Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, brings great experience to this. In his initial contribution, and in these comments, he gives food for thought as to how we implement the decisions of any review and how Ministers ultimately give guidance to police, which chief constables then put in place for police officers on the ground to deal with. We will look at that. The whole purpose of the review is to simplify this procedure, looking at what is necessary and helpful, and to get the police to focus on the things that really matter. Some of the examples that have been given today are things that the police should not be focusing on because they do not matter at all.

To answer the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, it is important that we look at what the regulations and the review say. We can act administratively on much of what happens. I have no doubt that the Government will do so, once we receive the final review.

I simply ask the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, for the moment, to withdraw the amendment. He has the right to bring his amendments back on Report. We will have a clearer picture at some point in the very near future. I hope this has been a helpful debate.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his gracious response. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for co-sponsoring the amendment and for his excellent contributions to this debate. I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for their contributions. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, a speedy recovery. I thank my noble friends Lord Kempsell, Lord Jackson and Lord Blencathra.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra that the police, under very difficult circumstances, do an excellent job on the whole and I admire what they do. But I think he is right that having to record and investigate non-crime hate incidents is as unpopular with ordinary police officers on the front line as it is with free speech campaigners. They do not want to be wasting their time in this way. Many of them have reached out to me to tell me that and to support this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her contribution.

If you look at proposed new subsection (4), you will find that nothing in the amendment would prevent the police recording information they regard as relevant about a suspect’s motive in the course of an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution. I am sceptical whether the police should be allowed to record incidents that clearly do not meet the threshold of being crimes for intelligence-gathering purposes, not least because there is very little persuasive evidence that that is helpful when it comes to preventing crimes, and I am generally suspicious of the concept of pre-crime—of trying to nip potential crimes in the bud by monitoring carefully incidents that do not quite meet the threshold of criminal offences. However, I am not going to die in a ditch and say that the police should never, under any circumstances, be able to record incidents that do not meet the threshold of being a criminal offence for intelligence-gathering purposes, provided that the recording of those incidents has no adverse consequences for the people they are recorded against.

That brings me to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs, which, on the whole, were very welcome. I am pleased that the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council recognise that NCHIs are not fit for purpose and that the regime should be scrapped and replaced with something much better, but I want to respond briefly to two points made by my noble friend.

First, my noble friend acknowledged, I think, that the recording threshold for NCHIs is currently too low, and that when the regime is replaced by another, such as the anti-social behaviour incident regime, the threshold as to what incidents should be recorded will be higher. The implicit acknowledgement that the threshold has hitherto been too low strikes me as a persuasive argument for scrapping those incidents that have been recorded under the lower threshold. If the threshold was too low, that is an acknowledgement that the incidents should not have been recorded. That is a good argument for why they should be deleted once this system has been overhauled.

Secondly, my noble friend Lord Herbert maintains that, even though chief constables have the discretion to disclose NCHIs when responding to enhanced DBS checks, the College of Policing could not find a single example of chief constables having done that. If that is the case then there is no cost to the Home Office agreeing that, henceforth, under the new regime, anti-social behaviour incidents—if that is what we are going to call them—should not be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks. The fear that they might be—that, not having committed a crime, that is recorded against your name and could stop you getting a job or volunteering at a school or for a charity—is why the current regime has had such a chilling effect on free speech. If none has been disclosed, why not go that one small step further and say that, henceforth, they will not be disclosed?

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let what the noble Baroness has said stand. I am making the point that disability, transgender identity—in my view—sexual orientation and race are things that you have and that are part of you. If the offences proposed for removal are removed by this House, that would send a signal to society that we are happy for people to stir up hatred on the grounds of those characteristics. That is not acceptable to me and I hope the noble Lord recognises that I cannot accept those amendments today, although I accept the way they have been put.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Surely the signal that scrapping hate crime from British law would send is not that we do not care about vulnerable groups but that we think they should enjoy the same legal protections as everyone else, and that everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is a view, but not one that I share. There are protections in the Public Order Act 1986 against stirring up hatred on racial or religious grounds because, yes, I am equal under the law if I have that hatred against me, but that hatred may be generated because I happen to have a racial or religious characteristic that is subject to attack. So, we are not equal under the law, because if I did not have that racial or religious characteristic I would not have been attacked. For me, that is therefore an aggravating factor and a reason why we should maintain those offences.

