Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

This is an ongoing serious issue. I know the Government take it seriously, and the noble and learned Lord has come up with a very practical way of addressing this. I know that my noble friend the Minister will be very familiar with these issues, and I look forward to her response with great interest.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if ever there was a day to consider whether we should just assume guilt by association, then today’s political context provides us with a reminder that it is complicated. I have added my name to Amendment 486 on reform of joint enterprise, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Having listened to the elegant and legally erudite contribution from the noble and learned Lord, followed by such a well-informed contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I am rather nervous that I am going to let the side down somewhat, but let me take a different approach.

Reading through the first-hand accounts in In Their Own Words produced by the Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association grass-roots campaign group that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred to, really brings home that this tool of criminal justice is destroying too many young lives by incarcerating them for crimes which they made no significant contribution to. Sending people to prison for life and labelling them as murderers when they have not killed anyone, or were in many instances effectively bystanders, is something Parliament must address. Why? We have a responsibility to make sure the law is fit for purpose and applied properly and as originally intended. I think joint enterprise fails on all those counts.

I think we can all understand what the intention of joint enterprise is and was. Sometimes those who do not actually wield the knife do seem equally culpable—the armed robber involved in the heist that has gone wrong is the example always used. It could be deemed that he is as guilty as his accomplice who shot the cashier because he significantly contributed to the crime by, for example, carrying or supplying the gun or threatening the cashier. We can all acknowledge that in the brutal murder of Stephen Lawrence a group was closely involved in the killing.

Interestingly, if you look back to the ancient history of the law, which was explained by the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, in a Times article a couple of years ago, it also brings home that things can be complicated but people can be equally guilty. It began, apparently, with duelling aristocrats in the 18th century. The courts hit on the idea of reducing the number of duels by making seconds and surgeons liable for murder alongside the principals, so once more we can blame the hereditaries for everything that has gone wrong since—that was a joke.

It is important to stress that this is not about getting the guilty off the hook because behind each of these joint enterprise cases, the victims of crime, the families of those brutally killed, must not be forgotten, but justice for them is ill-served by overcriminalisation or overpunishment of the wrong culprits.

I want to use a couple of examples. Faisal Fiaz found out about the murder that he “committed” at the same time as everyone else because he saw it on social media. He did not know beforehand that there had been a murder because he was waiting in the back of a car as two of his colleagues in the drugs gang he was involved in went round the corner intending to steal cannabis from a local dealer. I want to stress that Faisal was no angel—he was involved in the drugs trade; he was a teenager in a gang—but he did not know that his gang accomplices were carrying a knife or that they had gone on to stab the dealer to death. The stabber fled the country to Pakistan and is still at large, whereas Faisal was jailed for life, with a minimum of 23 years, without any compelling evidence of intent or knowledge of the crime about to happen or even that it had happened. His presence in the vicinity and guilt by association was deemed enough to suggest to the CPS that he contributed to the murder in such a way that he is in prison for life. He was punished as harshly as he would have been had he wielded the knife, but I do not think that was the original intention, which was for the heist gone wrong or a duel.

That seems to be the crucial weakness in the current law of joint enterprise: the courts seem indifferent to the precise contribution to the crime of the accused, and this breaks the link between any action and accountability for that action. In this context, of course evidential standards are watered down and can even be dispensed with.

I was struck listening to Joseph Appiah, who was part of a group that clashed with rival schoolboys when he was 15. He was 200 yards away from the fatal stabbing of a 16 year-old. He did not stab the victim, nor did he see the stabbing, and he assumed that that would all be taken into account. He said:

“I didn’t see it, I didn’t know what happened and I can account for where I was, I could prove it. I always thought, well, you know, I didn’t do it, so when all the evidence comes out, eventually they will see the light, but that’s not how it went”.


Despite no DNA or evidence that he was directly involved or that he saw the act or knew that a knife was involved, he was found as culpable as the teenager who did in fact commit a stabbing.

Understandably, people conclude that the law of joint enterprises is so loosely interpreted by the criminal justice system because it makes it easier to secure convictions. It removes the faff of investigation, evidence gathering, proof beyond reasonable doubt and so on. In other words, it fuels cynicism in criminal justice. There are also side injustices created by the courts wielding joint enterprise as a blunt instrument. Fear of being convicted that way means that defence barristers have been known to persuade innocent clients to plead guilty to lesser charges such as GBH to avoid a trial of joint enterprise.

All these problems are well known, as we have heard. Back in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that the law around joint enterprise had taken a wrong turn and been used wrongly for three decades. The court thought that it was rightly restoring the proper law of targeting those who intended to commit or assist in a serious crime. But, as we are all too aware, Supreme Court clarifications are not always used to rectify wrong readings of the law—the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has revealed that, in the three years leading up to the ruling in 2016, 522 individuals were charged, but in the three years afterwards, 547 were.

As others have noted, reform of joint enterprise has gone as far as it is possible for it to go in the courts, and it now needs a change in the law. I give credit to Kim Johnson MP, who has used her voice in the other place to draw attention to this and inspire us all. Her attempts have failed so far, but the Government should now grab this chance, here in Committee, to right this wrong.

I have some qualms with one part of this debate, however, which is the implication that this is an actively racist law, or, to quote Jimmy McGovern, that its purpose is allegedly

“to keep scum off the streets, that’s how I think the police see it. That’s how they see all these young people – as scum”.

I loved Jimmy McGovern’s powerful 2014 drama “Common”, but I do not think that that is what is going on here. Joint enterprise has been used by many in good faith to try to tackle the scourge and blight of gang violence.

Yes, young Black people are 16 times more likely to be prosecuted for joint enterprise—there were also lots of young people, with 14% between the ages of 14 and 17 and 40% between 18 and 24, and 93% of defendants were male—but let us be honest: there is a real problem of young Black men stabbing each other. I live in Wood Green in Haringey, and it is real and it is not racist to note it. It is something we have to take into account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I just ask the noble Baroness to come to her conclusion—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

We need them to understand that the criminal justice system is not targeting them personally for crime but is fair and proportionate. That is what we should do.