Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, when I became a practitioner at the Bar as a young woman in the late 1970s, freedom of expression was regularly used as the excuse to justify sometimes horrific porn. When there were discussions about this among lawyers, it was almost invariably said that women were being prudish and did not understand that erotica—that was always the word used, rather than pornography—was rather benign and had no effect on behaviour.

It has taken decades for that viewpoint to be challenged and research to be done to show the links between behaviours and exposure to extreme pornography—not that it has to be that extreme. Young women at the Bar tell me now that almost invariably when the computers of people who are brought to court for allegations of rape and sexual violations of all kinds are examined, they are full of pornography. The link between pornography and serious violation of women is now well established.

It is not about benign erotica. We are talking about the ways in which we have added to the menu of possibilities, often giving guidance to young men on how to perform sexually—in a way that does not involve any kind of tenderness and intimacy but is about objectifying women’s bodies and dealing with them in ways that are abusive, not hearing resistance or “no”, and never finding out whether something is acceptable.

The last time I wrote a book about the law was very interesting. This was 2018, and it was then republished a few years later after the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The book was being put on to audio, as nowadays happens, and I was doing the reading myself. A young woman was the technician in the sound lab where this was being done. There was a piece of the book about pornography, the way in which it was impacting on sexual offending and the serious influence that it brings to bear on the behaviour of many of the men who were coming before the courts.

She said to me, “I watch pornography every single day”, and I asked why. She said, “Because I wanted to know how to do sex—I wanted to know how it was done—but I’ve now become addicted to it”. It had replaced for her the possibility of having real sexual relationships. It was her confiding, in a sort of confessional box way, and saying, “What can I do about it to change my life? I find that it’s the only thing that can give me relief”. It was quite a shock to me as someone who thinks they know most things that happen under the human condition’s spread of behaviours. Here was this young woman, probably only about 18, describing how she was now addicted and how she had come to do it because boys felt that she was no good when it came to sexual behaviour.

I just want to say why I readily support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to whom I pay tribute. Over the years I have been exposed to pornography because it was part of the evidence in cases that I was doing. In war crimes, increasingly, there is on the phones of young soldiers all across the world a high level of pornography, and it leads to really vile and terrible abuses of women in conflict. For looking at the stuff that she has had to look at and the experience that she has had to bear, I really feel that we owe the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. People do not realise the toll that can take on somebody.

I was in chambers with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the famous writer Sir John Mortimer, who wrote the Rumpole series. John Mortimer was a great believer in freedom of expression, and he had done a number of cases around literature and freedom of expression in rather explicit novels. He then was pursued by the porn industry and offered great sums of money if he would act in porn cases, which on occasions he did. He said he used to take his glasses off because it was the only way he could live with looking at the stuff he was having to watch.

We were all offered the opportunity of inheriting his porn practice when he left the Bar, and I have to tell noble Lords that none of us was very interested in doing it because of the toll it takes on the human imagination. You want a mind that is not contaminated by this stuff in your expressions of love and intimacy, and men at the Bar who are doing this stuff say that there are times when they cannot dismiss it. We have to learn from the reality of this. This is poison; it poisons our children, and it is probably poisoning many of the menfolk who sit in this House. We have to find ways of dealing with it—it is going to be difficult.

I have supported the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, including the one on the mimicking of children. I can tell noble Lords very clearly that that is a real problem that we have currently. There is the business of depicting incest and the poison that it brings into households and so on. We discussed it only last week, and it disturbed so many people when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, described bots now doing that and the seeming inability to prosecute because it is not a human who is at the other end of it. Then there is business of not verifying age adequately. These are serious problems that we have.

One of the things that is inhibiting the response of jurisdictions, and I think ours might be one of them, is that we are concerned not to lose the confidence of the tech bros who are the billionaires making so much money out of many of the ways in which new technology exploits this and makes an incredible amount of money out of it.

One of the great Trumpian boasts is that our world should not be inhibited by regulation, but there are some areas where we need regulation and this is most definitely one of them. All of us need to come together and not feel that we should be obeisant to the American way.

I urge the Government, as sometimes happens with Governments of all complexions, not to make this an example of resistance to amendments that have been promoted largely by the other side. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has the support of women from around this Committee and from men. I ask the Government please to listen to these submissions; they are made because of the real detriment to our society and quality of life that is created by virtue of this stuff.

