Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 191 proposes an extremely radical change to abortion law. It was added on Report in the other place without due consideration and with only 46 minutes of Back-Bench debate. It is unnecessary, badly drafted and will harm women. We already have one of the most permissive abortion laws in the world. Even David Steel said he never intended the Abortion Act 1967 to enable termination to be treated like a form of contraception. The presumption in the Act is that deliberately ending the life of a child in the womb is a criminal offence unless it is signed off by two doctors who decide in good faith that one or more of the specified grounds are met.

The change in the law is not because there are women who cannot get abortions or because it is too difficult to get a doctor to sign off, but because of an ideological commitment to presenting abortion as a form of healthcare, like the removal of a tumour. The humanity of the baby in the womb is ignored. A wanted child is a baby and should be protected; an unwanted child is a foetus—an othering word, if ever there was one—and can be removed and disposed of. I simply do not believe the degree to which a mother wants or does not want her baby changes the moral status of the child and think we need to have a national conversation about this.

I may be in a minority in this House when I speak on this issue, but I suspect that the removal of abortion from the ambit of the criminal law for the mother is something that makes many people uncomfortable because abortion is important. I think we all instinctively know we are dealing with the termination of a human life. We cannot just allow a free for all; there must be limits. Even though prosecution of mothers for unlawful abortions is incredibly rare, the existence of a criminal law framework for abortion sends a vital message that ending the life of an unborn person is a serious matter. This is reflected in the way the law is framed, and that is what the majority of the public appear to want.

A poll of over 2,000 adults found that more than six in 10 respondents agreed that abortion should continue to remain illegal after 24 weeks; just 17% disagreed. Clause 191 disapplies the law from a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy. No matter how she ends the life of her unborn baby, no matter how late in the pregnancy, no matter how painful for the child, no matter how distressing for whoever finds the remains, she would be beyond the reach of the law; whereas any doctor or nurse who is complicit would be committing a criminal offence. The Member for Gower gave an interview to Times Radio. She was asked whether she was comfortable with any woman ending a pregnancy at any time; she said she was. That is what Clause 191 will enable.

Janice Turner of the Times, a supporter of abortion, wrote that she was “aghast” at this “glib, careless and amoral” clause. In her words,

“it cannot be that killing a full-term baby in the birth canal is legal, but smothering it outside the womb is infanticide”.

The Times editorial also raised the issue of pills by post, which was passed in the dead of night in 2022 without proper debate, or an impact assessment, and indeed the amendment was a disorderly one which had to be amended by the department.

There can be severe complications with abortion pills, especially when they are taken late in pregnancy. These include haemorrhaging and excruciating pain. The traumatic situations in which these women have ended up is as a result of pills by post. It enables women to have dangerous, late-term abortions at home alone without any medical supervision. Yet activists are now using the failings of pills by post to push for even more extreme laws.

In conclusion, Clause 191 will only make the situation worse, increasing the number of late-term abortions, and putting more women in danger. If we really care for women, we need to reinstate in-person appointments: proper, sensitive, skilled medical assessments where experts can assess how far along a woman is, whether there are any complicating factors that put her in danger, or whether she is being coerced. We already have unfettered access to abortion: Clause 191 is an embarrassment to supporters of abortion and a stain on our reputation as a country that claims to care for pregnant women and their unborn children.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, in opposing the proposition that Clause 107 should stand part of the Bill, I will speak also to my opposition to Clauses 108 and 109. These clauses were added by the Government without any debate on Report in the other place; therefore, they have not been subjected to the detailed scrutiny that they deserve. It is only right that, as the revising Chamber, we should fulfil our duty in that respect.

I will be clear from the outset that we on these Benches do not doubt for a moment the courage, dedication and indispensable role of our emergency workers. Indeed, the previous Conservative Government legislated to bring forward the specific offence of assaulting an emergency worker through the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. However, we must also ensure that the criminal law remains proportionate, coherent and workable, and in our view these clauses fail that test. Clauses 107, 108 and 109 introduce a series of new offences on the racial or religiously aggravated abuse of emergency workers. The Government present these measures as necessary enhancements to the law to protect emergency workers from abuse motivated by racial or religious hostility. No one disputes the seriousness of such conduct. But these clauses do not simply strengthen existing protections; they create overlapping, confusing and potentially sweeping new offences that go beyond what is necessary or desirable in a free society.

The provisions duplicate offences that are already well established in our law. Threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour motivated by racial or religious hostility is already an offence under Sections 18 and 29B of the Public Order Act 1986. I completely understand that those offences cannot be committed inside a dwelling, while the new offences in Clauses 107 and 108 can be committed inside a person’s house. That is a key difference between these offences.

Both clauses also require the conduct to be racially or religiously hostile, but, again, that aggravation is already captured by the criminal law. Section 66 of the Sentencing Code creates a statutory aggravating factor for any offence based on racial and religious hostility. Furthermore, Section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1988 creates a specific offence of using words or behaviour that cause “harassment, alarm or distress” and are religiously or racially aggravated. That offence can be committed inside a dwelling, so a person who racially abuses an emergency worker inside their home can already be prosecuted under the Crime and Disorder Act 1988. It is abundantly clear that there is absolutely no need for these new offences.

Clause 107 in particular casts an extraordinarily wide net. It includes not only threatening but insulting behaviour. This is a highly subjective term that will not create clarity or certainty—but do not take my word for it. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House has criticised these clauses for this precise reason. Its 11th report states:

“Clause 107 criminalises ‘insults’ and clause 108 introduces the term ‘distress’. This potentially leaves people open to criminal sanction on a subjective basis. In addition, clause 108 includes a defence for ‘reasonable conduct’, which is not defined. As a result, the precise scope of these clauses, and the criminal offences contained within them, is uncertain”.


In Clause 108, matters become even more troubling. The clause would criminalise conduct merely likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, again with the addition of racial or religious hostility, but with penalties that do not align with the broader public order framework. Here we see threatening or abusive behaviour that is already covered elsewhere reframed in a way that risks catching behaviour far removed from the core of criminal wrongdoing. While a defendant may raise a defence, the burden-shifting mechanism in subsection (7) is unusual and risks being applied inconsistently.

