Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

My main purpose is to take the opportunity of this Bill to aid better enforcement of the law by the police. My amendment would allow the police actively to identify those committing crimes such as phone theft, delivering drugs, harassing and intimidating the young or the old, including riding dangerously past my house on the pavement at very high speed. The Minister promised to look into the matter for me and to consider my amendment. We share the same objective and I hope he will agree to this modest amendment to make it easier for the police to do their excellent work. I beg to move.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am generally with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and we have done an awful lot together to look at cyclists being held more accountable. On this, however, I am probably going to suggest an amendment to her amendment. As it stands, the problem with her amendment is that the police currently have the power to stop any vehicle on the road without reason. They can stop somebody with or without a mask, or for no reason at all. This power would therefore not add anything, given that the police already have the power to stop any vehicle.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, acknowledged, whether it be in the cool of the winter, or even sometimes on a cool summer’s day, there is a reason to wear a mask or a face covering if you are cycling, because it gets cold. We have probably all been there. However, something to look at in the future—perhaps on Report—is whether someone, having been stopped, can be ordered to remove their face mask. There is not an awful lot of point in stopping them and they can keep their face mask on if their identity is in question. That is also true for motorcyclists, who wear helmets. Their faces are obviously encased in a helmet and there is no power to ask them to remove the helmet. Most of them do, because it gets pretty uncomfortable after a few minutes—in fact, if you prolong the conversation long enough, they always take it off—but there is no power to compel them to do it. That may be something that could be considered in the future.

On the police needing powers to stop cyclists, there is no power to stop an e-scooter, but any vehicle on the road can be stopped by an officer for any reason—not the least of which is that the police are expected to direct traffic. That is one of the reasons that they are given the power to either redirect or stop vehicles. So, as it stands, I am not sure about this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent and tightly drafted amendment from my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. I say that it is tightly drawn because proposed new subsection (2) is about concealing one’s identity, not about wearing the clothes themselves: the scarf or the hat. I speak as a cyclist who frequently cycles in the winter, when of course you need to wear protective clothing to keep you warm. However, this is about allowing a police officer, or another person who is entitled to know your identity, to know your identity, and it is about failing to stop when required to do so by a constable.

I am glad that my noble friend mentioned the issue of live facial recognition. I am just about to finish my four-year term on the British Transport Police Authority. In terms of clear-up rates, one of the issues we have in unfortunately failing to tackle violence against women and girls—which, of course, is a government priority and a priority of the Department for Transport—is that we have way too many persistent, repeat offenders on bail who are travelling on the rail network and who are able to enter stations and get on trains. Live facial recognition, were it to be rolled out for a good reason, with proper checks and balances, would significantly reduce the incidence of those people being able to get on trains and Tubes and assault women and girls, and others. Live facial recognition is important because, if people are going to be wearing face coverings, that will naturally circumscribe the powers used in live facial recognition.

Rates of crime on bikes and scooters have gone up. Many people who are committing those crimes are hiding their identity and I believe that, in most cases, there is a legitimate reason for the police to stop them. In 2024, Sky News received figures from FoI requests that showed that crimes involving e-bikes and e-scooters had risen by more than 730% in the preceding five years. These crimes included theft, robbery, burglary, drug trafficking, stalking, rape, violent crimes and weapons offences. In 2023-24, 11,266 crimes were recorded that mentioned an e-bike or e-scooter—up from just 1,354 in 2019-20. These figures do not include data from the Metropolitan Police and the West Midlands Police—I know that West Midlands Police have been busy doing other things, not always to their great credit —so the actual numbers were likely higher.

On 30 December 2025, the Metropolitan Police reported that it had seized 37 e-bikes and scooters in an attempt to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. That resulted in 52 arrests and weapons being seized. Between January and December 2025, Merseyside Police seized 1,000 unregistered vehicles, e-bikes, e-scooters and scramblers. It launched Operation Gears in July 2024 to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour linked specifically to bikes and scooters. In its words, two-wheeled vehicles

“are increasingly linked to serious criminal activity, including violence, robberies, and serious organised crime (SOC) offences”.

