Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 17th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group address the very serious blight that is fly-tipping. The issue lies at the heart of community life. It is vital that we make every effort to ensure environmental protection and community confidence in law enforcement.

The scale of fly-tipping in the UK should not be understated. Between 2023 and 2024, local authorities in England dealt with around 1.15 million incidents, a 6% increase on the previous year. The majority of these cases involved household waste, sometimes dumped in bulk. Unfortunately, the absolute number of prosecutions is tiny in relation to the problem. There were only 1,598 prosecuted actions in that same year. Fly-tipping is organised crime, but it is local councils and private landowners who often bear the cost of clearing up the mess.

The amendments tabled in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Davies and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen seek to protect local communities from the destructive practice of fly-tipping by providing for harsher penalties and giving the police more powers to act. Amendment 41 amends Clause 9 so as to ensure that the Secretary of State’s guidance on fly-tipping makes the person responsible for the fly-tipping, rather than the landowner, liable for the costs of cleaning up. It is wrong that this is currently left to judicial discretion—that risks inconsistent outcomes. The amendment does identify the person responsible, who in this case is the convicted offender.

My Amendment 46 introduces a further enforcement tool. Where a person is found to have committed a fly-tipping offence, authorities would have the power to add three points to their driving licence. Rather than simply compelling fly-tipping offenders to pay a fine, which they may deem a worthy risk when compared with the profits of their actions, this measure places at risk the offenders’ ability to drive. By threatening points on driving licences, repeat offenders will be less likely to fly-tip as their licences will be in jeopardy.

I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for his Amendment 42, which seeks to ensure in statute that the cost of cleaning up fly-tipping should not fall on to the landowners. In many ways, this amendment seeks to achieve the same outcome as my Amendment 41. I therefore welcome it and hope that the Government will pay it due regard.

I also thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for his Amendment 40, which seeks to remove the provision of third-party protection for seizure of vehicles in respect of fly-tipping, which he spoke to most compellingly just now. This would mean that offenders cannot escape punishment by using someone else’s vehicle and that local authorities are better equipped to tackle fly-tipping. Again, I look forward to hearing the Government’s position on this proposal. If we are to tackle fly-tipping seriously, it is important that police are well equipped to act.

My Amendment 47 seeks to amend Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 so that the police can seize a vehicle which they reasonably believe has been used in association with fly-tipping offences. It empowers the police, not just local authorities, to take action.

In conclusion, these are practical, targeted interventions with a clear principle: those who dump waste illegally should be held to account and local communities should not be left footing the bill. I hope that all noble Lords recognise the importance of holding those who dump waste to account and protecting communities from the blight of illegal dumping. I earnestly hope that the Government will consider carefully the practical measures proposed by me and my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the broader structural steps proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, in the amendments in the next group. Together they form a system for tackling fly-tipping. I look forward with interest to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his amendments. As he said, they include requiring the Secretary of State to designate serious and organised waste crime as a strategic threat; to create a national action plan to collect and publish quarterly information on waste crime; and to provide for an independent review of serious and organised waste crime.

On the strategic priority designation and the national action plan, of course I support taking fly-tipping and organised waste much more seriously. Fly-tipping goes far beyond simple domestic waste and is a widespread practice of criminals; I point to the comments I made in the preceding group. I earnestly hope that the Government take this amendment seriously and I look forward to hearing their thoughts on a national action plan.

On the publishing of quarterly data, we on these Benches are always sympathetic to the principle of transparency, which in turn drives government accountability. More granular and consistent data assist the Government in formulating their efforts to tackle fly-tipping.

On the third and final amendment, although I recognise the noble Earl’s thought process behind an independent review and the importance of scrutiny, my one worry is that it may divert scarce government resources away from tackling the problem at hand. Too large a focus on reviewing may unduly delay action. In our view, this Government are already all too keen to launch a review to solve every problem that comes their way. We do not need to give them any more incentive to do so. It is our priority to give the police the power to act as soon as possible. None the less, I hope the Government take all the noble Earl’s amendments seriously.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, explained, the purpose of these amendments is to take forward some of the recommendations of your Lordships’ House’s Environment and Climate Change Committee to tackle serious and organised crime in the waste sector. At this point, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the work of her committee, not just in their detailed examination of the issue but in the whole way their report has raised the profile of this important issue.

I am glad we have had an opportunity to discuss waste crime in the round. As we have noted, and I think we are all in accord across the Chamber, this is a serious issue. At the end of the debate on the previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mooted that perhaps we need to rebrand fly-tipping to make people take it more seriously. From reflecting on this debate, nobody can be in any doubt, as the committee’s report demonstrated, that this is a serious business—and it is a business. It incurs huge costs in terms of the damage done. It is obviously a very profitable business to those who engage in it and I think we are all determined to tackle it. We argue that there are certainly provisions in the Bill, as well as other government actions, that will help to address this.

As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, waste crime costs the economy an estimated £1 billion annually. We are determined to tackle it, why is why we are preparing significant reforms to the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime and to the waste permit exemptions regime. Bringing waste carriers, brokers and dealers into the environmental permitting regime will give the Environment Agency more powers and resources to ensure compliance and to hold operators to account. Changes will make it harder for rogue operators to find work in the sector and easier for regulators to take action against criminals. Our planned reforms will also introduce the possibility of up to five years’ imprisonment for those who breach these new laws.

We are also introducing digital waste tracking to make it harder than ever to misidentify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. By digitising waste records, we will make it easier for legitimate businesses to comply with their duty of care for waste and reduce the opportunities for criminals to operate. Furthermore, better data will help us manage resources more sustainably, reduce waste and protect the environment for future generations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, noted, the Government have also increased the Environment Agency’s funding, including the amount available to tackle illegal waste operators. This year, we have raised the budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% to £15.6 million. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which is hosted within the Environment Agency, has nearly doubled in size thanks to that extra funding. Overall, the EA has been able to increase its front-line criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and area environmental crime teams by 43 full-time equivalent employees. They will be targeted at activities identified as waste crime priorities, using enforcement activity data and criminal intelligence. That includes tackling organised crime groups, increasing enforcement activity, closing down illegal waste sites more quickly, using intelligence more effectively and delivering successful major criminal investigations.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, touched on the terrible incident at Kidlington, which we discussed in the previous group. All I can do is repeat what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The Government are engaging with the Environment Agency on the case with the utmost seriousness. An investigation is underway, and an Environment Agency restriction order has been served to prevent access to the site and further tipping. I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra; it is bad now, but at least this way it cannot get any worse. The local resilience forum has been notified to explore opportunities for multi-agency support. Noble Lords may be aware that there was an Urgent Question in the other place this afternoon asked by the local MP Calum Miller; I believe that my honourable friend the Minister Mary Creagh offered to meet with Mr Miller to discuss this further. This is an issue that we are taking very seriously.

As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, will appreciate, the Environment and Climate Change Committee wrote to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as recently as 28 October, to set out the conclusions of its inquiry into waste crime. I am sure that noble Lords will appreciate that it will necessarily take a little time to consider fully the Government’s response. Having read the letter that the committee sent this morning, I know that it is a complex letter that raises many points, and rightly so. Notwithstanding what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, offered from the annals of classic British comedy, we do not want to rush our response, and it certainly would ill behove me to shoot from the hip in my response when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will respond to it. I assure the Committee that the Secretary of State is carefully considering the report and will respond in due course.

Noble Lords will be aware of two facts, and I will put it no more strongly than this. First, the committee asked in its letter for a response by 9 December. Secondly, we are due to continue in Committee on this Bill until the end of January at the earliest—

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s interjection and for that clarification. However, as somebody who lived for 35 years with a footpath running through their garden, I have to say that I do not really agree with him.

We should be very careful about implementing these two amendments. They smack to me of the landed gentry attempting to keep the ordinary man and woman from enjoying the countryside. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that it would not be an easy task to prove that deliberate trespass had occurred over land and grounds or gardens with the intent of causing harm or wanton damage to those grounds.

In respect of Amendment 47B, I do not support increasing the fee should an offence be proved. I am nevertheless keen to hear the Minister’s views on the amendment, but at the moment I am not inclined to support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for tabling these amendments. The case he set out seems clear and obvious. His amendment would ensure that the offence of trespassing with intent to commit an offence extended to people’s gardens and grounds, and it goes no further than that. Any intrusion into those grounds or gardens with mal-intent should be reflected in the level of criminal fines.

My noble friend’s amendments simply proceed on the assumption that gardens or grounds, in their simplest terms, should be treated the same in legislation as residences and buildings. Private property does not stop existing once you step out of a physical doorway; the grounds or gardens surrounding buildings are extensions to them, to be bought and sold just as freely. I think the word “curtilage” often appears—certainly in the law, but often more widely—to describe the land or garden around someone’s house. Indeed, there may be even as great a need to create an offence for this as there is for trespassing on a property with intent. I can imagine criminals using back gardens to navigate between houses to commit burglary. I can imagine confrontations taking place not inside a building yet still in the garden or grounds owned by a victim. They are just as serious as entering a property to commit a crime.

However, I acknowledge that there is generally a difference between entering someone’s house and entering their garden. The former is in most cases far more intrusive—a far greater infringement of someone’s right to a private property. It therefore follows that entering a house should regularly carry a harsher sentence than merely entering the grounds, but that can be the case while ensuring that both are offences. We do not have to disapply the latter simply because it might carry a lower fine than the former.

My noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 47B provides for this, as he set out. It seeks to give the court the discretion to alter the fines levied on an offender based on the seriousness of the offence, creating a higher maximum fine to be used for the most serious offences. Additionally, creating a minimum fine will ensure that any form of trespassing with the intent to commit another offence is dealt with to a minimal acceptable standard.

Whatever form it takes, trespassing in order to commit crime is incredibly invasive and often traumatic, and it is right that this is acknowledged in the range of the fine level. I hope the Minister has listened to these points, and I look forward to his response.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for tabling the amendments. I hope I can half help him today and, in doing so, assist the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

I confirm that the Government will repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824. In Clauses 10 and 11, the Government are legislating to introduce targeted replacement provisions for certain elements of the 1824 Act, to ensure that the police have the powers they need to keep our communities safe. Those targeted replacement measures include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain, which we will come on to shortly, and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime. Both were previously provided for under the 1824 Act, and the police have told us that it would be useful to retain them.

