Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has brought me to this point after watching the deliberations on this. I was someone who, through multiple decades of youth work in particular and community work, was reluctant to do this, but I feel that it is the right thing to do. I just note a few things that would need to happen to make this effective and safe for the wider public.

I have dealt with many gang-involved young men, in particular. There are groups of young men whose sole job is to recruit for those gangs. Sometimes, with our criminal age of 10 being so low, it has made a number of children safer because it has kept them away. If you raise that age, it means that those recruitment people can go around saying, “You’re okay. You can’t be prosecuted, you can’t go to court and you can’t get in trouble”. If we are going to make this change, it needs to be sounded very clearly that there is still a route for you to get in trouble—that it is very important.

The more important piece, I would argue, is to look at how the Metropolitan Police now approach all young children; it views them as a victim first and it is very reluctant to move them into being a criminal without some very serious evidence—that approach needs to be embedded somewhere alongside this change. However, I make the point that there are a number of 10 year-olds—there are not millions of them out there, but there are enough in some of our poorest communities—who are sophisticated enough to be a real danger.

If we are going to make this change, we should make sure that, alongside it, we still have a way to affect the behaviour of those young children, in particular around bullying. If we remove supervision from them—often, supervision from the police is the only thing that carries enough weight in their own mind—they become a serious source of bullying and can cajole other children into breaking the law.

While I will support the amendment, I have been moved to this position only very recently, because it has had to fight against multiple years of experience of dealing with some young children who are very criminally involved, deliberately so. I still see the noble Baroness’ point, but I make a plea to the Minister to make sure that measures are put in place to keep the community safe and to identify young people early, not labelling them as criminals but dealing with their ability to bully and cajole other young people.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak on Amendment 469, and I have listened with great care to the persuasive argument presented by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom I think I can also refer to as a noble friend. I have also been briefed by Justice, a body that I have the highest respect for; indeed, I have been a member of Justice—I think I joined in 1964—for up to 60 years.

I accept the widespread view in other countries that the age for findings of criminality should be 14 years, which is the proposition in Amendment 469. I accept also that Scotland has recently raised the age of criminality from eight years to 12 years. We should also take into account the alarming increase in crime committed by young children going down to the age of nine years, and even lower. I read, for example, from Home Office statistics, which record that 9,544 offences were committed by children aged nine or younger in 2024. That is a rise of 30% on the 7,370 under-10 crimes recorded in 2019, before the pandemic, and an 18% rise on the total for 2022 of 8,064. They range, alarmingly, over crimes concerning rape, arson, stalking, attacking police, making death threats and drug and racially motivated offences—that is for nine year-olds. In Cheshire recently, police faced an attempted murder suspect who was too young to go before the courts. I take full account of all that.

However, I have a sense of unease in raising the age of criminality from 10 to 14 years. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, raised the case relating to two year-old James Bulger, of February 1993. I need not go into the full facts, but it suffices to say that in a shopping centre in Bootle in Merseyside, a little boy, two year-old James Bulger, was separated from his mother and was met by two other boys, 10 year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. They proceeded to take him away, eventually to a railway line, where they committed the most horrendous murder of that little boy. Following that, they were tried and convicted in November 1993 and in June 2001 were released from prison on licence. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has dealt with their anonymity following their release.

The record is that—and I think this is very relevant—Robert Thompson is not known to have been a reoffender, but not so with Jon Venables. He has had multiple convictions, including for child pornography. He is currently in prison and recently, in 2023, bail was refused because he still posed a danger and a risk to the public. As I said, I have expressed my unease about this.

The only further comment I make on the horrendous case relating to poor two year-old James Bulger is that it is not the only recorded crime of horrendous behaviour by young persons. I recall reading in the newspaper of the recent murder of a pensioner, and I am fairly sure that it was underage children who were responsible for that. I also recall reading in the newspapers of the murder of a homosexual in a public park. Again, if I recall correctly, underage children were involved, including a young girl.

Juvenile crime, I suggest, should be kept on the record. It was highly relevant in the case of Jon Venables that it should be kept on the record. Perhaps we could make an exception for the very serious crime that I have outlined to your Lordships. But one way or another, that record of criminality should remain with the juvenile.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I am not going to repeat the wonderful presentation by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. There is a sentiment in me which wants to go a long way with some of the things we have said. I listened quite intently to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the arguments were what I call suitable for a seminar, in that you can look at all sides of them. I am persuaded that some children may need greater care and support. It is quite possible that those who exhibit criminality could be helped and end up in a different place. Certainly, listening to the wonderful presentation by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the cases that she has tried, I do not think anyone could say a 10 year-old can commit a crime—that would be very strange. If they have committed a crime, they have committed a crime, and in questions of criminality it is not simply a matter of the law, because, say, you are, like me, an older man at nearly 77. In all of us, there is a propensity to be saintly and holy, but also a darkness which you have to deal with.