Not very long ago, I did a report for Scotland on sexual harassment in the street and the public square. It was very clear that disinhibition online leads to disinhibition in other places and in the public square. It is why young women out for an evening are suddenly abused by men coming out of pubs, asking to have sex with them and talking about the size of their breasts or their behinds, and speaking to women in the most revolting way. The women were saying, “I go home feeling degraded. I feel that I do not have the equality and dignity that are promised to me in this new world in which we like to imagine that men and women will be treated as well as each other”.

I urge the Committee to go with Amendment 314 on the parity of pornography online and offline, because we have to start regulating this stuff. If we do not do it soon, we will pay an incredible price.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I heartily support Amendment 314 and the others in this group. It is shocking that there is a disparity in the ways that online pornography and offline pornography are regulated. It rather makes a mockery of regulation in the offline sector, since anyone can circumvent it by watching material online that is banned offline.

As we have heard, material that is prohibited offline is prolific online. This includes content that depicts and/or promotes child sexual abuse, incest and harmful sexual acts such as sexual strangulation. The fact that the existing offline system of regulation has not been applied to the online world is a symptom of legislation not keeping pace with technological advances in the online world. Now is a golden opportunity to put that right.

Mainstream pornography sites host a vast amount of harmful content. Not only is that an inducement to participate in serious criminal activity but young people—boys and young men in particular—who access it are growing up with a totally warped view of what constitutes a normal, loving relationship. This surely risks seriously damaging their prospects of forming long and meaningful relationships in the future. We owe it to our younger generation to put this right and protect them from this horrific material.

Why on earth is access to such material not regulated effectively when exactly the same content offline is? It shows a naivety about the content and extent of damaging online material and the ease with which young and easily influenced minds can access it. It is shameful that there is no effective regulation of the age at which such material can be accessed. It needs to be put right urgently, and I urge the Government to seize this opportunity and accept Amendments 292 and 314 and the others in this group. Is there anything that we debate in this Chamber that is more important than protecting our children?

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness imagine just how unpopular I would be if I committed to an absolute timeframe? What I can say is that I hope she will take it from me that I regard this as important. The meetings with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, have started. This matters but we need to get it right.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

Will this review—yet another review—take place before Report? The Bill is before us, so once Report has passed, it will be too late to have the review. This is not something that we can leave until it is too late. Can we at least have an assurance that Report will be timed in a way that enables the Minister to come back and say, “This review has happened, and this is what we’re going to do”?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I entirely understand the sentiments. I cannot commit to that today, but I will take the point away.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendments 476, 477 and 478 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to which I have added my name. I am also sympathetic to the other amendments in this group and declare, as ever, that I am a schoolteacher in Hackney. I would also like to acknowledge the help of Transform Justice.

I rather innocently assumed that one of the cornerstones of the justice system in this country is rehabilitation, but this does not seem to be the case with our young people. As we have heard, every year in England and Wales there are 13,000 convictions of children aged 10 to 17, who are disproportionately from poor backgrounds, minoritised communities, in care or excluded from school. Those convicted acquire criminal records which only add to their disadvantage.

Some of these criminal records remain through life. A child charged for affray for a playground fight would have to disclose that for ever on a standard and enhanced DBS check. Also, currently, as we have heard, a criminal record is acquired on conviction rather than according to the date of the offence itself. This means that many people commit offences as children but acquire an adult criminal record because, through no fault of their own, the hearing at which they are convicted happens after their 18th birthday. This situation has got worse because of the recent delays in the court system. This is patently absurd.

As the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has said, brains do not mature until people are well into their twenties. Also, research has shown that teenagers take more risks when they have an audience. As I see in the playground every week, children are immature and often reckless, not seeing the consequences of their actions.

Our criminal records should allow for rehabilitation in order to allow young people to move on from childhood mistakes. These amendments would mean that young people should be able to be free of their childhood offences at a specific interval after they have finished their sentence, so they do not have to explain old and no longer relevant childhood offences to potential employers—even if they manage to get as far as an interview. We are not talking about the most serious crimes here.