It is a long-standing principle that the criminal law should be carefully calibrated, limited to what is necessary and drafted so that ordinary citizens can understand the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. The law must be strong where it matters, not sprawling and duplicative. When Parliament repeatedly layers offence upon offence, we risk incoherence, overcriminalisation and legal uncertainty, none of which helps emergency workers or the public. If the Government believe that the existing framework is insufficient, they should amend those statutes directly and not create parallel criminal regimes that overlap and contradict one another.

In conclusion, Clauses 107 and 108 are unnecessary and duplicative and risk expanding the criminal law in ways that Parliament has previously rejected. They confuse rather than clarify. They undermine coherence rather than strengthen protection. We owe emergency workers the best possible statutory safeguards, but they must be safeguards that work. These clauses do not. For that reason, and in the interests of principled and proportionate criminal law, I urge the Committee to oppose Clauses 107 and 108.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly because we have very important business in future amendments. I heartily endorse the comments of my noble friend on the Front Bench. Why were these proposals—which, after all, attract cross- party support, as indeed the 2018 legislation did—not brought forward for pre-legislative scrutiny or debate and discussion at an earlier stage in the other place? They were introduced only at a later stage. For all the reasons my noble friend gave, there would have been a proper debate about whether it is right to bring forward legislation that includes potential incarceration for up to two years for an offence. In fact, it is quite incongruent because it does not look at sexual orientation and disability, for instance, only racially biased hate crime in private dwellings. Why was it not brought forward at an earlier stage, when I think all sides of the House would have been predisposed to support it and debate it properly?

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will come back to that point in a moment. I think the noble Lord is trying to inject a slight bit of topicality into a different argument, but I respect his opportunities in trying to raise those issues.

I say at the outset that I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on this, which is why we brought this forward. I am grateful to her for standing up and supporting the objectives of the Government in her contribution. I have to say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that I cannot and will not support their approach to delete these clauses from the Bill.

Emergency workers, as the noble Baroness has said, risk their safety every day to protect the public. They deserve robust protection through legislation, especially against abuse directed towards them because of their protected characteristics, which is not only harmful but erodes the principle of respect and public service, which are core values of this democracy.

As the noble Baroness rightly said, when emergency workers walk through a door of a private dwelling, they are faced with the circumstances in that private dwelling; they cannot walk away. They are there because of an emergency—perhaps medical, police or fire—and, if they face abuse in that private dwelling, then they deserve our support, just as they have our support if they face abuse on the street for a racially aggravated reason. If somebody does something at the end of their path on a street in Acacia Avenue and abuses them, they will find themselves under the course of the law on those matters.

I believe—and this is what these clauses are about—that, if the emergency worker is racially abused in the property, then they deserve that protection. It is critical for sectors such as health, fire and policing to have that legal support. We cannot leave them, as the noble Baroness rightly said, to be abused. The law must recognise this and make sure we have proper protection.

Currently, as has been mentioned, the Public Order Act 1986 and Section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provide important safeguards in public spaces. It is not acceptable to call somebody a racially abusive name in a public space, so why is it to call them that name in a place of a private dwelling? It is not acceptable, so we are going to bring those clauses into play.

The noble Lord asks why we do this. We do this because Sergeant Candice Gill of Surrey Police, supported by the deputy chief constable—and, may I just say, by the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Surrey—has campaigned for this change in the law, having personally experienced racial abuse in a private home. It is not a sort of technical matter that the noble Baroness or the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, have mentioned; it is a real issue of racial abuse in a private dwelling to a police officer—who is doing her job, serving and trying to protect and support the public, and is being racially abused with no consequence whatsoever. Sergeant Candice Gill, after whom I would be proud to call this legislation Candice’s law, is campaigning and has campaigned to make this an amendment to the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, asked why we brought it forward in the House of Commons as an amendment. I will tell him why: it was brought to our attention, it is an action we do not support, and it is an area where we think action needs to be taken. That is why we have brought it. I do not think it is fair that people are racially abused in homes. Sergeant Candice Gill has campaigned on this and has brought it to the attention of the Government; we brought an amendment forward in the House of Commons which is now before this House, and I believe it should have support.

Clauses 107 to 109 will close that legislative loophole. The removal of the dwelling exception will make racially or religiously aggravated abuse of an emergency worker in a private dwelling an offence. The change will ensure that offenders prosecuted under Clause 107 face a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment. The offence in Clause 108 will be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4. As I have said, Lisa Townsend, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Surrey, said:

“This long-overdue change to the law would never have happened without Sgt Gill’s courage and determination”.


I think we owe this to Sergeant Gill and any other officer, health worker, fire service worker or police officer who has been racially abused in a home where they have gone to help support individuals. They deserve our support.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, for the avoidance of doubt, I think we need to put it on record that everyone deprecates racially aggravated abuse of hard-working, decent emergency workers—that is taken as read. But the noble Lord is asking us to consider legislation when we already have a situation, under Section 66 of the Sentencing Act 2020, which permits a court to consider any offence that has been racially or religiously aggravated. Section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provides for a separate offence where a person commits an offence under Sections 4, 4A or 5 of the Public Order Act.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Much as I would love to be intervened on by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who I believe will be supporting my amendment later on, I am intervening on the Minister, and we are not allowed to intervene on interventions.

If I may beg the Committee’s indulgence, I finally say to the Minister that the Select Committee on the Constitution specifically said:

“Clause 107 criminalises ‘insults’ and clause 108 introduces the term ‘distress’. This potentially leaves people open to criminal sanction on a subjective basis”.


Not only do we already have existing legislation, but the language in this new legislation is sufficiently loose that it will give rise, I think, to unintended consequences.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I hope the noble Lord will accept that I am not indicating that he or anybody else would accept that language, but the point is that we have to define and be clearer about the definition in relation to racially aggravated insults. The reason that we brought this forward is that, on the back of police representations from senior officers in Surrey Police—and from Sergeant Candice Gill, who was herself racially abused—and with the support of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, having examined this internally, we believe that the law needs to be clarified, which is why we have brought this legislation forward.