I go back to what I was saying a moment ago. This would remove offences of stirring up hatred under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. It would abolish racial and religiously aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act and delete aggravating factors of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity from the Sentencing Code. At the very time when Jewish people are being attacked for being Jewish and transgender people are being attacked for being transgender, that is not acceptable. I am not saying that either noble Lord wishes to encourage or support that type of activity—I recognise from the measured way in which they put their arguments that they do not. They have an honestly held opinion that removing that legislation would be of benefit to society. I happen to disagree and I am trying to put the reason why. If there is clear water between us, that is the nature of political life. I am not imputing any characteristics to the noble Lord for bringing this measure forward.

However, the effect of this would be to compromise the ability of the courts to reflect the greater harm—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, said—to undermine deterrence and clarity for police and prosecutors and to signal that those crimes are no more serious when they are motivated by hostility toward protected characteristics, contrary to long-standing principle. It would also risk eroding public confidence, particularly among people with those protected characteristics. The underreporting that the noble Baroness mentioned would absolutely nosedive if these provisions were taken away, because people would think that society had not put that down as a benchmark by which people should be judged. I am therefore afraid that I cannot accept the amendment.

I must also give notice to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, who made a very helpful plea that we should not bring forward further protected characteristics. I regret to inform him that, on Report, I will be very proud to stand here and move an amendment which puts transgender and disability as protected characteristics, in line with the manifesto on which my party stood and won an election in July 2024. We will be bringing forward amendments in the Crime and Policing Bill on Report to give effect to this change. We can have that debate openly and honestly, but I say to the Committee that society has some basic principles of respect that it should enshrine in law. The legislation that the noble Lord is seeking to remove would undermine that principle and I will not support it.

Non-crime Hate Incidents

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I say to the noble Lord that there is a review. My right honourable friend the former Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, commissioned that review in December 2024 because, self-evidently, the non-crime hate incidents regime was not working effectively. Noble Lords who were in the House for the Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, who chairs the College of Policing, examining that issue and saying that he would bring that review forward. There are a range of things that we need to do in the review. We should not lose sight of the fact that valuable information is gained by people reporting non-crime hate incidents, but equally we should not use it to pursue events which are fruitless when police should be focusing on real crimes.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of the Free Speech Union. To follow up on the noble Lord’s question, as I understand it, the Metropolitan Police is no longer going to investigate non-prime hate incidents, although it will continue to record them. That appears to be the direction of travel, so other police forces, at least in England and Wales, will take a similar position. However, if NCHIs continue to be recorded, can the Minister assure the House that they will not be disclosable in enhanced DBS checks when people apply for jobs as, let us say, teachers or carers? Given that these uninvestigated reports of involvement in non-crimes are going to be recorded, it seems indefensible that they should stop people getting jobs.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I genuinely do not wish to pre-empt the review being undertaken now. The review by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing will come forward shortly and I expect the interim findings to be published in very short order, but the point that the noble Lord made is a valid one. The Metropolitan Police has said that it will not pursue non-crime hate incidents any more but will still record information because it gives valuable information about potential disability crime, racial crime and crimes against transgender people and others. It is important that we get the balance right, and one reason why my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary ordered that review was to make sure that we do not waste police resources or take the actions that the noble Lord mentioned.

Public Order Act 1986: Section 5

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

What I can give the noble Lord is an assurance that the police will treat all members of the community on an equal basis before the law. Where actions have been taken by any protester—be they antisemitic, anti-Islamic, anti-Christian or anti any faith—if they cross the threshold of potential investigation/prosecution/conviction, that will be taken forward on an equal basis by the police. We keep these matters under discussion all the time. There is in my view no such thing as two-tier policing. The police do a job effectively and they will take action when matters are brought to their attention.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, as the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, I declare my interest. Together with the National Secular Society, we paid for the defence of the individual referred to and we will jointly be paying for his appeal. At 2 am on Saturday, the individual in question was woken by police officers at his safe house to inform him that the Metropolitan Police were investigating a plot to kill him. Will the Minister join me in urging the police to do their utmost to protect the individual in question? We do not want a repeat of what happened in Sweden last January, when an Iraqi refugee who had repeatedly burned copies of the Koran was murdered.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let me put it this way. If a potential offence—which threats to kill are—is made, the police have a duty to investigate and, if the offence proves to have validity, to take action, to prepare a case, to go to the CPS and to take potential conviction action where the court will determine whether the allegation the noble Lord has made is correct. The individual concerned is appealing. I cannot comment on the appeal; Members of this House would not expect me to comment on either the conviction to date or the potential appeal. I say to the noble Lord that, if offences are potentially being committed, it is the duty of the police to investigate and take action. I will leave it—if he will let me, in a freedom of speech way—at that.