For everyone else, these amendments would mean that childhood offences should automatically be taken off the records five and a half years after conviction. We also propose that a conditional caution, when accepted by a child, should not appear on the records. We propose that those whose conviction is delayed until after their 18th birthday should not acquire an adult criminal record.

With the number of NEETs approaching 1 million, we should be doing everything we can to remove barriers to employment and let rehabilitation of the young be truly part of the justice system.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to speak to Amendment 486D, and I support all the other amendments in this group. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for his compelling introduction, and for the other powerful speeches. You may wonder why I have tabled this very specific amendment. The best way I can relate it is to tell a brief story. I was truly shocked when a friend drew my attention to an incident involving his teenage daughter a few years ago, but which, I believe, affects many of our young people, receives very little publicity and ruins many lives.

My friend’s daughter had arrived at a railway station to find that the ticket machines were not working and there was a long queue for the ticket office. Desperate to catch a train to get her vaccinations for charitable work abroad, she foolishly jumped on a train without a ticket.

When she got out at her destination, she offered to pay at the barrier. The inspector told her to get a ticket at the ticket office. However, there was a long queue, so, knowing that she would not have time to do that, she went to the machines, but she found that she could not get a machine ticket for a journey from the station where she had left to the station she had arrived at.

Very naively, she thought she would therefore get the ticket after her appointment for vaccinations, and she left the station in a state of some panic. It was then that she was approached by the ticket inspector and told she was to be prosecuted under Section 5(3)(a) of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 for travelling without paying the fare with intent to avoid payment. It was the first time she had ever done something like this. Her ticket would have cost £3.20. That is less than a cappuccino coffee.

I discovered that, if convicted, she might not only face a fine of up to £1,000 or imprisonment for up to three months, but her conviction would be recorded on the Police National Database and future potential employers would see it after a basic criminal records search for up to six years and for up to 11 years, I believe, after an enhanced check. Through just one moment’s teenage lack of judgment, her prospects of obtaining a job and a career would be blighted during a crucial period when most young people are trying to get on the career ladder—all for a £3.20 fare.

Acting as a friend, I had many exchanges of correspondence with the rail company, all to no avail. The upshot was that I ended up joining her and her desperately worried parents at the local magistrates’ court for her hearing, where I intended to plead the mitigating circumstances of her case. To my horror, I discovered she was one of dozens of other children and young people queuing up that morning, charged with exactly the same offence, which was a regular occurrence at that magistrates’ court, I found. It was nothing unusual. I managed to persuade the train company to drop her case if she paid a fine, but thousands of other young people are not so lucky.

This was a young teenage woman who was on an important journey in connection with unpaid charitable work abroad. Her heart was in exactly the right place. On the spur of the moment, she panicked and thought she might miss her train. She had tried to pay the fare at the train barriers when she arrived, so she emphatically did not intend to avoid it. Of course—and I emphasise this—she thoroughly deserved the fine, but did she really deserve the likely prospect of being unable to obtain a decent job for the next six to 11 years, all for a one-off, first-time offence relating to a £3.20 train ticket? She was no serial offender.

The charity FairChecks has demonstrated that, with a criminal record, young people can be locked out of future employment opportunities and even voluntary work. Research shows that at least 30% of employers automatically exclude a candidate with an unspent conviction. But the facts show that, as we have heard, young peoples’ brains are still developing, which makes them more impulsive and less able fully to understand the consequences of their actions. It is therefore crucial that they be given the opportunity to move on from their mistakes without carrying the weight of those childhood errors during early adulthood. In all honesty, might not many of us say, “There but for the grace of God go our children”?

My amendment would give our children a second chance if they are found without a valid ticket on the railways. They would still be liable for a penalty fare or a fine but, provided it was a first offence, their lives would not be ruined by being given a disclosable criminal record. I emphasise that my amendment would not apply if they were caught a second time. In those circumstances, they would not have learned from their mistakes and potential employers would have just cause in wanting to know they were dishonest.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames and Lord Carter of Haslemere, and my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede for tabling Amendments 420, 476 to 478 and 486D. They form a formidable trio in terms of not just their expertise but the respect that they rightly command in your Lordships’ House.

A number of noble Lords have raised the question of the age of criminal responsibility. I hope I will be forgiven for not addressing that now; I know for certain that we will be addressing it at least twice in the days and weeks to come.

