endured 23 operations after injuries that resulted in him losing both legs when he was a toddler. That is the sort of cruelty—although unusually bad in this case—that the amendment is intended to address. For all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, outlined, we absolutely support the progress of this amendment, and we hope that the Government will look favourably on it.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, notification requirements received attention during the passage of the Government’s Sentencing Bill. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for ensuring this important matter remains firmly on our agenda. I join the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in paying tribute to Helen Grant MP and to Paula Hudgell, both of whose tireless campaigning has done so much to advance the protection of children. As my noble friend Lord Timpson set out in Committee on the Sentencing Bill, this Government are committed to safeguarding children and ensuring robust measures are in place to protect them from those who seek to cause them harm. We are working hard to consider the best way to manage such offenders effectively.

We are unable to support the amendment at present, as further work is needed to determine the most effective way to strengthen offender management. We need to consider fully all aspects of implementation when it comes to adding notification requirements to a new cohort of offenders, particularly in light of the Government’s recently published violence against women and girls strategy, which sets out significant reforms to offender management.

It is right that we take the time to understand the potential impact of these proposals. One of the issues is that adding notification requirements to a new cohort of offenders would involve significant costs for policing. For example, notification duties such as taking biometric data, verifying personal details, recording changes, conducting compliance visits and managing ViSOR data must all be absorbed into the general workload of the police. One of the tasks for the Government is to reflect that this could mean shifting resource from other important areas of police work.

I can reassure noble Lords, however, that since December, Home Office and Justice Ministers have met regularly to discuss options in this space and have held initial discussions with national policing representatives. So, I can add my reassurances to those already given by my noble friend Lord Timpson: Ministers will continue to pursue this issue with vigour. With these reassurances, I hope that at this stage the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful both to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and to the Minister for their contributions. I think we can all agree that child protection should be a priority for any Government and that we must ensure that any gaps in the law are plugged with immediate effect.

This amendment, unlike many in this Bill, is not about creating a new category of offender or about an expansion of the criminal law; it simply reflects and seeks to fix the troubling reality that individuals who commit acts of cruelty or violence or neglect do not have a monitoring regime upon leaving custody. That is what we believe needs to be corrected. We already accept, as a matter of principle, that where an offence demonstrates a clear and ongoing risk to children, the state has a responsibility to ensure appropriate oversight in the community, and that is why notification requirements exist for child sex offenders. This amendment merely extends the same logic to offences that, while different in nature, can be as devastating in their consequences and no less indicative of future risk.

I am grateful to the Government for acknowledging the need and the advantages of this amendment both inside and outside of this Chamber. I am grateful for the Minister’s words of support tonight, and I understand the point she made about considering this properly, but the rise in child cruelty offences demands action rather than any kind of delay. Every year that passes without a mechanism of this kind leaves children unnecessarily exposed to harm. Therefore, I want to give, with the greatest of respect, notice to the Minister that unless there is an amendment from the Government on Report that supports the substance of this amendment, it is likely that I would want to bring it back. I re-emphasise my gratitude for the Government’s co-operation on this point, but for present purposes I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

The point I was making is that the prospect of a murder conviction may have an effect on an officer if they feared that an error that they made may result in a murder charge. On the noble Lord’s own amendment, as I said, I listened with sympathy to it, and I await the Government’s response on it and, indeed, all the amendments in this group.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have heard during this short but important debate, these amendments all relate to the same matter of principle—namely, the legal standard by which an authorised firearms officer should be judged on the thankfully rare occasions when they discharge a firearm.

The Government pay tribute to our armed officers. Theirs is a difficult, dangerous and stressful job. They do it to keep us all safe, and we have a great deal for which to thank them. Of course we recognise that they often find themselves in exceptionally difficult circumstances, having to make life and death decisions in an instant. That said, there is the matter of public confidence in the police. I do not think that any of your Lordships would disagree that confidence in the police is of equal importance. I would not be doing justice to this debate if I did not recognise and mark the fact that some of our citizens feel great anxiety about the accountability of firearms officers. In the past, when there have been high-profile fatal shootings by the police, this anxiety has boiled over into anger and social unrest.