I hope this helps the noble Baroness, because the new criminal offence of trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence recreates an offence that is already set out in the 1824 Act. It does not add to it; it recreates it. As is currently the case, it will be an offence for a person to trespass on any premises—meaning any building, part of a building or enclosed area—with the intention to commit an offence, and that is currently in the legislation.

Amendment 47A from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to ensure that trespassing in gardens and grounds of a private dwelling is captured by the replacement offence. This is where I think I can half help him by indicating that gardens and grounds would already be included in the definition of “premises” in the 1824 Act, so, in essence, that is covered already.

His Amendment 47B would introduce a minimum level 2 fine and increase the maximum level fine from level 3 to level 4 for this offence. Again, the measure in the Bill replicates entirely—going back to the noble Baroness—the maximum penalties currently set out in the existing legislation that we are repealing, but replacing in part, through the clauses addressed by these amendments. I agree with the noble Baroness on the proportionality of the current level of the fines. I say to the noble Lord what he anticipated I would say to him: sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary, and we need to afford it appropriate discretion. Parliament rarely specifies minimum sentences, and this is not an instance where we should depart from that general principle. I know he anticipated that I would say that—as the good old, former Home Office Minister that he is, I knew he would clock that that was the potential line of defence on his amendment.

It is important to say that the penalties set out in the current legislation, which we are replicating, are considered appropriate and proportionate to the nature of the offence. Therefore, with what I hope was helpful half clarification on grounds and gardens, and with my steady defence on the second amendment, which the noble Lord anticipated, I ask him not to press his amendments.

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This is a very simple, clear and effective mechanism by which the Government can do the right thing. Surely, they will seize this chance to do that, if not from the Dispatch Box this evening, then before we get to Report. However, if it gets to Report, we will have to bring this issue before the House again to make a decision, because it is simply unconscionable to leave it in the Bill.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for her amendment. Contributions have been thoughtful, and they have certainly highlighted some of the issues that certain communities face. There is no doubt at all that we are united in the belief that all communities should be treated with dignity and fairness, and that these considerations should guide interactions between them and local authorities.

However, I respectfully state that we on these Benches cannot support Amendment 49. The effect of this amendment would be to repeal the provisions introduced by the previous Government in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. That Act created the offence relating to unauthorised encampments and the accompanying enforcement powers. Those powers were introduced by a Conservative Government, after much consultation and representations from local authorities and members of the public, who repeatedly expressed concern about the impact of unauthorised encampments on local communities.

The provisions that this amendment seeks to remove were designed to address situations where unauthorised encampments caused significant harm, such as damaging land, obstructing highways and shops or creating fear and distress in local neighbourhoods. We are not talking about minor inconveniences; we are talking about serious damage and disruption. In many cases, these provisions have provided clarity and reassurance, enabling the police to respond more proportionately and local authorities to act more swiftly while still supporting negotiated stopping and offering lawful sites wherever possible.

The noble Baroness deployed the argument that these provisions have been declared incompatible with the Human Rights Act, but I do not think that is an overwhelming argument for repealing legislation passed by this Parliament.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, but does he accept that there is no definition of “alarm and distress”, and that it is in fact a subjective view on the part of the landowner? Does he also accept that majority of the police did not want this provision when consulted?

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I think the point is that the lack of a definition gives the police the ability to act within their discretion.

As for the issue of incompatibility, it is worth noting that, when a declaration of incompatibility is made by the courts, such a declaration is not a strike-down power; it is not a mandate for immediate legislative repeal. It will come as no surprise that we on these Benches believe that there have been too many instances of judicial overreach, as to justify a repeal of the Human Rights Act and withdrawal from the ECHR. If we cannot prevent unlawful encampments by people with no right to reside on the land, which is, in our view, an absolutely legitimate aim, that is an indication that the Human Rights Act and the ECHR are not fit for purpose.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He speaks about so-called judicial overreach, but building on what the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, in a consultation in 2018, 75% of police said they did not want these extra powers and 85% said that they did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments. This is across the justice system; it is not just what the judges are doing.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

That may be the case in the year the noble Baroness cited, but the fact remains that these provisions have been brought into force, have been effective and have responded to representations from local authorities and members of the public, who have repeatedly expressed concern about the impact of unauthorised encampments on their community. I earnestly believe that repealing these measures entirely would remove essential tools for managing the real and sometimes serious harms experienced by communities across the country. For those reasons, these Benches cannot support the amendment.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Whitaker for tabling the amendment. She has obviously secured widespread support—from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

As my noble friend explained, the High Court ruling in May 2024 found that the specific changes made by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 relating to Traveller sites were incompatible with convention rights. This is where I am going to depart from the view of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, because the Government respect the decision of the court. The Government—I hope that this is helpful to my noble friend—are working now on a response to that court judgment. I want to make it absolutely clear that I recognise the High Court ruling, and the response is needed. I hope I can help my noble friend by saying that I can undertake to update the House ahead of Report on this matter. We are not able to finalise the exact response as yet, but I hope that is helpful to my noble friend.

I cannot support my noble friend’s amendment today, but it is important that we signal to her that this matter is one we have to resolve speedily. In considering the court’s judgment, the Government will carefully balance the rights of individuals to live their private lives without discrimination, while recognising the importance of protecting public spaces and communities affected by unauthorised encampments. That balance will be made, and I hope to be able to resolve that issue by Report, as I have said.

A number of noble Lords and Baronesses have mentioned the question of the shortage of unauthorised sites available to Gypsies and Travellers, and that is an important point. Local authorities, as Members will know, are required to assess the need for Traveller pitches in their area and must plan to meet that need. These decisions are made locally; they reflect specific circumstances in each area and operate within the national planning policy for Traveller sites, which is set by the Government. We aim to ensure fair and equal treatment for Travellers in a way that facilitates the traditional and nomadic way of life of Travellers, while respecting the interests of the settled community.

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Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel]

50: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Removal of power of entry under Part 8 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003In the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, omit section 74 (power of entry in relation to complaints about high hedges).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would repeal provisions of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 that permit the local authority to enter a person’s property without their consent to investigate complaints about high hedges.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment seeks to repeal provisions of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 that permit the local authority to enter a person’s property without their consent to investigate complaints about high hedges. I entirely accept that this is a somewhat niche and technical amendment, but it is nevertheless an important one. The 2003 Act established a regime whereby individuals can make a complaint about their neighbour’s high hedge. This provision made its way into the Act after amendments to the Bill in your Lordships’ House during its passage in 2003.

The intention was understandable, but it is one thing to give people the ability to complain about their neighbour’s high hedge and another matter entirely to grant the state the right to enter a person’s private property without their consent simply to measure that hedge. Such a power is and must always be exceptional. It should be tightly drawn and robustly justified. We submit that the matter of high hedges, however irritating or capable of provoking neighbourhood disputes, simply does not meet that threshold. Section 74 was conceived at a time when the framework for powers of entry was far less coherent than it is today, and since then, Parliament has rightly legislated to reduce, rationalise and strengthen oversight of such powers. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 in particular represents a significant step towards rebalancing the relationship between citizens and the state. Yet the power preserved in Section 74 stands out as an anomaly, disproportionate in nature and insufficiently justified in practice.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, for tabling what he termed a niche amendment today—there is nothing wrong with a niche amendment; it has generated discussion. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has just said, this puts the focus back not on the legislation or even on the enforcement but on whether, when discussions between parties break down, the local authority should be and is the arbiter of the dispute and, in order to be the arbiter of the dispute, whether the local authority can have access to the property.

It is important to say that, when assessing a complaint or appeal, issuing a remedial notice to an individual or assessing whether an individual has taken the necessary action, entering a property to assess the hedge in question surely is not a niche issue; it is part of the role of the local authority to be able to assess that issue. The Government believe that local authorities are best placed to consider unresolved disputes on high hedges; the procedures are set out in national guidance.

On the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has mentioned, I note that the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 enables local authorities to intervene, as a last resort. It should be for neighbours to try to sort these matters out, but there are opportunities for people who are unhappy with the council’s decision to have a right of appeal to the Secretary of State in cases in England. The power of local authority officers to enter someone’s property is an important part of ensuring such disputes are resolved and any remedial action is taken.

I assure the noble Lord that the power of entry is a power to enter a “neighbouring land” to carry out functions under Part 8 of the Act. The term “the neighbouring land” means the land on which the high hedge is situated—effectively someone’s garden. A local authority must give 24 hours’ notice of its intended entry and, if the land is unoccupied, leave it as effectively secured as it was found. I stress to the noble Lord that there is clear guidance on GOV.UK for local authorities in exercising their powers. The Government will keep this guidance under review.

In the absence of disputes being resolved by neighbours themselves—as the noble Baroness has said—amicably between the parties, it is possible that there are remedial powers to step in and require the offending property owner to take action. Where they fail to do so, it is also right that the local authority should be able to undertake the remedial work itself and charge the householder concerned. To do this, it is necessary to undertake the niche point of entering someone’s garden to examine the fence or hedge or to erect a platform on the highway to do the same.

If we accepted the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, today, I do not know how local authorities would be able to assess in terms of the legislation under the Act. If he says he does not believe the legislation under the Act is appropriate, and we should not have high hedges legislation, that is a different point. If we do have that legislation, then we need a mechanism whereby the local council can enter a premises. There might well be occasions where the local council must do that because relations have broken down to such an extent that only the local council can resolve it, and therefore it must undertake entry into a person’s garden or erect a platform to assess the issue in the first place. That is not a gross invasion of a householder’s property; it is a sensible resolution by a third party—given the powers to do so under the 2003 Act—to resolve an issue that neighbours have not been able to resolve.