The noble Lord also asked me to examine why it is covering only race and religion, why we do not cover protected characteristics of sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability, and why the Government have not tabled such an amendment. He will know that the Law Commission is already examining its review of hate crime laws. It is a complex area, and it is important we get the changes right. I will tell him this: we are considering that and have given a manifesto commitment to do so, and, ensuring that we do that, we will bring forward conclusions at Report stage in this House to give effect to those manifesto commitments on sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability to extend the proposals still further. I give him notice of that now so that he does not accuse me of pulling a fast one on Report. We will do that, but we will have to bring forward the details of it in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am inordinately grateful to the Minister for giving away, but he will know, because he was a diligent and assiduous constituency MP, that many of the people who go into clinical settings—for instance, A&E—are very distressed, discombobulated and upset about their condition, do not quite know what is going on and will sometimes say things they regret. I am not saying that is right. Some of them are not culturally sensitive, for instance. That may or may not reach a criminal threshold.

My main point—if we accept the principle that we need new legislation—is that, frankly, those people are in a very difficult position, and if we have loose and opaque language in primary legislation, we will have a situation where people who are not reaching the criminal threshold, or are doing so very marginally, are criminalised and are liable to go to prison for up to two years. Surely that is not something the Government are keen to encourage.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government are keen to discourage racial abuse against individuals who are doing their job, and that is what Clauses 107 to 109 do. The clauses set out in legislation a broad thrust of definitions. Ultimately, in these cases, police and health workers usually have body-worn cameras on and the police will judge evidential material to determine whether they wish to refer it to the CPS. The CPS will review the incident that has led to the potential referral and determine whether it meets the evidential threshold and is worthy of prosecution. Then, if it comes before a court, it will be for that court to determine whether that criminal threshold has been crossed.

With all that, it is not a simple matter of us passing the legislation; it is also a matter of the judgment of police officers, CPS officials and ultimately a judge or jury in determining the outcome of those cases. As with most legislation, I want none of this to go to court. I want it to change the behaviour of people who are looking at a charge of using racially abusive language not on the street but in their home. I hope it sets a minimum standard, which is what this Parliament should be about, in saying that we will not tolerate this. That is why I support the inclusion of the clauses.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

352: After Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“Offences of causing harassment, alarm or distress: amendments(1) The Public Order Act 1986 is amended as follows.(2) In section 4A (intentional harassment, alarm or distress) omit “, alarm” in each place where it occurs (including the heading) and omit “, alarmed” in subsection (2).(3) In section 5 (harassment, alarm or distress) omit “, alarm” in each place where it occurs (including the heading).”

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to contribute to Committee proceedings. My Amendment 352 is quite straightforward. It would omit the word “alarm” from the appropriate legislation, by way of a new clause. In the landmark 1976 case, Handyside v United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights established that freedom of expression under Article 10 extends to ideas that “offend, shock or disturb” the state or any sector of the population. The court emphasised that tolerance and pluralism are essential for a democratic society, and that this protection applies to both popular and unpopular expression.

The cut and thrust of debate, whether political, religious or philosophical, means being able to challenge long-standing and sometimes deeply cherished assumptions. It can be shocking and disturbing—even alarming—to have the pillars of one’s world view challenged. It can be deeply uncomfortable, but it should not be a matter for the criminal law. That is why I have tabled this amendment to the Public Order Act 1986.

My amendment would remove “alarm” from Sections 4A and 5 of the 1986 Act. Section 4A currently criminalises “words or behaviour” that are intended to cause

“another person harassment, alarm or distress”.

Section 5 criminalises

“words or behaviour … within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”,

even where that impact is not intended or, indeed, actually caused.

It seems to me that there should be no place in the criminal law of England and Wales for criminalising a citizen on the basis that his words or behaviour cause or are deemed likely to cause alarm. Of course, the law should seek to protect the citizen from harassment and distress: these are impacts that can have untold negative effects on people. In a democratic society, freedom of speech should always be balanced with civility and kindness. But, unlike harassment or distress, being alarmed is not inherently a negative impact. Indeed, it may be positive.

For some years now, we have been warned that our planet is hurtling towards destructive and irreversible climate change—I notice the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, temporarily sitting on my Benches—such that it might not be able to support life as we know it. The science and the prescribed remedy are by no means universally accepted. I make no point about that, but I do observe that those seeking to change our economic behaviour have not flinched at alarming us about the peril we face.

Of course, if you believe that bad consequences will follow bad decisions, you will naturally warn of those dangers, as exemplified by the proponents of Project Fear during the EU referendum. If the perceived dangers are said to be catastrophic, it will inevitably alarm some people. This is seen in the expression of religious or philosophical belief. If a Christian preacher believes, as Christians do, that the Day of Judgment is approaching, in which all people will be judged for the lives they have lived in the here and now, it should come as no surprise that the preacher will seek to ring the alarm bell. If you believe that the world consumption of meat is causing the decimation of the rainforests and leading to the overproduction of carbon dioxide gases, you might well want to alarm the complacent beef eater of those catastrophic consequences in order to make the case for veganism.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Is the noble Lord saying that, when I was on the Bench here and he hissed at me that I should shut up because I was rude, that was okay because it did not alarm me? Does he remember doing that? We almost came to blows outside.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I recollect that we have always had a robust exchange of views. I did not in any sense seek to alarm the noble Baroness, but, from memory, she arrived late for a group of amendments, pontificated for a few minutes on issues that she had not heard and then—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am going to call a halt at this point. This is remembrance of things past. We have an important amendment to discuss today, and we should focus on the amendments.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I thank the Whip. I was merely elucidating for the benefit of the Committee the context of the noble Baroness’s rather strange intervention on my remarks. I do not quite have the same recollection that she does—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Beith) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has moved the amendment, and the opportunity is there for other Members to speak to it.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I confess that when I woke up this morning I did not anticipate having a discussion about Thames Valley Police and a gay horse. Such is political life on the Government Front Bench. Nor did I anticipate talking about the Prime Minister’s private parts, referred to by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti.

