Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Banner Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments. I declare an interest of sorts in that I have a young daughter who is fast approaching her teenage years. The idea that she might one day be the subject of the kind of despicable abuse that my noble friend Lady Owen and others have outlined is utterly terrifying, so I am determined to do my part to secure its eradication.

My noble friend Lady Owen outlined the case for her amendments with all the skill and more of any King’s Counsel, so I do not need to say very much, but I want to highlight, in particular, her call for Parliament to be agile on this subject. The speed of proliferation of the kinds of abuse she has talked about risks Parliament looking lead-footed and out of touch if we do not take the further steps that she advocates through her amendments. There is no place for wait-and-see incrementalism in this area.

Any concerns about freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act, which from time to time we hear whispers of, are in my view entirely misplaced. The right to freedom of expression is qualified; it is not absolute. It is plainly not a licence to abuse. I ask rhetorically, and genuinely seeking an answer from the Minister: why not do it?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have signed Amendment 334 on spiking, but I want to congratulate my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge as she yet again leads the way on the important issues in her other amendments.

Clause 101, on spiking, is certainly welcome. The measure appeared in the previous version of the Bill in the previous Parliament, and I give credit to Richard Graham, the former MP for Gloucester, who brought this to the attention of Parliament. More broadly, I have a little question for the Minister. I am always very nervous when civil servants recommend that we remove things from existing legislation. I notice that the clause will remove Section 22 and Section 23 at the beginning and then there is the broader new Section 24. What has driven that? Too often things disappear and end up with some kind of defect or loophole. That is exactly what concerned my friend Joe Robertson MP, who tabled an amendment like my noble friend’s Amendment 334 on Report in the Commons, having tabled something similar in Committee. His concern was that there is a loophole and that spiking by a reckless act should also be an offence.

I do not need to persuade your Lordships that spiking is a hideous, heinous activity which can destroy people’s physical and mental health. The evidence given by Colin Mackie from Spike Aware UK at Committee stage in the Commons was compelling, especially as it was driven by his personal experience of his 18 year-old son Greg dying through suspected spiking of the kind now known as prank spiking.

At the moment, Clause 101 provides that there has to be an intent to injure, aggrieve or similar. I know that Ministers in the other place felt that the Bill covers recklessness, but I think it is pretty clear that the legislation does not particularly seem to cover prank spiking.

Recklessness is a well-trodden principle in criminal law, dating back a couple of hundred years. It is definitively an alternative to intent so, if the prosecution fails to establish that someone meant to do something, it can also establish that their actions were so reckless that they should be convicted. Indeed, this is what manslaughter is—somebody gets convicted of killing but without having the intent to commit murder. The other example, perhaps not quite so dramatic, is actual bodily harm. The prosecution must establish the harm but can do so on the basis that what was done was reckless so that harm was bound to follow rather than simply that someone intended for harm to happen.

I hope the Government will reconsider their conclusion that what we have before us in Clause 101 is sufficient. I understand that it may be that one MP has got particularly focused on this campaign, but it took Richard Graham to get focused on the issue of spiking for it to make any progress into legislation in the other place. I am grateful to this Administration for picking that up. I look forward to hearing from the Minister and hope again that there may be room for some consensus, not just compromise, on how we can make sure there are no loopholes in this law.

Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill [HL]

Lord Banner Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, emphatically support the Bill. As the father of a seven year-old girl, with her teenage years and young adulthood ahead of her, I found the stories of those subject to deepfake abuse to be truly terrifying, as is the rate of its proliferation. In the last year alone, over 140,000 new deepfake videos appeared online—more than in all previous years put together. The largest website dedicated to this abuse receives over 13 million visits monthly; one app processed 600,000 images in its first three weeks of operation. The law urgently needs to catch up with this new reality and the Bill would make that happen.

I would like to make three points about it. First, I completely reject the suggestion in some quarters—thankfully, not among any speakers today so far—that the Bill would be an unjustified interference with individual freedoms. This completely devalues the concept of civil liberties and individual freedoms, and it is frankly insulting to those who have devoted and given their lives to defending those freedoms to tarnish them by association with the abusive creation of demeaning fake sexual images of people. The only real rights in play here are those of the victims, as my noble friend Lady Owen so compellingly put it.

Secondly, I support the Bill’s approach of making the proposed offence consent-based, as opposed to the perpetrator’s intent having to be proved. As the Law Commission has explained, it would be impractical to require proof in each case that the perpetrator had the specific motive of causing distress or sexual gratification. Such a requirement would deprive the legislation of practical utility. Like dangerous driving, the act is itself sufficiently reprehensible for the law to treat it as criminal without having to delve into the perpetrator’s mind. In any event, let us be realistic here: it is no leap of faith for the law to assume that someone involved in creating or soliciting deepfake images without consent is not doing so innocently, or is oblivious to the obvious impact that such images can have on their victims. So I ask the Minister to confirm whether the Government will commit, whether through this Bill or other legislation, to a consent-based offence.

Thirdly, I part with the Law Commission in relation to its suggestion—albeit two years ago—that there is insufficient evidence of harm to criminalise creation and solicitation without sharing. For the reasons I gave at the outset of my speech, that view no longer reflects the reality. Today’s AI tools can create highly convincing deepfakes in minutes, presenting an immediate threat both to dignity and safety. If the law does not step in at that stage, before the horse has bolted, in practice it will be ineffective.

The Labour Party manifesto specifically committed to

“banning the creation of … explicit deepfakes”.

Despite the urgency I have outlined, no such proposal has featured in the King’s Speech. Mañana is not an answer. I congratulate my noble friend on taking the initiative with this Bill. I urge the Government to support it and not kick the can down the road in favour of future legislation with diluted and less effective regulation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I am afraid I will have to repeat the point I made previously: we understand very well the strength of feeling on this argument, and we are actively considering it.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I think the Minister said earlier that an offence of soliciting would add nothing because of the current established offences in relation to aiding and abetting, et cetera. Can he elaborate on his rationale for that, particularly in circumstances where the primary offence is committed overseas, perhaps in a jurisdiction where it is not actually an offence?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I am afraid I cannot elaborate further, because of the complexity of the situation that the noble Lord highlighted. We realise that it is difficult, and we need to get the law right. I do not want to say that we are taking our time, because this is an absolute government priority. We are in the process of identifying a suitable vehicle to address these issues in this Session of Parliament. The noble Lord makes a good point.