The local council may resolve the complaint in favour of the complainant or in favour of the person with the high hedge; that is a matter for them. But if the council does not have access to the property to do that, then the niche discussion will be about not being able to resolve the problem, so I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank those in your Lordships’ House who have spoken in this debate. I am delighted to have a degree of support from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who, as she recounted, has had some personal experience of this issue. I reiterate to the Minister that it seems entirely disproportionate for local authorities to be able to enter a person’s private property without their consent to investigate this issue—that is what underpins this amendment. I do not want to beat around the bush any more, and, for now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel]

51: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Gang-related graffiti(1) A person commits an offence if—(a) the person defaces a relevant surface with graffiti, and(b) the graffiti is gang-related.(2) Graffiti is gang-related if—(a) the graffiti contains any symbol, sign, mark or slogan that is associated with, or is an identifiable marker of, a gang or gang activity,(b) the graffiti contains any symbol, sign, mark or slogan that a reasonable person would associate with a gang or gang activity, or(c) the person who defaced the relevant surface with the graffiti is part of a gang.(3) In this section a “relevant surface” is any of the following surfaces, whether internal or external or open to the air or not—(a) the surface of any street or of any building, structure, apparatus, plant or other object in or on any street;(b) the surface of any land owned, occupied or controlled by a statutory undertaker or of any building, structure, apparatus, plant or other object in or on any such land;(c) the surface of any land owned, occupied or controlled by an educational institution (including its governing body) or of any building, structure, apparatus, plant or other object in or on any such land.(4) A person who commits an offence under this section is liable—(a) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding the general limit in magistrates’ court or a fine (or both);(b) on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.(5) In this section –(a) “gang” means the activities of a group that—(i) consists of at least three people, and(ii) has one or more characteristics that enable its members to be identified by others as a group;(b) “graffiti” includes painting, writing, soiling, marking or other defacing by whatever means.”

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, this group speaks to the two amendments in my name and in the names of my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie. They seek to address the long-standing problems of gang involvement in our cities and to probe the Government’s approach to this. I am grateful to the Minister for approaching me recently to discuss the issue, and I hope that we can continue that conversation.

Gangs are groups of people whose entire identities are founded on the control of a territory through the means of violence. They are established to exert power, maintained through the coercion and grooming of the youth, and exist to establish themselves over their counterparts by any means. They are exploitative organisations. The very idea that groups of young men should be able to gain de facto control of large parts of our cities through intimidation and aggression is one that should have been stamped out long ago. Unfortunately, we have let them fester. The result is that the Metropolitan Police believes there are 102 active gangs in London, each vying for their own share of the territory that is not, and cannot become, theirs. They commit a litany of crimes, with the most horrific reports suggesting that they keep scoreboards of the number of rival gang members they either stab or kill. This is not unique to the capital; it is the norm across many of our major cities.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to legislate against gang involvement before a crime has taken place. They are uncodified organisations, and attempting to break them up would require a large infringement on every citizen’s right to associate freely. But that does not lessen the need for legislative steps to be taken. Amendment 52 would implement, in our view, the next best thing by creating the aggravating factor of committing an offence in connection to the activities of a gang. This would disincentivise group-based crime and would mean that criminals identified as gang members would be able to be imprisoned for longer.

Similarly, it is well known that gangs often leave tags to mark their territories. This graffiti comes at enormous cost to either the taxpayer or private businesses. Small local businesses can see the fronts of their stores defaced, leaving them to choose between forking out repair costs or seeing customers potentially put off by the vandalism. Councils are faced with even more bills as they are forced to pay for the upkeep of their local areas. It is entirely unfair on the law-abiding communities that are burdened with this.

Gang-related violence does not end at the physical crime committed; it extends to the psychological. There is also the problem of the tone that gang-related graffiti sets. It is bad enough seeing your neighbourhood vandalised by gangs, but it is far worse when it is vandalised by a violent group marking their territory. It sends a signal to locals that their community is not, in fact, their shared property but that it belongs to a small group of individuals with scant regard for the law. It alarms them that these people live among them; it causes fear, distress and alarm. It is an act of intimidation which makes society feel less safe.

On the subject of graffiti, I do not know whether noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches are aware, but my right honourable friend the shadow Lord Chancellor has received a letter from one of their colleagues, the honourable Member for Cheltenham, Max Wilkinson. In his letter, he said that our amendments would see anyone who paints a St George’s cross on a public surface jailed for up to two years. I was rather baffled when I saw that; the subject matter of Amendment 51 is, in explicit terms, gang-related graffiti. The amendment would criminalise graffiti that uses gang signs, symbols or slogans that is committed in the course of gang activity. It uses the same definition of “gang” as Section 51 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. In our view, a person who simply paints a cross on a public building is very clearly not in scope of this new offence.

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Put simply, I am satisfied that the courts already have the tools necessary to respond robustly to serious gang-related offending. For that reason, I consider both amendments unnecessary. However, if there is something particular that they seek to address and to which I have not spoken, I invite noble Lords to meet with me to discuss it. Notwithstanding this offer and for the reasons I have set out, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and I thank the Minister for her kind comments at the start—they were slightly undeserving in my case, given her own experience. I listened carefully to what she said.

There were a couple of points I would like to come back on. Painting a St George’s cross, a saltire or whatever symbol might be chosen, would not and would never be caught by this, because it is not “gang related”. In addition, it is not too difficult for juries to understand the concept of something that is gang related.

On the issue of defining a gang, a point made both by the Minister and by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, the definition of a gang is the same as the one used in Section 51 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. It is the accepted definition. In that respect, I would not accept that it is too broad.

Underpinning these amendments is something that we all want to see: clean, happy cities that do not face the persistent threat of crime of any form. Unfortunately, a large part of the urban crime we currently face is the product of gang-related feuds and violence. The Centre for Social Justice has estimated that 60% of all shootings are gang related. Other reports suggest that they are responsible for as much as half of all knife crime. If we are serious about tackling crime, especially knife crime, we must do all we can to punish criminal gang members and disincentivise those who have not yet joined a gang. It is for that reason that we have put forward these amendments: to make gang-related offences specific and for them to require specific treatment in our law.

I could say much more about the amendments—and I am very grateful for the comments from all noble Lords, particularly for the support from my noble friend Lord Blencathra—but for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 51.

Amendment 51 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel]

53: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Offence of engaging in nuisance begging(1) A person aged 18 or over who engages in nuisance begging commits an offence.(2) Where a constable has reasonable cause to believe that a person is engaging or has engaged in nuisance begging, the constable may require the person to leave a relevant location as soon as reasonably practicable.(3) Where a person has been required to leave a relevant location by a constable, the person commits an offence if the person does not comply with the requirement.(4) A person who commits an offence under subsections (1) or (3) is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month or a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.(5) For the purposes of this section, a person engages in “nuisance begging” if subsections (6) or (7) applies.(6) This subsection applies if the person begs—(a) on public transport,(b) in a station or any form of public transport, or at an entrance to or an exit from any such station,(c) at a bus stop, tram stop or other place where members of the public get on to, or alight from, any form of public transport,(d) at a taxi rank,(e) on a carriageway or cycle track,(f) in any area outside business premises (whether or not the area forms part of a highway) where people are consuming food or drinks supplied by the business,(g) within 10 metres of an automated teller machine or night safe, (h) within 10 metres of a ticket machine, a vending machine or any other device through which members of the public obtain goods or services by making payments,(i) in, or within five metres of, the entrance to, or exit from, retail premises, or(j) in the common parts of any building containing two or more dwellings,(7) This subsection applies if the person begs in a way that has caused, or is likely to cause—(a) harassment, alarm or distress to another person,(b) a person reasonably to believe that—(i) they, or any other person, may be harmed, or(ii) any property (except property belonging to the person begging) may be damaged,(c) disorder, or(d) a risk to the health or safety of any person except the person begging.(8) In this section—“carriageway” and “cycle track” have the meaning given by section 329(1) of the Highway Act 1980;“distress” includes distress caused by—(a) the use of threatening, intimidating or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or(b) the display of any writing, sign, or other visible representation that is threatening, intimidating or abusive;“relevant location” means a location where the person is engaging or has engaged in nuisance begging;“retail premises” means premises used wholly or mainly for the purposes of the sale of anything by retail.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would introduce the offence of nuisance begging and permit a constable to move on a person engaging in nuisance begging.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, these amendments require a little bit of legislative background to be given. In 2022, the Government accepted an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824. Section 81 of the 2022 Act containing the repeal has not yet been commenced.

The previous Government stated their intention to commence the repeal of the Vagrancy Act only once appropriate replacement legislation was put in place. The replacement legislative framework was included in the previous Government’s Criminal Justice Bill, after which the current Bill is modelled. While almost one-third of the clauses of the Criminal Justice Bill have made their way into this Bill, the provisions to replace the Vagrancy Act have not. This amendment is intended to ascertain why.

The Criminal Justice Bill proposed to create a new framework of nuisance begging and nuisance rough sleeping, as well as creating three new related criminal offences. I entirely accept that the Government have carried forward the offence of trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence and the offence of arranging or facilitating begging for gain, but we do not see anything relating to nuisance begging in the Bill. My question to the Minister is simply: why? Do the Government believe that the police will have sufficient powers to deal with anti-social begging once the Vagrancy Act is repealed? It appears somewhat counterintuitive for the Government to seek to criminalise the facilitation of another person’s begging but not to criminalise nuisance begging. Do the Government believe there is such a thing as nuisance or anti-social begging?

Regardless of the Government’s response to that, it appears to us that there will be a legislative gap if the Vagrancy Act is repealed and nothing is put in place to substitute it. My Amendment 53 therefore mirrors the proposals from the previous Government’s Criminal Justice Bill. It would create a very narrowly defined offence of nuisance begging and would equip the police with a proportionate and practical tool—namely, the power to require an individual to move on from a relevant location where disruptive or unsafe behaviour is occurring.

This amendment does not criminalise poverty, homelessness or the simple act of asking for help. It does not target those who are vulnerable or down on their luck, nor does it seek to sweep such people out of sight. It draws a clear distinction between legitimate, peaceful begging on the one hand, and conduct which crosses into harassment and intimidation—with danger both to the public and often to the person begging themselves—on the other.

We believe that the public have a right to move through stations, transport hubs, shopfronts and busy pavements without being impeded, threatened or placed at risk. Likewise, those who beg have a right to be treated with dignity. But it is precisely because dignity matters that we must address those situations where begging is carried out in a manner or in locations that create real harm.