On a more serious note, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his amendment. I begin by confirming what my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said, which is that the right to express views, even those that may be unpopular, is a vital part of our democratic society, and freedom of expression is vital. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti have argued to remove “alarm” from Sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, for giving some balance to the argument and coming to a conclusion that I share. To remove from these offences behaviour that causes alarm would mean that behaviour that frightens or unsettles someone but which does not amount to harassment or distress would no longer be covered. Why does that matter? It matters because it would narrow the scope of the law and reduce the police’s ability to intervene early in potentially volatile situations. An example was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in relation to activity on a train, late at night, by an individual with too many beers in their body. That is a valuable cause of alarm.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that these provisions have been in place for many years: in fact, they were passed under the Government of Mrs Thatcher, which is not usually a thing I pray in aid when discussing legislation in this House. Removing “alarm” at this stage —this goes to the point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey—would affect how offences operate in practice, including the thresholds that have developed through case law. It would impact on the existing legal framework, which already ensures that enforcement decisions are made proportionately and in line with human rights obligations. This includes the important right, as my noble friend said, to freedom of expression.

The balance that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, struck is the one that I would strike as well. It is a long-standing, 39 year-old piece of legislation that has held up and has been interpreted in a sensible way by those who have legal powers to use it, both police officers and the CPS. Ultimately, we should ensure that the alarm element remains.

Having said all of that, noble Lords will be aware that the Home Secretary has commissioned an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, KC, is considering. He will consider the thresholds relating to public order and hate crime legislation, whether they remain fit for purpose, if legislative changes are required and if we could have more consistent approaches to the offence of inciting hatred. He will also consider how we ensure offence thresholds do not interfere with free speech and how we deal with the type of issues that the noble Lord has mentioned.

I believe we should stay where we are for the reasons I have outlined, but a review is ongoing. It is important that we allow that review to conclude, which it will do by spring next year. The Government will consider and respond to whatever recommendations come forward. We do not know what those recommendations might be, but they are there to be done, and that is one of the reasons the Home Secretary commissioned the review. I understand where the noble Lord is coming from, but I hope I have put a defence of why we should maintain where we are. In the light of the potential review, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his typically thoughtful and considered response. I think he would concede that this has been a very interesting and intelligent debate. I thank all noble Lords who took part, particularly my noble friend Lady Lawlor, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who was hoping to take part in the debate but, because this Committee has overrun somewhat, was not able to be here. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, touched upon the fact that the real meaning of alarm is a fine judgment. I take on board the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. However, it is important to look in the context of the advice and guidance that the police are given on the use of Section 4A and Section 5 of the Public Order Act. For instance, to breach Section 5, a person needs to act in either a threatening or abusive manner. He also needs to intend his words or behaviour to be threatening or abusive, or be aware that they may be threatening or abusive. I would say that alarm is a lower standard of criminality—a lower bar—than that.

According to police guidance, Section 4A is designed to deal with:

“More serious, planned and malicious incidents of insulting behaviour”.


You are more likely to be accused of a Section 4A offence in relation to a comment directed to a particular individual—for example, publicly singling out someone in a crowd. I think those are the differences, and we will have a different view as to the appropriateness of whether alarm is apposite for dealing with these offences.

Having said all that, we may come back to this. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, on this—it is very unusual, but it is a seasonal phenomenon that we agree from time to time. I even agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, from time to time. On the basis of Christmas spirit and all that, and the fact that we will no doubt return to this on Report, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 352 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 411 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie. The amendment was championed by my honourable friend Matt Vickers in Committee in the other place.

The amendment alters the statutory threshold for the exercise of the powers under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. That section permits a police officer of at least the rank of inspector to authorise stop and search powers within a defined locality for a period of 24 hours. Where such an authorisation has been given, a police officer may stop any member of the public to search them for offensive weapons or dangerous instruments without suspicion of the commission of an offence—so, essentially, it allows for a temporary adjustment to standard stop and search powers.

The current test that must be met is for the officer of sufficient rank to reasonably believe that incidents involving serious violence may take place in any locality in his police area. Our amendment would lower the threshold so that the police would be able to use Section 60 powers where there is a reasonable likelihood of violence, not serious violence. The fundamental principle behind this amendment is that the police should be able to act where there is a threat of violence—any form of violence—without being required to weigh the seriousness of that violence. This would remove the more subjective element of the test.

We know that stop and search powers are highly effective in combating crime and preventing violent offences. In the year ending March 2025, there were a total of 528,582 stops and searches conducted by officers in England and Wales. This represented a slight decrease of 1.4% from the previous year. Of those, 5,572 were conducted under Section 60 powers, which actually represented an increase of 5.4%. This is welcome; I am pleased to see the police making good use of their powers. But, given that there were 1.1 million incidents of violence with or without injury recorded by the police in the year ending June 2025, that the figure that the ONS has given shows no statistically significant change compared with the previous year, and that there were still 51,527 knife offences, there is more work that needs to be done. Lowering the threshold for the use of Section 60 is another tool that the Government could utilise in their efforts to crack down on the use of offensive weapons and the incidence of violence. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend on the Front Bench. At this juncture, I also thank the Committee for its forbearance when I was not able to move my previous amendment on mobile phone theft. I put on record my warmest thanks to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for moving it so eloquently on that occasion.

This is an issue about the difference between “serious violence” and “violence”, but the wider context is the fact that the UK has a knife crime problem. In London, the number of incidents up to June 2025 was 15,639, which was an increase of nearly 72% from the data recorded in 2015-16. Unfortunately, it has to be said that the number of stop and search encounters peaked at the end of the last Labour Government and dramatically decreased under the two previous Governments. Between 2003 and 2011, stop and search numbers increased, peaking at 1.2 million, but by 2018 this had fallen by 77%. The number of arrests resulting from stop and search encounters had fallen from 120,000 to 48,000.