The Government acknowledge the principle that underpins these amendments—namely, that having a criminal record will have a significant impact on children and that such a record can, in some circumstances, follow them into later life as adults, again with profound consequences. That said, as I think all noble Lords agreed, it is critical that our criminal records disclosure regime strikes the right balance. On the one hand, we want to support people who have committed criminal offences, either some time ago or when they were very young, to be able to move on with their lives. But there is also a need for appropriate risk management in the public interest, as well as to safeguard the most vulnerable.

I will deal first with Amendments 420 and 476 to 478. The existing regime helps employers make informed recruitment decisions through the disclosure of appropriate and relevant information. This will mean that some serious offences, even when committed as a child, will always need to be disclosed, particularly where a person is applying to work with children or vulnerable adults. As some of your Lordships will be aware, in his recent independent review of the criminal courts, Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the Government review the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. In the Statement I made to your Lordships’ House on 2 December, I said that we will consider opportunities to simplify the criminal records regime to ensure that it is both clear and proportionate, particularly in relation to childhood offences.

I would be very happy to meet with any of your Lordships over the coming weeks to discuss this in more detail. It is of the utmost importance to the Government that we work together to ensure that we get this right. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I was very struck by the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, that this is not always as straightforward as it might appear, hence the need to make sure that we do this carefully, in a structured and thoughtful way. As I said, I would be delighted to see any of your Lordships. Given the offer made by my noble friend Lord Hanson in the previous group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and I may be seeing rather more of each other than perhaps he had intended—but it is always a pleasure on my part.

Turning to Amendment 486D, I am very surprised to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Carter, says because the Government’s view echoes what my noble friend Lord Ponsonby said: children are generally treated leniently when fare evasion occurs. This offence is most commonly dealt with by transport staff, so usually no question arises of a child acquiring a criminal record for fare evasion and similar offences. The police usually become involved only in cases of a refusal to pay for a ticket, for repeat offences or because of some other complicating factor. Even when the police become involved, this does not usually result in a prosecution taking place because the Code for Crown Prosecutors requires prosecutors to consider, as a specific public interest factor tending against prosecution, where a child is young or where it is a first offence.

Police officers can give out-of-court disposals, which allow them to respond to low-level offending proportionately and effectively. These out-of-court disposals, of which there are a variety, provide opportunities for children to make reparation and restoration to victims, and to be diverted into courses or services which can help to change their offending behaviour. Most types of out-of-court disposals are not automatically disclosed on criminal record certificates.

The Government believe that it would be very unusual for a child or young person to get a criminal conviction for this type of offence but, were that to happen, the disclosure time limits under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act are very different from those that affect adults. Rehabilitation periods for children are typically half the length of those for an adult. For example, if a court were to impose a fine for fare evasion, there would usually be a requirement that the child disclose their conviction for only six months, as opposed to the case of an adult, who would have to disclose it for a year.

For all these reasons, under the existing legislation, the Government’s view is that there is a very small chance of a child who is a first-time offender getting a criminal record for a fare evasion offence in the first place, and an equally small chance of such a conviction following them into adult life. I will, however, make inquiries and write to the noble Lord giving such statistics as I am able to find.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I am extremely grateful. To some extent mine is a probing amendment—I need more facts and evidence around this—but the Minister referred to the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The cases I spoke about were prosecuted by the train operating company. I am not really convinced that it had even heard of the Code for Crown Prosecutors; judging from all the correspondence I had with it, I do not think it had, to be honest. I believe there is something there to be investigated more closely, because I saw the evidence with my own eyes.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I do not think that I can improve on what I have said. I will make inquiries into the statistical evidence that we hold and write to the noble Lord.

I reiterate that I am very happy to meet any of your Lordships, including, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, ahead of Report to discuss these issues in more detail. In the meantime, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 423 would implement a recommendation of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in the judgment in the Lee Clegg case in the 1990s. Briefly, the facts of that case were that, on 30 September 1990, Private Lee Clegg was on patrol in west Belfast, when a passenger in a stolen car was shot and killed. Lee Clegg was charged with murder, and his defence was that he fired in self-defence. He was convicted of murder on the grounds that he used disproportionate force.

