Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

He can, but as I have already said, the difficulty is that, however sympathetic the guidance, the circumstances of the woman concerned have to be investigated in order to identify whether her case falls within those criteria. Therefore, the damage he has done to the woman who has recently lost the child is caused, however sensitive the investigation and whatever the criteria. That is the problem.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

The noble Lord says that there is a profound difference. However, there are circumstances—maybe others are aware—where parents lose a very young child in the home to sudden infant death syndrome. In certain of those circumstances, the police have to come through the door. There is no profound difference there: unfortunately, we need to investigate sensitive things, and that is not a reason to not change the law.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I entirely understand and accept that the police will investigate many alleged possible offences in highly sensitive circumstances, but the issue that arises for Parliament, and your Lordships’ House in particular today, is whether we should adopt special criteria where the sensitivity and the distress relate to a woman who has recently lost the child that she is carrying. It is very difficult, in my view—I am obviously not an expert on this; women in the Committee will have a stronger view than I do—but I can understand the real, particular and damaging concern that arises where a woman who has carried her child for however many months loses that child and is then the subject of a criminal investigation. It is difficult to imagine anything that is more distressing to the woman concerned in those circumstances. The Committee therefore has to take a view on this. My current view—