The fact is that there is significant evidence that stop and search does demonstrably have an impact on the incidence of knife crime, and therefore reduces crime. In a study released in 2025, the two criminologists Alexis Piquero and Lawrence Sherman analysed data between 2008 and 2023, and found that stop and search encounters were successful in reducing deaths and injuries related to weapons. The conclusion of the study was that

“increased stop and search encounters can significantly reduce knife-related injuries and homicides in public places”.

Evidence from a number of bodies and think tanks, including Policy Exchange, suggests that, while there may be a range of causal factors, a link between rates of knife crime and rates of stop and search exists. As the rate of stop and search decreases, the amount of knife crime increases. As stop and search rises, the amount of knife crime falls. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir Stephen Watson, said last year:

“If you don’t back your officers to do stop and search, they will stop doing stop and search. And if you stop doing stop and search, you’ll see street robberies going up”.


The issue is the difference between “serious violence” and “violence” within that context. My simple point to the Committee is that, if we want to take weapons off the street and prevent incidents of knife crime and other crime, we have to increase stop and search. Therefore, you have to give warranted officers the legal underpinning and the authority to make the appropriate decisions for stop and search. In 2023, there were 5,014 occasions when a police officer found a weapon or firearm when looking for a different prohibited item. In 3,221 of those cases, they were looking for drugs. This is a case of effective policing and not just getting lucky. So, if they could stop for “violence”, they might find weapons that could have led to a more serious situation. If not, there is a potential for people to just walk away.

On that basis, it is wise for the Government to consider this amendment, because it allows flexibility in operational policing. Fundamentally, it will prevent crime and may even in the long run prevent serious injury or death. Therefore, I invite Ministers and the Committee to give this amendment their strong support.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 411, because it brings clarity and accountability to the exceptional power in Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This is not a call to strengthen police powers; it is a call to describe them accurately, so the public understand their narrow scope and the safeguards that constrain them.

Section 60 is triggered only when

“a police officer of or above the rank of inspector reasonably believes”

one of a small number of factors: that incidents of violence may take place in a locality; that a weapon used in a recent incident is being carried locally; or that people are carrying weapons without good reason; and that there has already been an incident of serious violence. The statute requires the authorisation to be for

“any place within that locality for a specified period not exceeding 24 hours”.

These are tight operational limits.

Changing the definition from “serious violence” to “violence” keeps all the safeguards that make this power exceptional rather than just routine: the inspector-level threshold; the written and recorded authorisation; the geographic and temporal limits; the ability to seize weapons; and the requirement to provide records to those stopped. Those are not peripheral details; they are the legal guardrails that protect civil liberties while enabling targeted public safety action.

I simply ask: where is the dividing line between violence and serious violence? If someone gets stabbed multiple times and it is life-threatening, we would all agree that is serious violence, but what about the person who gets stabbed once and suffers a non-life-threatening cut? Is that merely violence and so does not count? That is why we have to change this definition to any violence, no matter how serious it may be called. This is not a wide-ranging opening of the stop and search powers applying everywhere for all time. Using “violence” in operational documents with an explicit cross-reference to the Section 60 triggers reduces confusion with broader strategic programmes labelled “serious violence”. It prevents the normalisation of suspicionless searches and makes it easier for Parliament, oversight bodies and the public to scrutinise each authorisation against the statutory test.

This amendment is modest, practical and proportionate. It highlights the statutory safeguards and does not remove any of them, but it gives the police a sensible power to save lives and prevent injury where they think that there may be more violence. I urge the Committee and the Minister to support Amendment 411.

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Like the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, I am concerned about suspicionless stop and search. It is quite a blunt instrument. I am not saying that it does not have a place in the statute book. An obvious example is that when guests come to this Palace, they routinely go through a form of suspicionless stop and search by walking through airport-style security gates and having any bags searched. There is no room for concern or feelings of injustice there, because it is a high-security environment, everybody understands the risk to the Palace and those within it, and everybody is treated in the same way, so there is not this concern about arbitrary or discriminatory treatment. When, for example, under the Terrorism Act, or indeed under other statutes, a place of particular risk and sensitivity is identified in that way, you can see the beginnings of some justification for suspicionless stop and search. However, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, when he spoke in support of the amendment, he was almost justifying routine suspicionless stop and search. Why not just have it everywhere in England and Wales if it is so effective? The answer is that, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, said, if you make it too readily available and have too low a threshold, suspicionless stop and search at large will lead to arbitrary and discriminatory results and to a feeling of distrust between some communities—young black men in particular, but not exclusively—and the police.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

As usual, the noble Baroness is making a cogent and persuasive case, but I do not think she concedes that we are not talking about suspicionless searches; we are talking about an expectation that violence will happen—there will be a violent incident rather than a seriously violent incident.

I just leave her with the figures: in London, from 2021, there were 311,352 stop and searches, and they had fallen to 135,739 in 2024. At the same time, there was an 86% rise in knife crime. The argument that those of us on this side are making is that there has to be a balance. None of us wants racially profiled overpolicing, but at the same time, we have to find a reason why when we reduce stop and searches, there is an inevitable increase in knife crime.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I hear the noble Lord, but with respect, this provision relates to suspicionless stop and search. That is a term we use to describe a stop and search power that does not require reasonable suspicion that the person who is about to be stopped and searched is a criminal, is equipped or whatever it is.

The power in Section 60, therefore, is a suspicionless stop and search power, which is why it needs to be circumscribed and why there have to be certain conditions met before an area can be designated, because the normal law of the land, as noble Lords will recognise, is that anywhere in the land a constable can stop and search an individual whom they reasonably suspect of carrying a knife or being otherwise involved in criminality.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Section 60 powers are in operation and have been there for some significant time. As I shared with the Committee a moment ago, the use of those powers by police officers was significantly higher in the mid to late 2000s than it is now. That is because we are trying to ensure that there is operational guidance—not ministerial guidance—on the use of stop and search powers. Stop and search is seen by the police as a tool of last resort in an area where there is serious violence. I am not going to speculate for the noble Viscount on what that serious violence barrier is; that is an operational decision for the police at a local level in a particular circumstance.