The amendment identifies particular locations: public transport; station entrances; ATM machines; business forecourts; taxi ranks. These are points where there is little practical ability for a member of the public to avoid unwanted confrontation. They are places where one cannot simply walk around a challenging encounter. A narrow station staircase is not somewhere to negotiate past an insistent or aggressive request for money. These are the very locations where nuisance behaviour has taken root and where the police currently lack a clear and effective mechanism to act.

The amendment would set a threshold based not on the mere presence of a person asking for money but on conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress, fear of harm, risk to health or safety, or disorder. These are long-established, widely understood standards in public order law, and they ensure that the power is used only when behaviour becomes unacceptable.

The move-on power in subsection (2) is at the heart of the proposal. It is preventative rather than punitive. It would give a constable the ability to intervene early, to de-escalate situations and to protect all involved before matters deteriorate. For the individual concerned, it would avoid immediate criminalisation; it would give them an opportunity to comply and move on without penalty. Only wilful refusal to comply would constitute an offence.

For all those reasons, and with the balance that this amendment strikes so carefully, in our view, I commend it to the Committee, and I urge noble Lords to lend it their support. I beg to move.

Amendment 53A (to Amendment 53)

Moved by

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Amendment 53B (to Amendment 53) not moved.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate, and I thank all those who contributed. I listened very carefully to the Minister and his indication that the Government believe that they have all the necessary tools to prevent anti-social begging.

Underpinning these amendments is that those who work daily in town centres, transport networks and retail spaces consistently report situations where members of the public feel frightened or cornered. The law does not provide a consistent, targeted response to those problems. That is the basis of this amendment, which seeks to ensure clarity for the public and the police. The amendment is carefully drawn, limited, balanced and rooted in the principle that no one should be made to feel unsafe when going about their daily business.

We cannot ignore the reality that some forms of begging today bear little resemblance to what many of us have known in the past. We now see behaviour that is aggressive, persistent and sometimes strategically targeted at locations where people feel trapped. However, having listened very carefully, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 53 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, we recognise the legitimate concerns about persistent anti-social behaviour. Repeat offenders represent a significant challenge; within many communities there is a small core of individuals creating a disproportionate amount of misery and distress to victims. However, the Liberal Democrats remain sceptical about the approach taken by Amendment 54. On these Benches, we believe that youth incarceration should be a last resort, not an automatic consequence. Mandatory detention after three breaches not only removes judicial discretion, it risks criminalising young people for behaviour which is below the criminal standard.

The evidence shows that detention is largely ineffective and often counterproductive. In reality, it increases the likelihood of future offending. Indeed, a chief constable I spoke to told me that short-term sentences simply equip people to be better at crime. The aim of these measures may be to help victims, but the risk is that they could ultimately result in the creation of more of them.

We believe that the key to tackling persistent anti-social behaviour is properly funded community policing. There are about 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs and neighbourhood teams now than in 2015. More than 4,500 PCSOs have disappeared, and their loss is continuing. Some forces simply do not have enough personnel in neighbourhood teams to actively address anti-social behaviour. In his response, will the Minister say what is being done to reverse the exodus of community officers?

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, the contributions we have heard demonstrate the seriousness of the issue and highlight why communities and victims need reassurance that persistent anti-social behaviour will be confronted robustly and effectively. I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for bringing forward these amendments. They provide a welcome opportunity to examine whether the current response to repeat breaches of injunctions is sufficient.

It goes without saying that ongoing and persistent anti-social behaviour has a profound impact on the lives of ordinary residents, including the feeling of individual safety and a wider sense of cohesion in our neighbourhoods. Amendment 54 seeks to provide that if someone under 18 breaches three injunctions of supervision orders, they must be given a detention order. It seems likely, to me at least, that someone who has broken three such injunctions is plainly on the path to becoming an habitual offender. Repeated breaches should not simply be met with ineffective sanctions—communities have to know that the law has teeth and that those who repeatedly defy court orders will face meaningful consequences. The amendment seeks to reinforce that principle and to signal clearly that a cycle of breach, warning and further breach is unacceptable.

I hope that the Government give the amendment the thought and time that it deserves, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for Amendment 54 and for fessing up to Amendment 55, which we will accept as an honest mistake. I welcome his honesty in raising the issue.

There is a recognition that Amendment 54 still wants to provide for minimum sentences for persistent breaches of youth injunctions. I emphasise that the Government do not want to criminalise children unnecessarily, an aspiration we share with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. That is why the new respect order in the Bill will not apply to those under 18. However, we know that in many cases the behaviour of offenders under 18 requires a more formal deterrent and intervention. That is why we have retained the civil injunction as is for those under 18. Practitioners have told us that it is a particularly helpful and useful tool to tackle youth anti-social behaviour and to ensure that their rights and the safety of the community are upheld.

Youth injunctions are civil orders and fundamentally preventive in nature, which again goes to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. It is more important to intervene to prevent than it is to punish afterwards, particularly when young people are the individuals who are causing those challenges in the first place.

The important point about youth injunctions, which, again, goes to the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, is that if the respondent abides by the terms of the order, they will not be liable for any penalties but, self-evidently, where a respondent does breach an order there needs to be some action. The noble Lord has suggested one course of action. I say to him that the courts already have a range of responses, including supervision orders, electronic tagging, curfews and, in the most serious cases, detention orders for up to three months for 14 to 17 year-olds.

I hope there is a common theme across the Committee that detention of children should be used only when absolutely necessary, and that courts should consider the child’s welfare and other risks before imposing such a response. This should be on a case-by-case basis, and the prescribing of a mandatory minimum sentence, even for repeat offenders, would both undermine the ability of the independent judiciary to determine the appropriate sentence and potentially be disproportionate. There is a place in our sentencing framework for mandatory minimum sentences, but I submit that this is not it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, is quite right again that one of the best preventive measures we can have is to have large numbers of boots on the ground in neighbourhood policing. She will know that the Government have a manifesto commitment to put 13,000 extra boots on the ground during this Parliament. In this first year or so, the Government have put an extra 3,000 in place. We intend, where we can, to increase the number of specials, PCSOs and warranted officers to replace those who were lost between 2010 and 2017. When I was Police Minister in 2009-10, we had 20,000 more officers than we had up to around 2017. That is because they were hollowed out and taken out by the two Governments who ran the Home Office between 2010 and 2017.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that visible neighbourhood policing is critical to tackling anti-social behaviour, but the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to provide minimum sentences, which I do not think will achieve his objective. It does not have my support either. I hope he will withdraw the amendment, having listened to the argument.

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[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I hope to be as brief as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra when introducing these amendments.

There is an urgent need to ensure that the mechanisms we put in place under the Bill are both workable and effective. My noble friend’s amendments seek to ensure that the person appointed as the co-ordinating officer is simply the most qualified regarding the internet and online sales. There seems to be broad agreement that those responsible for enforcing penalties for illegal online sales must have the right skills. Whether or not such individuals wear a uniform is less important than whether they understand the digital channels through which harmful goods are marketed and moved, and criminals should not be able to exploit technological advantage to stay one step ahead of enforcement. I therefore hope that the Government take these amendments seriously as practical suggestions to help tackle a serious problem.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his amendments to the clauses that implement this Government’s manifesto commitment to hold senior managers of online platforms, be they social media platforms, online marketplaces or search engines, personally liable for the failure to remove illegal online content relating to knives and offensive weapons. His Amendment 55B would require the co-ordinating officer—that is, the person appointed by the Home Secretary to administer these new powers—to have the necessary internet and online sales experience and skills, stating that they need not be a warranted officer. Amendment 55F would make these criteria explicit in the statutory guidance for these measures.

I agree with the sentiment behind the amendments. It is of course important that the co-ordinating officer responsible for the administration of these powers be suitably experienced. I reassure the noble Lord that the Government are providing £1.7 million for a new national police unit to tackle the illegal online sale of knives and weapons, including the issuing of content removal notices. The unit will be dedicated to co-ordinating investigations into all aspects of online unlawful knife and offensive weapon sales, and to bringing those responsible to justice. It will also improve data collection and analysis capability in order to expand police understanding of the knife crime problem and how enforcement activities can best be targeted. The intention is that a senior member of this specialist unit will be appointed as the co-ordinating officer, and they will have the necessary skills and resources to administer the powers.

Whoever is appointed as a content manager must be experienced in both aspects of the problem we are trying to tackle. They should have experience not only of online sales but of the investigation of illegal online sales of knives and weapons—that is, they must be able to understand the investigatory and evidential process as well as having experience of the internet. This will, to paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not be any old bobby with a warrant card but someone highly experienced in internet sales and the investigatory and evidential role. That is why, in short, we feel that the role must be held by a warranted officer. It is a police role. They will be issuing enforcement notices and, as part of the criminal process, they need to have that experience as well as the essential online experience that all noble Lords who spoke in the debate mentioned; we agree that that is necessary.

Given the assurance that we are not neglecting the online side of things, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will be sufficiently reassured and is content to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has so concisely described—he gets more concise as the evening goes on—this group deals with the sanctions applied under the online weapon advertising regime.

We very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring accountability for businesses and sellers who facilitate the online sale of knives. However, if the penalties imposed are too small, they merely become a tolerable cost of doing business for large, wealthy online service providers. As the noble Lord explained, the Bill proposes maximum civil penalties for service providers of up to £60,000 for failing to comply with content manager requirements or for failing to comply with a content removal notice. His Amendments 55C and 55D directly challenge that maximum limit by proposing that the penalty for a service provider’s non-compliance should instead be a minimum of 500% of the value of the illegal goods advertised.

In our view, that proposal shifts the focus decisively towards financial deterrence—although I hate to agree with the noble Lord twice in one evening. The argument embedded within these amendments is sound: fines should reflect the scale and profitability of the illegal advertising business they enable. By linking the minimum fine directly to five times the value of the illegal goods advertised, we ensure that the penalty scales proportionally with the volume of the illicit trade facilitated by the platform, making it financially unsustainable to turn a blind eye to illegal weapon content.

The noble Lord’s Amendment 55E applies this same principle to the penalties imposed on the service provider’s content manager. Clause 23 currently sets the maximum penalty for the content manager at £10,000. Amendment 55E seeks to replace that cap with a minimum penalty of 100% of the value of the illegal goods advertised. That would ensure that the individual responsible for overseeing compliance within the organisation also faces a penalty that reflects the seriousness of the content they failed to manage or remove, particularly where that content is tied directly to the advertisement of unlawful weapons.