I am not uneasy about children having a criminal record if they have committed a crime; I am uneasy about the way they are then treated. We heard from the noble and learned Baroness about making sure that their identity is not put out in the public domain, because there will be vigilantes who want to terrible things to young children. On the fact that a judge took a decision on their being taken to another prison, there are appropriate ways of punishing people without feeling that all punishment must be the same because the nature of the crimes is like those of other criminals. I would have a thought that, with a child such as Thompson or Venables, and considering what they did to young James Bulger, you need to find appropriate ways of dealing with their safekeeping and providing help, but not in the same way as you would treat a John Sentamu. For instance, if I commit a terrible crime, although I am 77, I should be answerable to the rest of the population. The way we handle children often leaves a lot to be desired.

I was a chaplain in a remand centre, and some of those young people had committed horrendous crimes. When you looked back, nearly 99% of their habits had been learned from adults; it was not that they were dreaming of doing these terrible things. It was a borstal for the young, so I take on the arguments made. On the arguments about children that the noble Baroness gave us, I do not think it is a question of age. I do not know how their brains work, although that might help in terms of sentencing, but for me it is not a question of age.

During the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, we went to Wales, and we—and William Macpherson, who was the chair of the inquiry—were shocked that children as young as six were committing some of the most horrendous racist incidents. By the way, we call it the Stephen Lawrence inquiry but the rest of the population do not say that. They keep on calling it the Macpherson inquiry. It is not that; its title is the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Again, you looked at the parents and they were not responsible. It was a group enterprise. Kids in school were learning the language and there was not enough information to help them understand that behaving like that is not going to help them.

We as a nation should take the view that all children belong to us, and it is our responsibility to make sure we create an environment in which they are going to be helped. Locking them up and throwing away the key cannot be acceptable where children are concerned, no matter what crimes they may have committed. We should examine, in the streets where we live, how well we have helped and supported children.

I ask the Minister, as we have matters that need to be taken seriously, to consider whether it is best to do this through this Bill, or whether it would be better to arrange a seminar to examine the issue before Report, and find out what would be best for our children, instead of applying the unhelpful label “criminal” or deciding that a threshold of 14 or 12 will do it, because kids as young as seven can do some terrible things. We should put our hand on our hearts and say that maybe, as a society, we need to do much better.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

It is important to recognise the very important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, in relation to the problems of gangs in London, but I do not believe that that should be the reason why we should not make a change.

There are three things one can say very quickly. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has dealt at length with the enormous improvement in understanding the development of the mind and the enormous scientific advances that have been made. Across the criminal justice system, we generally are very bad at adapting to science.

Secondly, it is right to pay tribute to the Youth Justice Service across England and Wales. It has improved, and we now deal with youth crime and young people in a much more humane and civilised manner than we did 20 years ago. The number in places like Feltham has fallen enormously, and thank goodness it has. I do not know how many of your Lordships have been there, but it is a terrible place, and you do not want to send people there, particularly young people.

Thirdly, this was an issue I looked at when chairing the Commission on Justice in Wales. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, that he is not to worry: I am not making a devolution point now, but I will come back to that at Report. However, I will say that the commission that examined this issue was firmly of the view that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 12, having heard a lot of evidence. It seems to me that this is something we cannot kick into the long grass again. We must recognise change, and we should make it now.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord may recall from his days at the Bar that the juvenile courts were very sensitive to their role; that the judge and the counsel did not wear wigs; that the young offender was not kept in the dock, but was placed alongside his lawyers, and so forth. So we have, stretching back a long way, been very sensitive when trying juveniles.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

We have indeed.

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I add briefly to this debate. When the matter came before your Lordships’ House with the passage of the CHIS Bill towards the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, whether to move from the use of CHISs and their conduct being looked at ex post facto to it being looked at in advance was hotly debated. It is a difficult subject to debate in an open Chamber. We all accept that CHISs are necessary, but it is impossible to go into the details of those cases here. Further, it is important to concentrate not on what happened prior to 2020, although such cases are illustrative of the abuses that can occur; we are concerned with what has happened since 2021 and how well the Act is working.

As things stand at present, I cannot really add much to what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said. My experience of this area of CHISs is that we have learned an enormous amount from Northern Ireland. We ignore at our peril what the judiciary and those who have experience of Northern Ireland tell us. That peril is that we need to be absolutely clear that the system we have of authorising when CHISs engage in criminal activity is subject to rigorous scrutiny. What disturbs me, and why I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is that the key to the new system was prompt, effective and detailed scrutiny, reported to the best extent possible, of the way in which the system is operating.