The legislation is clear. The level of use has dropped because the police recognise that this is a tool of last resort which has to have the confidence of the community. I cannot differentiate between levels of violence in a way that may help the noble Viscount today, but the level of violence must be deemed at the time by a local senior police officer on the ground to be sufficiently worrying that he or she determines an area in which stop and search powers will operate. That may not answer the point, but I hope it is of some help to the noble Viscount.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

On that issue, notwithstanding the fact that these powers have to be sanctioned by a police inspector, they are often accompanied by a public information initiative from the police force concerned, and their time limit is 24 hours. If this amendment were accepted, would it not give the police the opportunity to use these powers at football matches, at which there is a chance not of serious violence but of public disorder leading to lower-level violence? In the last year or so, they have used them 357 times. Therefore, they would not necessarily use the more draconian dispersal orders which are sometimes used at football matches. What this side is asking for is more flexibility not just in respect of knife crime but of public order-related events such as football matches.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I say this as best I can to the Committee: to my knowledge, there has been no request from the police for that reduction in threshold to allow them to exercise further stop and search powers. Indeed, as has been shown over the last 15 or 16 years, the use of stop and search has significantly decreased to around the 5,000 figure, as I mentioned earlier. I hear what the noble Lord says, but I am not sure that the police themselves want to exercise that power to control crowds at football matches. I will leave it at that, if I may.

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[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.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who regularly jumps out of the way on a pavement from e-bikes, electric scooters and so on, I think this amendment is probably very sensible, but we should listen to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, because, as far as I can see, it does not go sufficiently far. We need to add to it, perhaps on Report, a provision that the police can require someone to take their face covering off, because without that, I do not think it goes very far.

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I will restrict myself to asking the Minister only a few questions about how the Government will treat any future regime to replace NCHIs. First, what assurance can he give that, in any future regime, the Government will have given thought to the application of a common-sense regime across police force areas? I think it is fair to say that in the implementation of NCHIs there has been a difference, as always, in the degree of zealotry between the application in different forces. Secondly, what can he do to ensure that the NCHI regime will not be replaced by, in effect, a similar regime but in another name? The forthcoming report from the College of Policing may well throw further light on policy options there.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support the excellent amendment of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. I declare an interest as a paid-up member of the Free Speech Union.

I was brought up in Plumstead in south-east London, as was Stephen Lawrence. I can absolutely understand the horror and the imperative for action that arose from the disgraceful racist murder of that young man in 1993: there was a clamour to tackle the culture that gave rise to five racist thugs taking that young man’s life. That is a very important context, but I am afraid that things have developed in a way that we did not foresee way back in 1993.

In preparing for this debate, I was reminded of the remarks of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, in 2024:

“I had to look up what on earth the term”—


non-crime hate incidents—

“meant—I was puzzled by it”.

Coming from the DPP, that reveals a lot about what a strange anomaly NCHIs have been.

The idea that there is a kind of police record that can result in ordinary people who have committed no crime being visited by police at their home or workplace because an investigation has been launched into whether their views or attitudes may one day lead to criminal activity should be seen as entirely incongruent with British justice and freedom of expression. It brings to mind the film “Minority Report” and the fictional idea of pre-crime. But this is not fiction: it is the real world. The idea that, in the real world, a person could lose their job because an NCHI shows up on an enhanced DBS check ought to be anathema to us.

Mention was made earlier of Allison Pearson. My noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs is absolutely right: it was the Communications Act or another piece of legislation that was involved when Essex Police visited her on Remembrance Sunday 2024. She has nevertheless raised the public profile of the impact of NCHIs on people and, for that, we should thank her, as we should Harry Miller and others.

The Times reported that year that 13,200 NCHIs were recorded by 45 police forces in the 12 months to June 2024. That includes allegations against doctors, vicars, social workers and even primary school children. As we have heard, Policy Exchange calculated that this had amounted to at least 60,000 hours of officer time. It surely was never a defensible use of police time, especially while so many serious crimes such as burglaries and sexual offences remain unsolved and uninvestigated. There are too many stories to tell, but one elderly woman was shocked to find herself the subject of an NCHI after taking a photograph of a sticker which read: “Keep males out of women-only spaces”. She did not even put the sticker up; she just took a photo of it. The 73 year-old received a visit from police officers after she was caught on CCTV taking the photo of the sticker, which someone had put up on an LGBT Pride poster. She said she agreed with its sentiments and wanted to show it to her partner. Apparently, the police thought this made her a likely future criminal.

My noble friend Lord Herbert said that these cases have been bad for public confidence in the service, and he is right. It is therefore welcome that over the last year or so there has been a growing realisation and consensus in the Government that there is a need to address the problem. In particular, I welcome the recent press reports that the college and the NPCC are set to recommend scrapping non-crime hate incidents as a result of the review.

My noble friend Lord Herbert has promised that there will be a sea change. We must wait and see the final detail on how the changes are delivered in practice. I say this partly because what we are attempting to do in turning policing away from an excessive focus on what we might call DEI issues towards the criminal matters that the public care about goes against the grain of the last two decades of police culture. We have seen before how difficult this is to uproot. The previous Government published new statutory guidance on NCHIs in 2023. Training should have been given to call handlers on the raised thresholds and common-sense tests, and we should have seen a reduction in the number of non-crime hate incidents recorded, but, sadly, the report published the following year by His Majesty’s inspectorate, An Inspection into Activism and Impartiality in Policing, concluded that there was

“inconsistency in the way forces have responded to the new guidance”

and that

“We often found that call takers hadn’t received training about NCHIs, and had limited, if any, knowledge”


of the statutory guidance.

First, can the Minister say how we will ensure that police training on the new regime is not undercut by an obsession with DEI issues and the politicisation of policing which has clouded police judgments too often in recent years? Secondly, we need to see a clearer commitment from the Government on how they plan to respond to the NPCC report and what the timelines will be. I know there are ongoing reviews into police discretion and hate crime, and I particularly welcome the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, of hate crime legislation. I hope that he will feel emboldened to address one of the more fundamental issues; namely, the injustice resulting from the creation of a hierarchy of victims by legislating for certain protected characteristics rather than treating all victims equally.