These amendments force us to consider how we can make our laws genuinely tough on organised online crime. In our view, legislation must be proportionate; and proportionality, in the face of corporate digital crime, means that penalties should meaningfully exceed the profits derived from facilitating criminal activity. The amendments rightly push us to consider the financial consequences that would truly deter platforms from risking public safety for private gain.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Blencathra for these amendments and offer support from the Front Bench for them.

The three amendments by my noble friend all have the same aim: to tie the level of financial penalty directly to the value of the illegal knives being advertised and the profits generated from their sale. The logic behind them is obvious—and they also raise an important point. Fines that merely represent a modest operational cost to criminals will do little to deter those who deliberately trade in dangerous and illegal weapons. If the economic reward remains greater than the economic risk, the deterrent effect is minimal. Therefore, it seems prudent to put into statute appropriate provisions to ensure that that never is the case. The purpose of penalties must be both to punish wrongdoing and to disrupt the business model that makes it worth pursuing.

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Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel]

56: Clause 27, page 31, line 16, leave out “4” and insert “14”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would increase the maximum sentence for the new offence of possessing a weapon with intent.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 56 in my name seeks to increase the maximum sentence for the new offence of possessing a weapon with intent, where conviction is conviction on indictment, from four to 14 years. The principle behind a new offence of possessing a weapon with intent to use violence is well intentioned. It is one that we support. We are living through an epidemic of knife crime, and the level of general offensive weapon offences has shown no signs of declining over the past decade.

I appreciate that the Government are taking some of the necessary steps to attempt to curb this situation and this new offence is one of them. Creating more offences to eliminate the problem at source is the right approach, in our view, while introducing additional measures that target the most dangerous in our society is also necessary. This Bill creates a separate category for those who have violent intent, which, in principle, should achieve the latter. But it is worth implementing this offence only if it is accompanied by sufficient corresponding punishment. The Bill as it stands does not achieve this.

There is, of course, the current law that prohibits the carrying of a bladed article in public. That offence carries a maximum sentence of four years. It is a blanket offence which does not consider additional factors; it treats offenders the same regardless of whether they hold some kind of ill intent. This new law, conversely, will consider intent. Violent intent will become an additional factor to be considered, and rightly so, because the extra element of meaning to commit damage or harm makes it a worse crime than simply carrying a weapon. It will differentiate between those who might and those who intend to cause a threat to society. In essence, the question behind this amendment is: why then is this not reflected in the punishment? Why does the new law carry the same maximum four-year sentence?

This law should work to do two things. It should allow the justice system to differentiate between those who pose intentional threats and those who may not. It should deter those who have intent from leaving the house with a weapon in the first place. If the penalty does not differ from the current law, it will do neither. If the maximum sentence remains identical, the courts will not have the means to sufficiently differentiate criminals who have been convicted. The criminals themselves will not be deterred in the first place, as there will be no greater threat of repercussion than that which already exists.

If we are to treat carrying an offensive weapon with violent intent as a separate, more serious crime, it must be reflected in the punishment. It is an incredibly serious offence that someone should not only break the law by carrying an offensive weapon but do so with the intent to inflict damage or harm. It self-evidently threatens the safety of our citizens and shows complete disregard for the functioning of society. Sentencing these criminals as if their violent intent is merely a secondary factor that does not deserve consideration will not do, in my respectful submission.

Amendment 56 seeks to solve this disparity. It increases the maximum sentence to 14 years. It is a maximum sentence, a ceiling, not the sentence to be imposed whenever. That, in our view, is the right thing to do. It will give the courts the means to reflect this in practice. There is no reason why the Government should not wish to achieve both these things, but the punishment must be reflective of the crime. I look forward to the Government’s response on this. For those reasons, I beg to move.

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Coupled with the measures in the Bill, we are seeking to do what I hope all noble Lords and the noble Baroness wish, which is to send signals that there are significant penalties for carrying a knife and for possessing a weapon with intent. We think that the proposals in the Bill are proportionate. There is a difference between us on that. If the noble Lord remains unsatisfied, I am sure we can examine those issues further on Report, but that is the view of the Government. That is a firm commitment. It is new legislation and I hope it is welcomed; if he wishes to pursue the issue of a higher penalty, we can discuss that and, no doubt, vote on that on Report.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Goschen and Lord Blencathra, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for their support for this amendment. I really hope that the Minister will reflect on the support for it from different quarters of the Committee.

I particularly want to comment on the speech of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, in which he pointed to the 12-month summary conviction, because under the Government’s Sentencing Bill, that sentence would be suspended. A convicted criminal, having just been proven in court to hold violent intent, will not go to prison, but will instead be released back into the public. I really hope that the Minister reflects on that specific point, as well as the more general one, which is that it is self-evident that legislation must give the courts the necessary flexibility to account for different levels of crime. If we cap the maximum sentence at four years, which is the same as for the lesser crime of carrying a bladed article, we risk not effectively penalising those planning to commit the worst possible crimes.

As the Minister said, it is a differentiation, this new offence. It is a more serious offence, and it must be sufficiently different from the existing law: that difference must continue through to a different level of sentence. It is consistent that the maximum punishment is increased to reflect this additional consideration, but the Bill does not yet do this. The maximum sentence remains at four years, even though it is for a more serious crime. Therefore, I really hope that the Minister reflects on everything that has been said tonight and that he looks again at Amendment 56 in my name.

It is an amendment that solves these issues: it gives the courts ample room to adapt their sentences, based on the severity of a crime; it gives the judiciary the discretion to issue longer sentences than it is currently able to do; and it is a maximum—I say again, it is a maximum—sentence. It is a ceiling. It would allow the justice system to effectively deal with criminals who pose a tangible risk to their fellow citizens, and act as a great deterrent. We all want a system where the worst criminals are proportionately punished and the courts are able to adapt to achieve this. Although I listened very carefully, I am not convinced that the legislation as it stands achieves this, and I really hope that the Government reconsider this. For the time being, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 56 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard some very powerful and emotional speeches, and I very much hope that, having seen the unanimous support all around the Committee, the Minister will respond positively today. I wholeheartedly support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin; I would have added my name to all of them, had there been space on the Order Paper.

This has been quite a dark debate, but as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, these are the direct, evidence-based conclusions of her independent pornography review. I very much welcome the questions the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked about the lack of a response to the Creating a Safer World review. It analysed 132,000 videos and clearly established an unambiguous link between the consumption of extreme pornography and violence against women and girls, both online and offline. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said, it is poison; as the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Boycott, said, it is motivated by money; and as the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, said, it is the worst end of human nature for profit.

As we have heard today from all around the Committee, we are extremely mindful of the emotional impact on young women and girls in particular. I acknowledge that, in their later Amendments 294 and 295, the Government have made some progress on the possession and publication of pornographic images portraying strangulation and suffocation. The review by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, found that such content is rife on mainstream platforms and has normalised life-threatening violence, to the extent that 58% of young people have seen it, so I welcome the Government’s moves to close that specific gap.

However, while the Government have addressed the issue of strangulation, these amendments address the remaining glaring legislative gaps identified by the review. We cannot shut the door on one form of extreme violence, while leaving the windows wide open for others.

Amendment 314 seeks to establish a fundamental principle: parity between the online and offline worlds, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, and others, have explained. Since 1984, we have prohibited content offline that the British Board of Film Classification would refuse to classify, such as material promoting non-consensual acts or sexual violence. Again, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I hope that, given the extremely effective way the BBFC has carried out its duties, we will not find it too difficult to find a way of sharpening that amendment to make sure that there is a very clear definition of the kind of content online that is equivalent to that offline, which we are seeking to regulate.

Amendments 290 and 291 address content that mimics child sexual abuse and incest. The noble Baroness’s review highlighted that “teen” is one of the most frequently searched terms, often leading to videos featuring performers styled with props, such as lollipops and school uniforms, to look underage. Experts working with sex offenders have made it clear that viewing this type of violent or age-play pornography is a key risk factor. Men who offend against children are 11 times more likely to watch violent pornography than those who do not. By allowing this content to proliferate, we are effectively hosting a training ground for abuse. These amendments would extend the definition of extreme pornography to cover these specific, harmful depictions.

Amendment 292 would introduce a duty for pornography websites to verify not just age but consent. We know that the average age of entry into trafficking for pornography in the US is just 12.8 years. Currently, once a video is online, a woman who has been coerced, trafficked or simply changed her mind has often no legal mechanism to withdraw that consent. What the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, said on this was particularly telling. This amendment would provide a necessary right to erasure, ensuring that platforms must remove content if consent is withdrawn. If the banking sector can verify identity to secure our finances, the multi-billion pound pornography industry can verify identity to secure human dignity.

Amendment 298 addresses the rapid rise of AI nudification apps. As my noble friend Lady Benjamin said, the Internet Watch Foundation reported a 380% increase in AI-generated child exploitation imagery between 2023 and 2024—a staggering figure. These tools are being weaponised to humiliate women and children. This amendment would criminalise the possession of software designed to create non-consensual nude images, closing a loophole before it widens further. I add to what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said on the need for wider guard-rails on large language models in, I hope, future government legislation.

The Government have rightly recognised the harm of strangulation content, and I urge them now to accept the logic of their own position and to support these additional amendments to deal with incest, child-mimicking content and the fundamental issue of consent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, we should be ashamed of ourselves, and I hope that we now ensure that the legislation catches up with the reality of the digital age.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Bertin not just for tabling and speaking to these amendments but for the excellent work she has done and continues to do in this area, which by all accounts has taken its toll. She has campaigned on these matters for a long time and deserves so much praise from all of us.

When I first discussed these amendments with my noble friend, I could hardly believe what she was telling me. Essentially, their underlying premise is that certain forms of extreme pornography are still allowed despite the fact that they have been proven to have highly damaging impacts on the development and behaviour of young boys and adolescents, not to mention the exploitation of children, women and so many victims and potential victims of this subject matter.