The Government’s job is to balance these factors. We must ensure that the law offers protection to our brave police officers while at the same time providing reassurance to our fellow citizens that, if officers do fire their weapons, their conduct will be rigorously scrutinised. It is only right that the public should have confidence that any officer whose actions fall below the high standards we rightly expect will be held to account in the public interest.

Our conclusion is that we should not create a two-tier justice system where police officers who kill or injure in the course of their duties are judged by a more lenient standard than applies to the rest of the population. Our reason is this: we are confident that the criminal law which covers self-defence, defence of others and the use of force in the prevention of crime already provides sufficient protection for police officers. Because of the lateness of the hour, I am not going to go through the details of this, which I had intended to do, but will move straight to the amendments.

Amendment 423, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, would change the law so that an authorised firearms officer who acts with disproportionate—in other words, unreasonable—force would still be guilty of an offence, but it would be manslaughter, not murder.

I want to say a few words about what the law says about how a jury must consider whether the amount of force used by the officer was reasonable, sometimes described as proportionate. While this is an objective test, if the jury is told that what the officer did in the heat of the moment, when fine judgments are difficult, was no more than they genuinely believed was necessary, even if they were mistaken in that belief, that would be strong evidence that what they did was reasonable. If the jury also considers that the officer may have done no more than was reasonable in the light of what they believed to be happening, they are not guilty of anything. In other words, the law provides a full defence.

It is unclear whether Amendment 423 is intended to replace this full defence with a partial one, or whether, as I think is the case, it is intended to work alongside it in some way. If the noble Lord’s intention is to create a partial defence, then what he is saying is that officers who use unreasonable or excessive force should be held to a different standard from the rest of the population. We cannot accept this because the Government believe that to do so would fundamentally damage confidence in the police and in the justice system.

I turn to Amendment 423A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, which seeks to amend Section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. As your Lordships have heard, Section 76 deals with householder cases. The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to make authorised firearms officers subject to the same standard as the householder confronted by an intruder. The amendment attempts to raise the threshold for when force becomes unreasonable from disproportionate to grossly disproportionate for firearms officers. In effect, this means that firearms officers could rely on the defences of self-defence, preventing crime or making a lawful arrest if they used force that was disproportionate in the circumstances, provided it was not grossly disproportionate.

For the reasons I have already given, the Government are of the strong belief that it would be wrong in principle to authorise the police to use excessive force and that this would be extremely damaging to public confidence. In any event, we do not think there is a proper comparison to be made between householders facing an unexpected intruder and trained firearms officers. The threshold was raised in householder cases to recognise the exceptional nature of being unexpectedly confronted by an intruder in one’s home. The unique stress and shock of a home invasion justifies greater legal protection, allowing a higher level of force than in other self-defence contexts. The same logic does not apply to firearms officers, who are trained and equipped to use lethal force and are deployed only in the most high-risk situations. They are subject to strict command, control and training protocols to ensure that lethal force is used only when necessary and in accordance with the current legal framework.

I turn finally to Amendment 422, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. As the noble Baroness has explained during the debate, her amendment deals not with criminal trials but with police conduct hearings. The previous Home Secretary commissioned Timothy Godwin and Sir Adrian Fulford to carry out an independent police accountability rapid review because it was recognised that there was ongoing complexity and confusion, and that there were concerns that this was having an impact on recruitment and retention of these essential and much valued officers. Sir Adrian and Mr Godwin examined the matter thoroughly and heard evidence from a wide range of stakeholders. Their conclusions and recommendations, published in October 2025, were clear that the Government should change the legal test for use of force in police misconduct cases from the civil to the criminal law test.

The reviewers found that police officers need confidence and greater consistency in the disciplinary system and that this would improve fairness and public confidence. The Government have taken on board that recommendation and we are in the process of making the necessary changes to The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020. Our intention is that these changes will come into force in the spring. We accept that the amendment is well intended, but I hope that the noble Baroness will understand why the Government cannot support it and, for the reasons I have given, I invite her to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and everyone who has spoken. There is a major issue of public trust in policing which has yet to be fully explored, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.