However, these ongoing reviews should not be an excuse for inaction. Will the Minister make the commitment that, should the NCHI review require primary legislation to implement its recommendations, this will be done via amendments on Report—a point made by my noble friend Lord Blencathra—preferably adopting my noble friend’s carefully crafted amendment?

While I understand the previous Government’s decision to introduce statutory guidance via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 as a first step towards introducing some common sense in this area, it had the unfortunate consequence of providing a statutory basis for recording NCHIs. If this is to be corrected, the law will need to change.

Again, the devil will be in the detail. The NPCC’s final report has not yet been published, but it did publish a progress report last October. There were a number of points where I would want to see improvements in the final report before I could feel confident that the new system will avoid the pitfalls of the current regime. One of those relates to the NPCC’s recommendation that the Home Office introduce a new national standard of incident recording. As I alluded to earlier, the current threshold, which dates back to 2011, is too low and does not adequately cater for contemporary policing demands.

We ought to think carefully, too, about any new definition. The current draft proposition put forward by the NPCC defines an incident as

“a single distinct event or occurrence which may be relevant to policing for preventing or solving crime, safeguarding individuals or communities or fulfilling other statutory policing purposes”.

This helpfully makes it clear that there needs to be a clear policing purpose for this data to be recorded. I am concerned about the words “may be relevant”. At the very least, would it not be better for it to say, “likely to be relevant”? My concern is that an activist police officer would record practically anything on the basis of “may”. We all know hoarders—the kind of people who keep everything because they tell themselves it may be useful in the future.

Finally, we need greater clarity on enhanced DBS checks. The progress report recommends that the Home Office consider whether there needs to be further guidance, but key questions are ignored. Will the police delete NCHIs that they have already recorded, and will the new anti-social behaviour incidents be disclosable in enhanced DBS checks? I am pleased to support this very good and sensible amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the noble Lords, Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hogan-Howe, for leading on this. It is telling that there is cross-party support for this amendment. The Government should take note of such rich and excellent speeches from across the House. There is widespread concern for all sorts of reasons, and action should be taken.

I feel a bit cynical because I have celebrated the demise of non-crime hate incidents on a number of occasions in the past. When the Fair Cop founder Harry Miller won his High Court challenge in 2020, the judge declared that non-crime hate incidents had a chilling effect and unlawfully infringed on Harry’s freedom of speech. I remember that a lot of us thought that would be the end of that. I then listened to a number of Home Secretaries declaring that there was a problem with non-crime hate incidents, and I thought, “Oh, good, something will be done”, because politicians like to do something. But I am most reassured, genuinely, by the present Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who seems to be determined to get to the bottom of this and to sort it out. Her emphasis that the police should focus on streets and not tweets is quite a good summation of where we are. However, despite that universal acknowledgement that non-crime hate incidents are not fit for purpose in many ways, I worry that, as with the Greek mythological Hydra, all the various attempts at cutting off the monstrous NCHI serpent’s head will result in another couple of heads growing instead. It is important that we do not just console ourselves with getting rid of the name while allowing the sentiment and the politics of it to remain.

As somebody who has spoken many times on this issue in this House, often greeted by some eye-rolling but also offered endless assurances that it was all being sorted—not by this Government but by a previous Government—I now believe that assurances are not enough, and we need to make this issue watertight. We need primary legislation as a guarantee that there will be no more non-crime hate incidents and a full deletion of the historic records held by the police. The noble Lord, Lord Herbert, made the point that when there have been changes in the criminal law, records have not been deleted, but these are not crimes, so they should be deleted. Even if they are not used, the idea that the state has a file on hundreds of thousands of people with the words “bigot” or “hate criminals” across them, even if they are hate non-criminal, is not right and they should be deleted.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, for his contribution because he set out the balance between non-crime hate incidents and non-crime incidents and the difference between the two. One of our concerns on these Benches is that—I am going to use the phrase he used, for which I apologise, but I had already written it down—in looking at this amendment, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is really important, and I will explain why in some detail later.

I remind the Committee that, in considering our two amendments about hate crime last week, I referred to the recommendation Combating Hate Crime by the Council of Europe, which says that

“hate can be manifested with different degrees of severity, ranging from everyday stigmatisation and discrimination, microaggressions and verbal abuse, to violence, terrorism, war crimes and genocide”,

which is an enormous spectrum. The reason why non-crime incidents, whether hate-related or not, need to be recorded is that often, the perpetrators go on to escalate their behaviour.

I have referred before in this House to being stalked by a political opponent for three years. Before we could get the police to take it seriously, we had recorded some 75 incidents, probably half of which were crimes but half were not. As things escalated, it went from minor crimes to the perpetrator using a very large knife on tyres. The police psychologist said, “If we don’t get him now, it will be people next”. It is that entire spectrum of behaviour, with some incidents ending up being part of a crime, that means we cannot just throw out all non-crime incidents.

I am afraid that the same is also true for non-crime hate incidents. I am grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, referred to the appalling case of the antisemitic attacks, because those would go as well if this amendment were accepted, since there would be no capacity for the police to start monitoring and recording such things until they tipped the balance into a crime, even though the damage was done in those earlier incidents, repeatedly to the same group of people. I think of friends of mine who go to synagogue in one town, and of young Muslim friends in my home town of Watford who are shouted at on their way to worship every single week by the same small group of people. Probably neither of those would even get to the first bar of being recorded as a non-crime hate incident; but, if their behaviour follows the typical course and escalates, and the police have not recorded anything, they have nothing to go back over. So I beg the movers of this amendment to—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

What the noble Baroness has described is a crime. Those people shouting racist abuse at Jewish people or Muslims on the way to a mosque are committing a crime under the existing legislation that has been in place for many years. It has nothing to do with the recording of police intelligence, which is unfettered by this amendment, and it is certainly the case that what she has described is de facto a criminal offence.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I referred to the comments made by previous speakers on this group who talked about police wasting their time recording. The two groups of people I have just referred to have tried to report these incidents and have not been able to get them taken particularly seriously. Therein lies the problem. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, that there has to be new, revised, clear guidance about how the police need to process these things. It may be that there will be many that are not now processed, but we cannot just say that we should get rid of non-crime hate incidents in their entirety.