We have heard compelling speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Kennedy, and, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, in support of these amendments. There are so many perspectives from which one can look at them. One slightly personal perspective I have is that of a father of teenage children. I have teenage sons. Like all teenagers, they are bombarded with technology, challenged by social media and confronted with the unlimited scope that access to the internet can provide, with all its positive possibilities but also all its temptations, and in particular the dangers inherent in online pornography of an extreme nature. My sons, in effect, are the target audience of much of this material and I do not want this to be the new normal, as one of my noble friends described it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, spoke of poison and how we have to find ways of dealing with it. I concur completely. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, who said so powerfully that technology is outpacing regulation. That is the real danger here. As my noble friend Lady Shawcross-Wolfson said, we have to close the loopholes.

My noble friend Lady Bertin has highlighted that, at present, we criminalise child sexual abuse in all its forms. We thus criminalise sexual activity within certain family relationships and the making of indecent images of children, yet, astonishingly, online content that depicts, fantasises about or encourages these same criminal acts is legally and widely available.

Amendment 290 confronts the deeply troubling reality that material which appears to portray a child—even when the performer is an adult—can be used to groom, normalise or encourage sexual interest in children. We know that such material is not harmless fantasy. Law enforcement, child protection organisations and international research bodies have all warned that material appearing to depict children fuels harmful attitudes and increases the risk that individuals progress towards real-world offending.

Crucially, Amendment 290 would also create a new offence of producing or distributing material that glorifies or encourages sexual activity with a child or family member. No one in this Chamber needs reminding that such conduct is criminal and profoundly harmful, yet text-based, audio and visual material explicitly celebrating child abuse and incest remains widely accessible on mainstream pornography sites and user-generated content platforms. The law should recognise the role of such material in grooming, desensitisation and normalisation of abuse.

Amendment 291 addresses the glaring inconsistency whereby extreme pornographic content is prohibited in many contexts yet explicit depictions of unlawful sexual acts between family members—including those involving persons described or portrayed as under 18 —are not necessarily captured by existing legislation. Incest is a criminal offence, reflecting both the safeguarding imperative and the inherent power imbalance within some familial relationships. Yet, again, pornographic content portraying incest, often stylised to appear illicit, coercive or involving younger family members, remains permissible to host, sell and distribute online so long as it is performed by adults.

This amendment would not criminalise lawful adult behaviour; it would criminalise the possession of extreme pornographic images depicting acts that would themselves be criminal if performed in reality. Once again, the principle is consistency. What is an offence offline should not be freely commodified online under the guise of entertainment.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Brinton has made a powerful case for removing the limitation period. The Government have already signalled a willingness to act, so objections are likely about timing rather than policy—at least, I hope that is the case.

The amendment would align the law with what Parliament has already accepted, which is that child sexual abuse is distinct from other offences. This is a crime defined by secrecy, grooming and a stark power imbalance. We know that victims often take decades to come forward, so allowing offenders to shelter behind time would reward fear and coercion.

Amendment 293 provides clarity for all parties—victims, police, prosecutors and, indeed, defendants. It removes the scope for technical argument about whether a particular course of conduct falls outside time and instead focuses everyone on the core question, which is whether the evidence available can support a fair trial. It also brings coherence. Across the system, we are rightly moving away from arbitrary cut-offs that prevent past abuse ever being heard in court. The amendment is a modest step in the same direction in accordance with the recommendations of inquiries and the expectations of survivors.

There must be no time bar on prosecuting sexual activity with a child. If we are serious about saying that such conduct is never acceptable, surely we should also be serious about saying that it is never too late to pursue justice for it. The amendment achieves that and warrants the support of the Committee and the Government.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for bringing forward the amendment. Obviously, victims of child sexual offences should always be able to seek justice, no matter how long it takes them to come forward.

We absolutely understand and respect the intention behind this proposal. Many survivors of abuse do not feel able to disclose until years—sometimes decades—after the offence, and there is a very real sense of injustice when the law appears to stand in the way of accountability.

However—and on this point I side with my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier—I think there exists no limitation period for offences that would occur under Section 9 of the Sexual Offences Act. The Limitation Act 1980 applies only to civil cases, and indictable criminal cases do not have general limitation periods in England and Wales. As offences under Section 9 of the Sexual Offences Act are indictable only, we do not think the amendment is strictly necessary, despite the fact that it pursues a very noble aim. While sympathetic, therefore, to the principle—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Briefly, has the noble Lord opposite considered Section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act, which has a six-month time limit on prosecutions brought in the magistrates’ court? Has he considered that Section 9 is neither a way of—my noble friend the Minister is shaking her head at me, so maybe it is not necessary for the noble Lord to answer.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that. I will just wait for the Minister to explain to all of us what the position is.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, these dangerous practices of strangulation and suffocation are often used to control, intimidate and silence in domestic abuse situations. The growing normalisation of strangulation during sex risks giving abusers a veneer of acceptability and a false sense of impunity. Strangulation was the cause of death of over a quarter of the women killed between 2014 and 2025—about 550 in total. In that context, the case for criminalising such images is compelling. Mainstream platforms must be put under a duty to remove this material or face sanction.

The related amendments in this group are welcome, in order to ensure that the new offences operate coherently across England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We on these Benches very much support this group of amendments, which sends a clear signal that such material is totally unacceptable.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I thank the Minister for tabling this group of amendments, and I am happy to offer the support of these Benches. The criminalisation of strangulation in pornography is part of a wider initiative that has been championed across the House and discussed today, particularly on this side by my noble friend Lady Bertin, but by many others as well.

The prevalence of strangulation in pornography and the harm it causes are very clear. Distributing such material is already illegal offline; the fact that its online equivalent is not is a gap in the law, and these amendments correct that. They close that gap and prohibit the distribution of a practice that is both dangerous and extreme. I know that there are reports from some GPs of an exponential rise in incidents of non-fatal strangulation and suffocation among younger generations, which they largely attribute to pornography; the least we can do is to provide restrictions on dangerous content that should not be normalised. As has been said, distributing non-fatal strangulation images is unlawful offline; it makes little sense that that is not replicated in our online legislation. This group aims to correct that, and I willingly offer the support of these Benches.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords for their support for these amendments, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin, Lady Gohir and Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I also note the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, about enforcement and regulation. As I said in the debate on the second group, I am very keen to continue working with the noble Baroness on other matters related to online pornography— there is much more to be done.

I hope that, in the meantime, your Lordships will join me in supporting the important steps the Government are taking in relation to strangulation pornography. I beg to move.

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In closing, I very much share the impatience of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. We have a widening group of those interested in online safety, who have taken a strong interest ever since the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill. We will keep pressure up on the Government, but I very much hope that they will not need too much pressuring and will respond with alacrity to these amendments.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge for bringing these important matters to your Lordships’ Committee and for speaking so passionately and clearly about the subject matter of her amendments. There is very little that I can add. My noble friend has an impressive track record in this area, her Private Member’s Bill being a striking example of that, and these amendments are very much in the same vein. As she made clear, we must all remember what is truly important here, and that is the victims of these events. They must be at the centre of all our debates, and today they have been.

I am very pleased that my noble friend has retabled Amendments 333 and 334, which were brought forward in the other place by my honourable friend Joe Robertson MP. The omission of recklessness as part of the offence of spiking is, as many noble Lords have said, a severe oversight by this Government; we believe that it should be rectified. My noble friend Lady Owen has our full support for this amendment and our broad support for the rest of her amendments.

Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to my Amendment 295C, which is a probing amendment. By way of background, Schedule 9 inserts new Sections 66AA and 66AB into the Sexual Offences Act 2003. New Section 66AB contains exceptions to the new offences of taking or recording intimate photographs or films, and its subsection (3) contains an exemption for healthcare professionals who are taking intimate photos of a person who is under 16 and lacks the capacity to consent. My probing amendment would remove the provision that the person has to be under 16 for the exemption to apply. It seeks to probe the Government about a situation where, for example, a doctor has a 30 year-old patient with severe learning disabilities or an 80 year-old patient with dementia. Neither has the capacity to consent, but the doctor has to take a photo of the patient in an intimate state to show the patient’s condition to their consultant, for example. That doctor would not be included in the exemption and therefore would be liable to prosecution.

This is simply to try to understand the Government’s reasoning because, if the exemption is to apply—and it should—there should be no distinction based on age. The doctor is performing the same professional duty to a person who is 15 and cannot consent and a person who is 18 and cannot consent. I will be grateful if the noble Baroness can clarify that particular point.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I join with all other Members of your Lordships’ Committee in expressing gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for bringing forward this large group of amendments, as well as to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, for bringing forward Amendment 295C. I am also pleased to commend government Amendments 300 to 307 in my name, which make two changes to the existing intimate image abuse provisions in Clause 84 and Schedule 9.

This is an eclectic, disparate and rather large group of amendments. I will endeavour to address them in as concise a manner as I can, but it is going to take a bit of time, so I hope your Lordships will forgive me. I start by stressing that the Government are committed to tackling the complete violation that is non-consensual intimate image abuse. However, before I turn to the noble Baroness’s amendments, I want to make a few general comments that apply to many of the amendments in this group, and to some of the others that are being considered by your Lordships’ Committee today.

I start with a comment with which I am sure we can all agree: it is essential that the law is clear and easy to interpret. In that context, I make the following observation, not so much as a Minister, but drawing on my past experience as a senior prosecutor and judge. It is very tempting to add new offences to the statute book. Some of these are intended to spell out the conduct of which society disapproves, even when it is already caught by more general offences—or, some would say, to make something that is already criminal, more criminal.

It is tempting to say that, if such an additional offence makes no substantive change, then why not—the Government should simply accept it. However, such changes are not always without consequence. In my experience, it can sometimes make it harder to prosecute, and thus secure convictions, when there are a number of different offences on the statute book, all of which cover the same behaviour but often with slightly different elements or maximum penalties. I know that that is absolutely not the intended effect of many of these amendments, but I would gently suggest to your Lordships that it is worth bearing in mind that legislating for large numbers of new offences may not be without adverse consequences.

That said, I have the utmost respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Owen. She and I share the determination to deal with some pretty repellent behaviour that has the ability to ruin victims’ lives; the question is how best to achieve it. As I said before, I want to make it absolutely clear that the Government and I are very much in listening mode. I was very pleased to meet the noble Baroness recently, and I thank her for that. I wanted to understand better the intentions underlying some of her amendments, and I look forward to working with her closely over the coming months.