The Metropolitan Police has also produced reasonably new data—up to the end of 2023. They show that there were 4,985 cases of robbery and theft of a mobile phone in London using a motorcycle or an e-bike in 2023, and a face covering was worn in over 1,000 of those. These statistics demonstrate that it is legitimate to link bikes and scooters to crimes. Therefore, if someone is covering their face specifically to avoid identity while using these vehicles, it does raise suspicion, and it most emphatically gives police a legitimate reason to exercise their due and proper powers. On that basis, I support my noble friend’s amendment.

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[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which has been campaigning against non-crime hate incidents for at least five years.

I thought it might be helpful to begin with a definition of what an NCHI is. The amendment itself says that it is

“any incident or alleged incident which does not constitute a criminal offence, but is perceived, by any person, to have been motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility or prejudice towards a person or group on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity”.

How many of these incidents have been recorded by the police since the concept of NCHIs was introduced by the College of Policing in 2014? The Telegraph submitted an FoI request to all 43 police forces in England and Wales in early 2020, and 34 of the 43 —about three-quarters of the police forces in England and Wales—responded and disclosed that 119,934 NCHIs had been recorded in England and Wales in the five years from 2014 to 2019. By my calculation, that is an average of 65 a day—and remember, that that is just in England and Wales, and just three-quarters of the real total. There is no reason to think that the number being recorded every day by police forces in England and Wales has declined from that average of 65 since then, in the subsequent six years.

How long does it take the police? How many police hours are spent recording NCHIs? Policy Exchange published a report last November in which it concluded that the police spend 60,000 hours a year—again, that is just the police in England and Wales—investigating and recording non-crime hate incidents. If you factor in that they have been around since 2014, that means the police have spent at least 660,000 hours investigating and recording non-crimes since 2014.

What sort of incidents are we talking about? “Non-crime hate incident” sounds quite serious. I will give just a handful of examples. A man had an NCHI recorded against him after a neighbour complained that his whistling the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” was racist. A woman had an NCHI recorded against her name because she posted on X that she thought her cat was a Methodist. A nine year-old girl had an NCHI recorded against her because she called another girl in the school playground a “retard”. Two secondary school pupils had NCHIs recorded against them for saying about another girl, again in the school playground, that she smelled like fish. This is the kind of thing that the police have been spending 660,000 hours investigating and recording since 2014.

Incidentally, I know of at least one Member of this House who has had an NCHI recorded against her, and a Conservative Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, had an NCHI recorded against her because of a complaint made about the contents of her speech at a Conservative Party conference that she was addressed in her capacity as Home Secretary.

So it seems that it is not terribly difficult to make the argument that the police have been wasting a huge amount of time investigating and recording relatively trivial incidents. Again, I stress that the definition says that if it is merely “perceived”, not just by the “victim” but by any person, as being motivated by hostility or prejudice towards the “victim’s” protected characteristics, it can be recorded as an NCHI. Sometimes, when NCHIs are recorded, the person against whom the NCHI is recorded is not informed—so you might well have an NCHI recorded against you without knowing it.

All this sounds quite trivial, but having an NCHI recorded against your name can be quite serious, because chief constables, at their discretion, can disclose the fact that an NCHI has been recorded against a person when they apply for a job that requires them to do an enhanced DBS check. So, you can end up not getting a job as a teacher or a carer, or a voluntary position with a charity such as the Samaritans, because you have an NCHI recorded against your name.

I will just point out one more, I think unintended, consequence of the NCHI regime, which is that records are deleted after six years. So if you have an NCHI recorded against you at the age of 17, it remains on what is in effect your criminal record until you are 23, whereas quite serious criminal offences, if you are convicted, are spent when you reach the age of majority. The fact that you have committed a non-crime can hang about your neck like a bad smell long after you have reached the age of majority, even if it was recorded against you when you were a child. So, in some senses, not committing a crime and having that recorded against you can have more serious consequences than committing quite a serious crime and being convicted of it.

I believe that I am pushing at an open door. A report on NCHIs has been commissioned by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. They have published a provisional version of the report, in which they declare the NCHI regime unfit for purpose. I do not think that they have submitted the final report to the Home Secretary yet, but I know that, when they do, the Home Secretary is likely to take up the recommendations, and I think we will see the end of the NCHI regime.

I have four issues on which I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance. The first is that, as I understand it, the new regime will be that incidents are no longer recorded as non-crime hate incidents; some cases will be recorded as anti-social behaviour incidents, but they will not be logged on the police national database. I ask for the Minister’s assurance that anti-social behaviour incidents that would have been recorded as NCHIs under the old regime will not, unlike NCHIs, be recorded on the police national database.

