Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson and Baroness Maclean of Redditch

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Owen and will try to keep my remarks as brief as possible. As we have heard today, technology continues to provide new avenues for abuse, in particular for the abuse of women. Abusers use technology in ever more inventive ways to harm, harass and try to humiliate their victims. Thanks to the work of my noble friend Lady Owen and others in this House, the law has made huge strides in recent years; however, more needs to be done.

Broadly, these amendments fall into two categories: those that seek to update the law to ensure that it addresses new and growing forms of tech-enabled abuse, and those that seek to provide more effective support to the victims of non-consensual intimate image abuse. We need action on both fronts. I will not go into detail here, as it has already been covered, but I will just reiterate that some of the gaps that need to be closed are: updating our definition of what constitutes taking an image; including audio recordings in the framework for tackling non-consensual intimate images; ensuring that images which may have been innocuous when they were taken but are then transformed into something sexual or degrading are also captured by the law; and, finally, recognising the practice of doxing as an aggregating factor.

Unfortunately, we know that, however the law changes, abuse will not be eliminated any time soon, so we must also ensure that the law supports victims in the aftermath of their abuse. As it stands, there is no proper framework to ensure that intimate images that the courts have found to be taken or shared illegally are then removed and destroyed. Instead, survivors see their images being repeatedly uploaded, posted on to pornography sites, shared in anonymous chat forums and even allowed to remain untouched on their abusers’ devices or cloud accounts. It cannot be right; the law must change. Between them, Amendments 295BA, 295BB, 295BC and 295BD would create a proper mechanism for victims to ensure that images are promptly removed from online platforms, deleted and then hashed to prevent them from resurfacing elsewhere.

Making progress on this issue is crucial. We know the trauma caused to victims who have to live with their images remaining online or live with the knowledge that they could be re-uploaded at any point. As one survivor told the Women and Equalities Committee:

“I am terrified of applying for jobs for fear that the prospective employer will google my name and see. I am terrified when meeting new people that they will google my name and see. I am terrified that every person I meet has seen”.


We cannot allow this situation to continue. The amendments from my noble friend Lady Owen would make the law more effective, more enforceable and more protective to victims, and I hope that we will be able to make progress on them in this House.

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, I add my voice to the support for my noble friend Lady Owen from across the Committee. She has done a great service to victims of these crimes all across the country, most of whom we know are women and girls, but men and boys can be affected too.

I will focus on Amendment 334 which, as my noble friend Lady Coffey has mentioned, would add the word “reckless” in relation to the spiking offence. This is very important. I remember being the Home Office Minister when the phenomenon of needle spiking first hit the headlines. It focused a lot of attention on spiking in general as a phenomenon and meant the Home Office had to put its focus and resources behind it. We found it was very difficult to prosecute these crimes. Often, the substance had left the body. Often, victims were blamed for their behaviour, for putting themselves in those situations.

When I went to talk to the victims, I often heard that they thought that people were just doing it for a laugh, and a lot of the hospitality industry—bars, clubs and festivals—said the same thing. They said that it was really inadequate to have the requirement to prove harm or a sexual motive. That was part of the reason, though not the whole reason, why we have seen such a woefully low level of prosecutions for this. It is my belief that we need to make sure we include this recklessness element, and that is also the belief of most of the campaigners that I have worked with, including Stamp Out Spiking and, of course, Richard Graham, who did a tremendous job. I hope that the Government will adopt this amendment and all the others.