I am thankful for the contributions of my noble friends Lord Hacking, Lady Curran and Lady Chakrabarti. I am afraid that I am going to have to disappoint my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti on the implementation date for the deepfake legislation, as she will probably not be surprised to hear. It will depend on a number of factors, and I cannot give her a date today. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin, Lady Maclean, Lady Sugg and Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who was kind enough to leave the question of the ombudsman with me. I am also thankful for the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Banner and Lord Cameron, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.

I turn now to this group of amendments. Amendment 295BA seeks to create a reporting mechanism for non-consensual intimate images to be removed within 48 hours. The Government recognise the calls to go further than the existing protections afforded by the Online Safety Act. We share the concern that some non-consensual intimate images remain online even after requests for removal have been made by the Revenge Porn Helpline. Worse still, some remain online following a successful conviction for non-consensual intimate image offences. We absolutely acknowledge this problem. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are considering how best to tackle this issue, and I hope to be able to provide more detail on the work in this area on Report.

I turn to Amendment 295BB. As I have just said, the Government recognise the harm caused by the continued circulation of intimate images and thus share the intention underlying this amendment. There are existing mechanisms that allow the courts to deprive offenders of images once they have been convicted of intimate image abuse offences. We are already amending deprivation orders so that they can be applied to seizing intimate images and any devices containing those images, regardless of whether the device was used in the offence itself. An example would be an external hard drive: even if it was not used to perpetrate the offence, it can be seized if it has the images on it. This will significantly limit the defendant’s ability to retain or access intimate image abuse material.

That said, we recognise that these existing powers were not originally designed with intimate images in mind, and that, as a result, they currently do not extend to devices that contain images but were not directly used to commit the offence. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are taking steps to strengthen the framework.

I turn to Amendments 295BC and 295BD, which were also spoken to by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. I must say that the noble Viscount slightly lost me with some of the more technical details of what he was describing.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for the explanations of their amendments. I support the Government’s Amendments 308 and 309 for reasons that will be explained by the Minister. I go further and support the Amendments 312 and 313, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie. It must be so difficult for social workers and charities to steer sex workers away to a better life if they have to admit to these offences when seeking legitimate or conventional employment, when they have not even been found to be dishonest. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in her Amendment 316B for the reasons that she explained. This is yet another online problem.

I am afraid that I cannot support Amendments 310 and 311, which seek to make buying or organising the provision of sexual services illegal. I come at this from a similar position to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone.

In the recent past, and for centuries before, we erroneously thought that we needed to stamp out gay sex because we did not like it. Thanks to the effort of great campaigners, people like me now recognise that the policy was absolutely bonkers. We made otherwise law-abiding citizens out to be criminals, we turned patriots into security risks, and we made sure that around 5% of the population could never reach their full potential—and we hurt them. We made sure that gay people could not have stable relationships, which then caused a variety of health issues for both the gay and the straight communities. We do much the same with prostitution.

We have an especially nasty name for sex workers—we call them prostitutes or worse. However, quite a lot of people, mainly men, are happy to use them for a variety of reasons—some understandable and some not so good. We do everything that we can to make it a dirty, horrible, seedy, disgusting business, in the vain hope that doing so will reduce the problem. It does anything but.

We ensure that only criminals can engage in managing the paid-for sex business, just like the drug trade. Worse still, and just like homophobia, we create a health problem with sexually transmitted diseases, when we could minimise the problem if we so desired. The noble Baroness explained the logic behind her amendments. If the policy were successful, there is no doubt that it would be a great moral success. However, to be successful, the police would have to devote huge resources to absolutely stamp out prostitution in the UK, and I am not confident that they can.

I see considerable problems with these amendments. The first is around the safety of sex workers, and the noble Baroness touched on this. I would imagine that, very often, appointments are made via an ordinary mobile phone. If something goes horribly wrong with the encounter, no doubt the police can access the mobile phone records and use relevant detection techniques. Sex workers can currently identify regular, and therefore safe, clients. If these amendments became law, clients would not use their main mobile; they would surely use burner phones, regularly change them and turn them on only at railway stations and the like. Of course, this activity would no longer be a red flag; it would be quite understandable. If the booking is online, clients would use a website that might be far away from the UK, in authorities such as Russia or the Far East. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, talked with great knowledge about this issue. It would lead to significant cyber and espionage risks compared with sex workers using certain well-known UK sites.

One would hope that someone who acquires a sexually transmitted disease would be honest with the health professionals seeking to identify the source of the infection, particularly if it were hard to treat. If the amendment is accepted, very few clients would agree to reveal that they have paid for sex, where and with whom.

I can understand why the noble Baroness has sought extraterritorial jurisdiction. If she did not, we would be exporting our problems—if they are problems—to another country, which might be as close as Germany, for instance, which has for many years done what I am about to propose. If the police are given concrete evidence that this offence has been committed somewhere on the continent, are they going to go in hot pursuit? I am not sure that the police in Berlin, for instance, would be very helpful, given that it is not an offence there.

When certain state employees are security vetted, it is necessary to understand the applicant’s sexuality because it could obviously be a major vulnerability, but there is never a problem if the applicant is honest and candid, and the vetting team is not easily shocked. However, it would be a problem if the applicant admits to serious criminal offences. If they successfully lie to the vetting team, they make themselves a security risk.

Unlike the online problems that we have been discussing, we are talking about the world’s oldest profession. If we think that we have stamped it out, we may only have driven it deep underground, as explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. Those seeking paid sex would have to use dangerous IT solutions, which would leave them, and possibly their employers, much more vulnerable to cyber attacks and blackmail. The sex workers involved would be involved in a very serious criminal undertaking—not just, as at the moment, perhaps three girls setting up a flat together.

What is to be done to address the ills that the noble Baroness has so skilfully articulated? I do not disagree with her analysis of the problem and the evils. Hitherto in the UK, we have taken a priggish and prudish attitude to these matters and made things far worse, just as we did with gay people. The answer is that we should regulate, license and tax this activity, just as we do with alcohol. We should license establishments, whether large or small—the larger establishments could be discreetly located so that they do not interfere with the local community. We should ensure that sex workers never again have to give the majority of their earnings to an immoral criminal who will abuse them if they do not. The economics of the profession would be favourable for sex workers if there were no immoral parasites involved. We should ensure that criminals are not able to be involved in the business at all. We should license sex workers to ensure that they have not been trafficked and are not being coerced into the business. This policy would make it far more difficult to force people into the business and would drastically reduce the risks for sex workers.

If we went down this route, there would be significant benefits apart from the tax take, which would be significant. We could require regular health checks and make sure that any drug dependencies were properly managed. We could make this a condition of the personal licence. It is reasonable to argue that sex workers would not have to entertain so many clients in a day, and in any case, as I have suggested, it would be a far less sordid activity for all. If the Minister is cautious in his response to these amendments, I will gladly support him.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in what has been a thoughtful and at points sobering debate on this group of amendments. Each amendment has been brought forward with a genuine desire to protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, a shared goal among all of us.

On Amendments 308 and 309 in the name of the Minister, I of course understand and respect the intention that lies behind them, which is to ensure that individuals who were exploited as children, often in circumstances of profound vulnerability, are not burdened in adulthood by convictions or cautions that arose from their victimisation. We share the Minister’s desire to protect children from such exploitation and absolutely recognise that those under 18 involved in prostitution can very often be victims.

The amendments as drafted would create an automatic disregard or pardon for every offence of loitering or soliciting committed under the age of 18. Will the Minister explain whether a blanket approach of this kind is the right mechanism? Young people under 18 can be convicted of a wide range of offences, many of which the law rightly considers on a case-by-case basis with great care and nuance. It is not immediately clear why this category of offence should be given automatic treatment when others are subject to a case-by-case consideration. I totally accept that that is a difficult question. While we are very sympathetic to the concerns that underpin the amendments, we hope to hear from the Minister a more detailed rationale for them.

Amendments 310 and 311, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, raise significant issues about the role of those who enable, promote or profit from prostitution, including through online platforms, and about the criminal liability of those who pay for sexual services. Again, we absolutely support the underlying principle that exploitation, whether offline or online, must be robustly tackled and that those who profit from the abuse or commodification of vulnerable people should face meaningful consequences. The growth of online facilitation has created new and disturbing avenues for exploitation, and we support efforts to ensure that our legislative framework keeps pace with these developments.

However, the approach that the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, has suggested through these amendments, which is effectively to repeal the current offences in the Street Offences Act and replace them with the new offences in her amendments, is a very wide-ranging change to the law. Such a sweeping and significant alteration to our legal framework should not be undertaken, in our view, without a serious consideration of the impact and should be the subject of a serious examination, consultation with the police and other groups and the publication of proposals by the Home Office. It is not a change that we can simply make on a whim.

Finally, Amendments 316A and 316B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, concern the rapidly evolving landscape of online sexual exploitation. We share the noble Baroness’s concern about the ways in which digital platforms can facilitate harmful or coercive practices and about the need to ensure that those who profit from the exploitation of vulnerable individuals are held to account. We recognise the seriousness of the issues that she has raised this evening and the need for continued work to ensure that offenders cannot simply exploit technological advances to evade scrutiny or sanction. I hope the Government will consider these amendments very carefully.

There is clear recognition of the need to strengthen protections for vulnerable people and to ensure that those who exploit them, whether in person or online, are met with the full force of the law. I look forward to continuing discussions with the Government as the Bill progresses and to hearing from the Minister tonight so that we can ensure that the legislation is robust and proportionate and delivers the protections that victims so clearly deserve.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the problem of prostitution has been around since biblical times. I can understand why the noble Lord might not be very supportive of Amendments 310 and 311, but does my noble friend on the Front Bench not offer any solution to the problem of prostitution?

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl for that question. I have made the position of the Front Bench clear and think it is now for the Minister to answer such a testing question.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick for commencing this discussion and debate. A number of views have been expressed in Committee today and some go wider than the amendments that are before us. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, raised a number of issues which go beyond what is before us. My noble friend Lady Ritchie also touched on the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie. It is clear that there are differing views in the Committee—from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, on the Front Bench opposite—which tells me that this is a truly complex area where there are very different legislative options open and where the Government need to consider very carefully what needs to be done.