I also ask for the Minister’s assurance that, once the new regime is in place, previous NCHIs recorded under the old regime will be deleted and will not hang around for six years as they do currently, given that there is acceptance that the regime is not fit for purpose. If the regime is not fit for purpose, I hope the Minister can assure us that existing NCHIs—it is not inconceivable that they number in the hundreds of thousands—will be deleted. Finally, I seek reassurance that these anti-social behaviour incidents will not be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks.

I hope that the review by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council will be submitted and digested in time for the new regime to be put in place on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because we need to move on from the recording of non-crime hate incidents by removing them altogether from police systems.

Non-crime hate recording had an honourable start, following on from the Macpherson inquiry. There were two problems at the time. The first was that recordable crime was lower than it should have been because it was not being recorded accurately, due to misrecording and it sometimes not being recorded at all. This was linked to police performance being measured by the amount of crime in society. Therefore, the police service was incentivised to record less rather than more crime, thereby, ironically, undermining its own bid for more resourcing.

The murder of Stephen Lawrence showed us that, sometimes, before a crime is committed, there are signals that someone may be a racist, for example, and that, if we take the right action, we could prevent those crimes occurring and someone getting hurt or any other crime being committed. That system worked well at the start, because it allowed the police to collect intelligence and spot patterns—for example, by geography, suspect or victims. That relied on the basic repeat offender victim location theory, which shows that 10% of repeat offenders can account for over half of some crimes.

The problem is that the same system is now being used to police the social harms caused by causing offence. Causing offence is not a crime. The internet amplifies the problem—first, because it has a permanent record of the offensive but not criminal behaviour, and, secondly, because it allows millions of people, sometimes worldwide, to see the communication. For everybody involved, it is then very hard to ignore. This has led to some bizarre police interventions—the noble Lord, Lord Young, has already mentioned some—on issues that are not crimes or even non-crime hate. The public have juxtaposed these with significant complaints—such as shoplifting, car theft and other serious crimes—that, meanwhile, the police say they are too busy to deal with, even when a suspect is available to arrest. The two issues do not sit well together.

There is a need to record intelligence about incidents that may later become significant if crimes are committed. This can be on the police command and control log, where the incident can be given an anti-social behaviour coding, or on the criminal intelligence system. The problem arises if the name of a person who is said to have caused offence is recorded. In my view, if the police say that they will record what is being alleged because someone has called the control room and they need to log all calls—the police later denying that a call had come in would not be sensible—then it is necessary to record those incidents in the control room. However, if, on the face of what a person tells the police, they see no crime or incident, they will not investigate and will not record the name of the person the caller says has offended them.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in the nicest possible way, that my noble and learned friend Lord Hermer has given strict instructions to Government Ministers on Henry VIII clauses, and the various statutory instrument committees in this House and in the House of Commons have also expressed a grave view on them.

I put it to the Committee—and I hope that the Committee will accept this in good faith, as I am trying to do it in good faith—that the Government have recognised that there is a problem, and the Government have asked the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to examine that problem. The Government have received an interim report, which the noble Lord, Lord Herbert of South Downs, referred to at Second Reading. The Government are awaiting the final report, which the noble Lord has said is coming shortly. I have not seen the final report. There may be things in it that maintain, change or revoke altogether the issues that have, quite rightly, been raised. But, if the Government had not realised that there was a problem, we would not have asked for solutions to be brought forward.

I know that I occasionally say, “Something will be happening very shortly”, but I say, in genuine help and support for the Committee, that we know that there is a problem. We want to change that problem, but we are trying to make sure that we get sufficiently robust professional advice to be able to make some political decisions based on the advice that we receive. With that, I have tried to help the noble Lord and I hope that he will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minster as he was getting towards the end of his speech. I have just one point: whatever advice the college gives, there will need to be a litmus test for whether the Government will support it. Whatever advice is given, I encourage the Government to make sure that it is clear, so that officers on the street understand it. If we end up with another series of 20 conditions, that will not simplify things. We must have a litmus test. For me, it might be, “If the officer acted in good faith and within the law as they believed it, we will support them”. I am not saying that that is the answer in this case, but it should be something simple.