On an appeal, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords had to decide whether a soldier on duty in defence of the civil power—in a similar position, therefore, to police firearm officers—who kills a person and who would be entitled to rely on self-defence but for the excessive use of force, is guilty of murder or manslaughter. A manslaughter verdict would have meant a change in the law. Lord Lloyd of Berwick said that the arguments in favour of such a change were very persuasive. Quoting from the Court of Appeal, he said:

“There is one obvious and striking difference between Private Clegg and other persons found guilty of murder. The great majority of persons found guilty of murder, whether they are terrorists or domestic murderers, kill from an evil and wicked motive. But when Private Clegg set out on patrol on the night of 30 September 1990 he did so to assist in the maintenance of law and order and we have no doubt that as he commenced the patrol he had no intention of unlawfully killing or wounding anyone. However, he was suddenly faced with a car driving through an army checkpoint and, being armed with a high velocity rifle to enable him to combat the threat of terrorism, he decided to fire the … shot from his rifle in circumstances which cannot be justified”.


Lord Lloyd continued:

“It is right that Private Clegg should be convicted in respect of the unlawful killing … and that he should receive a just punishment for committing an offence which ended a young life and caused great sorrow to her parents and relatives and friends. But this court considers, and we believe that many other fair-minded citizens would share this view, that the law would be much fairer if it had been open to the trial judge to have convicted Private Clegg of the lesser crime of manslaughter on the ground that he did not kill … from an evil motive but because his duties as a soldier”


meant he had a high-velocity rifle, and

“he reacted wrongly to a situation which suddenly confronted him in the course of his duties … we consider that a law which would permit a conviction for manslaughter would reflect more clearly the nature of the offence which he had committed”.

However, Lord Lloyd ruled it was inappropriate for the courts to change the law, and it was for Parliament to do so.

Here we are, 30 years on, with that opportunity, and the issue has never been more important, given the analogous position of police firearms officers. Since 2010, British police have shot dead 30 people—an average of two a year. Most recently, we have seen the prosecution last year for murder in the case of Sergeant Martyn Blake. Police officers are being deterred from volunteering for firearms training and the National Police Chiefs’ Council says police forces across England and Wales are grappling with a significant shortage of firearms officers, exacerbated by the lack of legal protections afforded to armed officers, particularly regarding criminal and misconduct hearings. The move to anonymity in criminal proceedings is welcome but not enough.

Parliament enacted legislation in 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, which set out the law of self-defence in Section 76. This provides that the question whether the degree of force used by D—the defendant—was reasonable in the circumstances is to be decided by reference to the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be, but, crucially, the degree of force used by the defendant is not to be regarded as having been reasonable in the circumstances if it was disproportionate. Therefore, the upshot is that a police officer cannot rely on self-defence to a murder charge if he used disproportionate force. This is unlike in the case of householders who, since the Crime and Courts Act 2013, will now generally have a defence if the force was disproportionate, but not if it was grossly disproportionate.

This confirms my belief that there is a lacuna that needs to be addressed, just as the House of Lords said in the appeal in the case of Lee Clegg. I should add a brief postscript here to the Lee Clegg case, since I believe he was subsequently acquitted on the grounds of new evidence.

On 23 October 2024, the then Home Secretary made a Statement on the Martyn Blake case. She said that

“the current system for holding police officers to account is not commanding the confidence of either the public or the police”,

and that although the public are entitled

“to expect that when officers exceed the lawful use of their powers … there will be … robust processes in place to hold them to account”,

she continued:

“Police officers who act with integrity and bravery to keep us safe each day need to know they have strong public support. If officers lack the confidence to use their powers … public safety is put at risk”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/24; col. 300.]


My amendment seeks to strike this balance by implementing the recommendation of the House of Lords in the Lee Clegg case all those years ago. If passed, it would not, as in the householder’s case, result in an officer’s acquittal, since I do not think that can be justified in the case of trained firearms officers. There needs to be accountability and a criminal penalty. The House of Lords in Clegg seemed to agree, since it recommended manslaughter, not acquittal, for such cases. I will be very interested to hear the views of the Government on this long-standing issue.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. Firearms officers provide a valuable and necessary service, and are an important part of UK policing. They do a very difficult and dangerous job and deserve our thanks. The current climate is not conducive to good policing and does not support our officers. This amendment is a positive one which will help them.