The Government are absolutely committed to tackling the harms associated with prostitution and sexual exploitation, including where it takes place online. This is an important part of our work on tackling violence against women and girls which, as colleagues in the Committee will know, is a top government priority, and about which we will be saying more shortly. But we need to look at the evidence. We have limited evidence as to what will most effectively reduce demand for prostitution and disrupt exploitation without—and this is the key point that came out of some of the contributions—unintentionally causing harm to victims and survivors and making life more difficult for those who choose that lifestyle. I say to my noble friend that the Government are not in a position to accept the amendments today, but I want to make it absolutely clear that we are in the business of taking steps to tackle sexual exploitation and to gather evidence to inform further interventions in the future.

Amendment 310 in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie would make it an offence to assist, facilitate, or control the prostitution of another person, regardless of whether the individual secures any personal gain from this facilitation. The broad wording of this offence could—and again this echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, said—have an adverse consequence for people who choose to be engaged in prostitution, for example, by criminalising professionals such as healthcare support workers, charities which provide sexually transmitted infections testing or those providing contraception or safety planning. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, made a compelling case around some of the issues that the Government have reflected on in relation to that amendment. My noble friend Lady Goudie’s amendment would also make it a criminal offence to operate a website hosting adverts for prostitution, and I will come back to that again in a moment, if I may.

My noble friend Lady Ritchie, in Amendments 316A and 316B, would introduce new criminal offences to tackle the sale of personalised sexual content online, including audiovisual and visual content. Amendment 316A would make it an offence to own, manage or facilitate one of these online platforms, while Amendment 316B would create an offence of causing or inciting an individual to sell personalised sexual content on these platforms. It would also introduce a duty on the online platform to remove personalised sexual content within 24 hours if an individual is convicted of the offence and if an individual who is incited to sell the content has requested its removal.

The Government recognise very strongly that we need to take action to tackle these websites. The so-called pimping websites need to be addressed and tackled. However, I would argue that criminalising those websites may have safety implications for people who sell sex and may result in displacement to on-street prostitution, which is more dangerous for individuals. It may also disrupt policing operations. The police can scan adult service websites for signs of vulnerability and exploitation and to gain data to support criminal investigations.

I accept that members of the Committee might want government Ministers to say that, but Changing Lives, an organisation supporting people who have been sexually exploited, also advocates against criminalising adult service websites. Instead, it is calling for stronger regulation, more referral mechanisms and more funding to support people affected by exploitation.

Amendment 311 in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie would make it an offence for an individual to pay for or attempt to pay for sex either for themselves or on behalf of others. The Government have looked in detail at this approach in other countries which have taken it and have seen indications that the law can be misused to harass and victimise people engaged in prostitution. Again, that is a matter for debate and discussion, but that is the view the Government currently take.

Amendment 312, in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie, would repeal the offence in Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 which criminalises a person aged 18 or over who persistently loiters or solicits

“in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution”.

Amendment 313 would disregard prior convictions and cautions. There may be some common ground here, because I absolutely recognise the concern that this offence may criminalise vulnerable individuals and restrict their opportunities for employment. However, I am also mindful that on-street prostitution can have an impact on local communities, and it is important that we consider their views.

My noble friend Lady Goudie, were she able to be here, would say that the criminal law rightly evolved in 2015 to make it clear that children cannot be prostitutes and that any child who is paid in exchange for sex is clearly a victim of child sexual exploitation. Therefore, I would argue that it is long overdue that individuals issued cautions or convictions for the offence in Section 1 of the Street Offences Act before 2015 have their criminal records expunged.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, asked for details. I simply repeat: children cannot be prostitutes. Children who are paid in exchange for sex are clearly victims of sexual exploitation. The records currently in place provide significant barriers to the employment and psychological rehabilitation of those who are now adults. It is important that we look at the long-term consequences of those incidences and help support them in rebuilding their lives. That is why we have tabled government Amendment 308, which will disregard convictions and cautions for Section 1 offences issued to under 18s. Amendment 309 will provide pardons for such convictions and cautions.

In each case, what we have tried to do—I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will reflect on this—is to ensure that the disregard and pardon are automatic. We do not want to retraumatise victims and survivors of childhood abuse by requiring them to go through an application process. I asked today in our internal Home Office discussions how many individuals this could impact. We have looked at the figures for the last 30 years and assess that 350 to 352 individuals would fall under the auspices of that. Someone aged under 18 30 years ago is now approaching their 50s. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that for that person an offence committed as a child would still be on their record. Something they maybe did not have responsibility for at the time would therefore impact upon their employment and life chances. Therefore, I would welcome his support for that repeal.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment exposes the indefensible gap between Parliament’s clear intent and women’s lived reality. The new offence was deliberately framed to capture deliberate, targeted and deeply damaging conduct, with a suitably serious maximum penalty, but without commencement, there are no consequences for offenders and no visible progress for the public. The Government’s delay sits uneasily alongside their stated ambition to halve violence against women and girls, particularly given previous assurances that implementation would follow swiftly as part of their wider strategy.

From these Benches, the message is simple: Parliament has already done the hard work in legislating; what is now required is immediate commencement, not further consultation or prevarication, so that this cross-party achievement can finally begin to offer real protection on the streets and in public spaces.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for moving this amendment, which, as she says, seeks to accelerate the commencement of the 2023 Act. The intention behind the amendment is clear and wholly understandable: to ensure that victims of sex-based harassment benefit from protections that Parliament has already approved, and to do so without further delay.

Without doubt, there is a shared desire across this House to see individuals, particularly women and girls, better protected from harassment in public spaces, and while I entirely understand that commencement provisions often involve important practical and operational considerations, including the readiness of policing and guidance frameworks, and that there has to be an explanation of the implications of altering the timetable set out in the original Act, we on these Benches recognise the motivation behind the amendment and the concerns that it seeks to address.

If the Government do not agree with the amendment, we look forward to hearing from the Minister what progress there has been towards commencement and whether the approach proposed here would assist the effective implementation of the Act’s provisions.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for raising the important issue of public sexual harassment. As has been discussed, Amendment 315 seeks to automatically commence the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 when the Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent. I remind the Committee that this Government have been responsible for periods of activity since July 2024, not for two years. As members of the Committee will know, tackling public sexual harassment is an important part of the Government’s mission to halve the levels of violence against women and girls in a decade.

As the Committee knows, and as I have said on numerous occasions, including today, the new violence against women and girls strategy is to be produced as soon as possible. It will include a range of actions to tackle sexual harassment. I reassure the noble Baroness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, that the measures we are developing within this to address sex-based harassment include options for commencement of the 2023 Act.

I echo fully the sentiments of the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and agree that timely implementation of legislation is an important principle to follow. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that, if we pass legislation, we must look to introduce it. The Government have heard what noble Lords have said: namely, that we need to set a timeline for the commencement of the 2023 Act. It is important to fully consider the issues of implementation of the new offence, including engagement with the police and operational partners. We want to ensure that, when the offence comes into force, it is used often and well.

I assure all noble Lords who have spoken today that the Government intend to commence this offence as soon as is reasonably practicable. By bringing the provisions of the 2023 Act into force through the usual commencement regulations, we can ensure that this can be timed so that the police and others are ready. Accordingly, I suggest that the amendment is unnecessary. I ask the noble Baroness to be patient and wait for our violence against women and girls strategy, which will appear in short order. In the meantime, I hope she is content to withdraw the amendment.

I say that because we are looking at options to commence the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023. We believe that it will tackle this issue and ensure that women feel safer on our streets. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, as with all primary legislation, we need a preparatory period, but my officials in the Home Office, along with my ministerial colleagues, are working through the next steps. We are taking the time to get this right. I assure noble Lords that we will provide an update in due course and that they will not have too long to wait.

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[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments reflects the realities that the police, the NCA and child protection agencies now face, with children being coerced online into self-abuse, harming siblings or even abusing their family pets under pressure to provide images or live streams as proof. The overlap between child sexual abuse—as the noble Lord, Lord Black, has so clearly demonstrated—offline offending and animal cruelty is now recognised in safeguarding and law enforcement practice. It comes alongside a wider surge in online animal abuse content, in which abuse is staged, filmed and shared for attention or gratification. Strengthening the law on animal sexual abuse so that it reflects how this behaviour is perpetrated and disseminated online is therefore necessary and overdue.

Two points are critical. First, terminology matters. Animal sexual abuse is now used in policing and safeguarding precisely because it captures a wide range of exploitative conduct that is formed, traded and used to control and terrorise victims, including children. Narrowing the language risks opening loopholes that offenders will exploit. Secondly, these reforms need to go hand in hand with better investigation, data sharing and sentencing so that the growing volume of image-based offending against children and animals results in real accountability rather than just statistics.

The sexual abuse of animals and the use of such material within wider abusive networks, which is reprehensible, must now be treated with the seriousness the evidence demands.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Black for his contribution this evening and for his amendments. I welcome the moving of Amendment 316.

As others have said, animal sexual abuse is one of the cruellest acts imaginable. It sees the taking advantage of defenceless creatures, often by those who are expected to be caring for them, and shows complete disregard for living, conscious, feeling creatures who frequently become damaged, traumatised and often die as a result of ASA. I wholeheartedly agree with all noble Lords that it is an offence that deserves to be dealt with using the full force of modern law. The amendment would ensure that the law reflects the severity of the crime. As has been outlined by other noble Lords, applicable legislation is currently fragmented and often parochial. At present, too many offences fall outside the scope of prosecution and the legislative framework is not reflective of the current reality.

I will not repeat all the statistics presented in my noble friend’s excellent opening speech, but it is worth emphasising a couple of his points. The first is the connection of ASA with child sexual abuse offences, general sexual offences, domestic abuse and coercive and exploitative behaviour. As was demonstrated, there exists empirical evidence that proves this correlation. In the United States of America, for example, nearly one-third of ASA offenders have also sexually offended against children and adults. In the UK, 71% of domestic abuse victims have reported that the abuser also targeted pets. There is clear evidence that certain offenders commit similarly related crimes.