On what the noble Baroness has said, I have looked at these reports myself. They are necessarily vague—they have to be, because you cannot put the information into the public domain—but they are delayed. I hope that the Minister will look very seriously at this and maybe meet some of us so that we can see the reality. Is this system working? If it is not working, we must revert either to the old system or to what is proposed in this amendment. It is key to public confidence in the police that we do not have a repeat of what happened in the matters that are the subject of the inquiry that has been spoken about—though this amendment has absolutely nothing to do with that—that the CHISs operate properly, and that anything that goes wrong is properly dealt with. We cannot have another scandal on the scale of that which has been investigated for the past 10 or 12 years—I have lost count of time.

This is, therefore, a matter where the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness really should be investigated. I hope that the Minister will look very seriously at it. I had long discussions during the passage of the Bill in 2020 to try to ensure that we had a good system. At present, on what is available, there is no real democratic accountability and no independent scrutiny of it. We must have that, if public confidence in the police is not to suffer the kind of problems that it suffered, into which the inquiry is going on, in relation to pre-2020 events.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am so glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, have participated in this debate. Like myself, they attended the recent meeting chaired by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. It was very nice to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, the admiration for the courage of the witnesses who came to speak to us at that meeting.

In any form of covert human intelligence, there has to be deception. It is the only way that the officer of the state, whoever he or she may be, can penetrate through to get the confidence of the criminals who they are there to investigate. But there should be, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti says in her amendment, some restraint in what they get up to.

When the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, got up, he started by saying that he opposed this amendment, but it was pleasing that, by the end of his speech, he was quite neutral. That was very reassuring.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti referred to the 2011 case of R v Barkshire, which concerned an undercover police officer infiltrating a group of climate change activists. The police officer, who I will not name, indulged in a sexual relationship, for about seven years, with one of the ladies involved. It also involved the birth of a child. This police officer, according to my brief, had as many as 10 other sexual relationships during the course of his activity as an undercover officer. When it came to the court, it was said that he went “much further” than the authorisation given to him, and that he played

“a significant role in assisting, advising and supporting … the very activity for which these appellants were prosecuted”.

That is why my noble friend—I hope she notes that I am giving her full support in this amendment—is absolutely right to suggest that there should be restraint. I accept entirely the restraint which is contained in Amendment 470.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank JUSTICE and the group Police Spies Out of Lives, particularly the women who were on the receiving end of the treatment by the CHISs. I declare an interest as a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which has given grants to Police Spies Out of Lives for well over a decade, in the run-up to the beginning of the inquiry.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about how long it has taken to get the abuses taken seriously, and it really has. The inquiry itself took many years to be established, and there was damage to those women’s lives in the aftermath every time they went to people in the establishment to ask them to please take their concerns seriously. There was stunning silence.

The trust had a chance to meet and hear from these extraordinary women, who were seeking justice for many decades. Without their determination there would be no inquiry, no TV documentaries and no newspaper articles. I salute them all for their refusal to be cowed and their strength of character, even in the face of repeated setbacks from the establishment, including the extremely slow inquiry—which is not expected to conclude before 2030, and quite possibly later—at an enormous cost to the public purse and, above all, to these victims of the police spies.

The glacial speed of the public inquiry into undercover policing is on a par with the long delays of other historic scandals including infected blood, Post Office Horizon and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. As young girls and women who were taken advantage of in the 1970s head towards getting their pensions, it is vital to ensure that there are no further delays.

As we heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, Amendment 470 would replace provisions in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, as amended by the CHIS Act 2021, which grants complete advanced criminal and civil immunity for authorised operatives and agents with public interest offences, as long as they did not act as agents provocateurs.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, helpfully made clear her experience in Northern Ireland and the shortcomings of the CHIS legislation. The contribution from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, also confirmed that we must continue to learn lessons from the new system. Amendment 470 would correct the law to ensure that, in future, those using CHISs must have a high standard of regulation and accountability. We, as a country, need more oversight of CHISs’ criminal activity and the mechanism to ensure that officers and their superiors meet these high standards and make decisions in light of the law.

From these Benches, we welcome Amendment 470 and the safeguard that it offers to the victims. I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, but the officers too, because it would give them a framework and responsibility to think about any actions, whether they need permission for them and, if so, whether they should really be thinking about doing it at all, which is long overdue.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Again, I would have to have a look at that before I give an answer. I am very happy to discuss it with the noble Baroness.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Can the noble Lord comment on the case of R v Barkshire, and does he endorse the behaviour of the counter-intelligence officer in that case?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am not entirely sure that I know all the facts of that case, so I am probably not qualified to answer that question. I spent my job putting people behind bars, not defending them. I am not a lawyer; I would not like to take that any further, frankly.