This is a topical amendment. Several days ago, the Independent Office for Police Conduct ruled on the case of Sean Fitzgerald being shot during a raid by West Midlands Police. He was holding a black mobile phone, which the officer who shot him believed was a gun.

This ruling was the conclusion of a long, complex investigation that included experts whose reconstruction corroborated the officer’s testimony that the phone could have been mistaken for a gun. The director of the IOPC said:

“The determination over whether the officer should face disciplinary proceedings largely came down to a split-second decision in what was a dynamic, fast-moving, armed police operation”.


This was a tragic accident, but it highlights the fact that firearms officers have to make very difficult, instantaneous decisions that can result in life or death. They have to quickly make a call on what is the safest option for themselves, their fellow officers and the public. In order for them to make the best judgments for themselves and for the public, they need to be confident that they will be supported in making that endeavour.

It is striking that in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, former firearms officer Sergeant Harry Tangye said that his and his fellow officers’ main fear was not being shot themselves; it was facing the investigation that would happen after they discharged their weapon while doing their job. The case of the shooting of Chris Kaba demonstrates this. In response to how the officer was treated, up to 300 Metropolitan Police officers stepped back from firearms roles, and the Army had to be put on standby to support the Met.

Firearms officers go through intensive training, including in how to respond in high-pressure situations. These are dedicated people with a strong desire to protect the public and serve their communities. Tangye said:

“But each time an AFO attends a scene, they face an uncomfortable truth: if I get this wrong I could be jailed. In my 30-year career I never once met an officer who wanted to ‘bag’ a scalp; no-one who hoped for the chance to use their gun to bring down a criminal. Most of us weren’t even keen on firearms at all. If you were a weapons enthusiast, you would be viewed with great suspicion by your force and probably removed”.


Authorised firearms officers, or AFOs, he said,

“shouldn’t have to do their jobs in fear of being jailed, or in fear of their careers, their lives, being ruined”.

The Police Federation also shares these concerns: that firearm officers,

“even when they follow the tactics and training they have received, will face significant struggles and hardships over what are usually split-second decisions taken by them in dangerous and fast-moving situations”.

Firearms officers need to be protected in primary legislation to make sure it is certain that they will be treated fairly when they have to make a very difficult decision. This amendment from the noble Lord is not a “get out of jail free” card; it still holds them to account for their actions. It means that officers who do their job properly, who make a decision that would be impossible for most people in this Chamber to comprehend, are protected under the law, and on that basis, I strongly support the amendment.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

We already have a system that allows courts to protect safety where it is genuinely at risk without abandoning openness, accountability or equality before the law. For all these reasons, I support the stand part notices and submit that these clauses should not stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I respectfully disagree with the proposition that these clauses should be removed from the Bill. My views will come as no surprise to the 10 noble Lords who were present in the Chamber on Tuesday night at 11.15 pm to debate my amendment on why police officers who use excessive force on the spur of the moment, in the honest but mistaken belief that their use of force was reasonable, should be sentenced differently. There will be an opportunity to debate that further at on Report.

The underlying principles here as to whether anonymity should be given to police firearms officers in criminal proceedings where they are charged with a qualifying offence are exactly the same. As the House of Lords Judicial Committee said 30 years ago in the case of Lee Clegg, law enforcement officers deserve to be treated differently, since they go on patrol to assist in the maintenance of law and order with no intention of killing or wounding anyone. They face evil people who get out of bed with the full intention of trying to kill them and us. That life and death situation does not normally confront the rest of us. These officers have to make split-second decisions in order to protect us and deserve, at the very least, to be given anonymity if they are charged with a criminal offence, so that they and their families are protected from adverse publicity during those proceedings.

The last thing we want is such brave officers being deterred from volunteering for firearms training when the National Police Chiefs’ Council says that police forces across England and Wales are grappling with a significant shortage of firearms officers, exacerbated by the lack of legal protections afforded to them, particularly regarding criminal and misconduct proceedings.

Clauses 152 to 155 are a welcome recognition by the Government that police firearms officers are in a unique position. As I have said, I would take this further to address how such officers are sentenced, but that must wait for Report. In the meantime, the modest protection of anonymity during criminal proceedings, with an exception built in where anonymity would not be in the interest of justice, is a proportionate measure which is long overdue.