A lot of the other speeches during this debate have talked about the polarisation in our society being because people are now saying things to others, with people becoming offended. We discussed this briefly last week. The things being said to people on the street would not have been said five or six years ago. People might have thought them as they walked past, but it was quite rare. We are deeply offended if it targets us. We often do not recognise when we are being offensive to other people. I say again: there is something about the way our society is working at the moment that means we have to learn to look at ourselves, not just at the others we do not like. The police, who are literally trying to police all this, are in a very invidious position. They need tools to record information because it helps them to assess and understand when other things happen. It is much broader than non-crime hate incidents, as I have alluded to already.

Paul Giannasi OBE, the national hate crime lead for the police, has been reviewing the current protocols and his recommendations for a new code of practice will be very welcome. I am sure, from what the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, has said and from what I have heard elsewhere, that there certainly will be changes. We have to understand that the key issue here is balancing those individual rights: the absolute freedom of expression as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton—he and I had a debate about JS Mill last week—alongside the state’s obligation to protect citizens against targeted victimisation. The police must be able to gather intelligence and evidence and log symbolic messaging to targeted groups. All the other things—about whether those end up on DBS—can be looked at as part of this review, and I am sure they will be. But the police need to see that bigger, wider picture.

One of the problems about the Lawrence murder was that the police were not watching what was happening in that community in the months and years running up to it. That institutional blindness was certainly one of the things that came out of the inquiry. As others have said, the monitoring of such incidents was the result of the recommendations by Sir William Macpherson as part of his public inquiry in response to Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

I come back to this point: in terms of practical value, the police must be able to record incidents that do not in and of themselves amount to criminal offence, because many crimes, such as I described with harassment, and indeed with stalking, require evidence of a course of conduct. People say to me, “Oh, but stalking is always about relationships; that’s not about a hate crime”. Quite a lot of stalking is actually non-domestic, and it is targeted at somebody because of a particular characteristic.

I finish on the point I made right at the start about the evidence that police need for this course of conduct if behaviour escalates. If a group of people go out and do things again and again, there is a point at which it is going to tip over. I was party to and a survivor of something that ended up as 132 crimes; once the police saw all the evidence that we had been holding of the earlier non-crime hate, it was extremely helpful when things started to escalate. Reform is absolutely needed. We hope that the review will have recommendations for a new regime. But I also hope that it will not leave victims vulnerable, either from perpetrators whose behaviour escalates or from police who are not quite clear about the role they have in recording non-crime incidents.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 423A and will talk a little about the two other amendments.

In England and Wales, police firearms officers have intentionally discharged conventional weapons at people around 120 times over the last 20 years, between 2006 and 2026, so that is a discharge of a weapon at a person about six times a year. This figure represents less than 0.05% of all authorised firearms operations during that period.

In 2024-25—in just one year, the latest—there were 17,249 firearms operations. During that 20-year period, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said, the police shot dead on average around three people a year, each one a tragedy. There is no way that any officer should celebrate what happened, nor the families, of course, or all the people who are hurt by these terrible things. At the same time, the police injured a further two people a year.

This is not a trigger-happy group of people. They are the only people in this country who can go forward to deal with criminals or situations where a person is armed or similarly dangerous. They are a unique group of around 5,500 people in England and Wales who protect the population of 60 million of us and our visitors, and on our behalf they go forward.

They then expect, as I think we all do, that they will be held accountable. They do not expect immunity in the criminal or any court, but they do have a reasonable expectation that the system will understand the challenges they face, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned. In that fraction of a second, they have to make their decision on whether to shoot.

They suffer from the further challenge that they are only human beings with all our human strengths and frailties. Despite the fact that they are selected from still a reasonably large group of police officers who apply—not all who put themselves forward are selected—and then go through some rigorous training, at the end of the day they remain a human being, with all our frailties, fears and, at times, courage.

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[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

There are just too many times when officers are faced with the challenge, which is unfair. The solution I propose is that we should treat firearms officers fairly and differently. I am not a lawyer. The Government may be able to come up with a better proposal, but the position that we have at the moment is untenable and something that I am not prepared to let rest. I ask for support from the Government in some respect.

My final point is that I support, to some extent, the proposal of the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Jackson. My concern is that it might lead to more people being charged more often, and I am arguing that they should be charged less often for doing their job.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me, if I can beg your indulgence. In order for there not to be any confusion, I neglected to advise the Committee that my brother is a serving Metropolitan Police officer. I should have mentioned that earlier.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, these three amendments raise a difficult but important question: how should the law treat the use of lethal force by authorised firearms officers so as to protect both the public and those officers who act in good faith in dangerous situations?

Amendment 422 would make it clear in the Police (Conduct) Regulations that when an officer uses force based on a mistaken belief, that belief must be both honestly held and objectively reasonable. This reflects the Supreme Court’s decision in W80 and would give bereaved families, and communities that often feel over-policed, greater clarity and confidence in the system.

Amendment 423A would update Section 76 of the 2008 Act so that force used by an authorised firearms officer could never be treated as reasonable if it was grossly disproportionate to the situation as they saw it. That would set a clear upper limit on what can count as lawful force, drawing a boundary beyond which self-defence cannot reach, however real the threat appears.

From these Benches, we understand the intentions behind both amendments: the first writes the W80 test into disciplinary rules; the second provides clearer statutory guidance in firearms cases.

Amendment 423 goes further. It proposes that if an authorised firearms officer kills someone while acting under an honest but mistaken belief that the force used was necessary and reasonable, the conviction should be manslaughter rather than murder. We are concerned that this would, in effect, create a special route from murder to manslaughter for authorised firearms officers, one not available to others who also face life-and-death decisions.

When police use potentially unlawful lethal force, there must be full investigation, prosecution where appropriate, and robust disciplinary proceedings. The central question, then, is whether these amendments strike the right balance between public accountability and fair protection for officers who must make split-second decisions in life-threatening situations.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, as ever, to support my noble friend in her Amendments 436 and 437. She is an expert in intellectual property, but she might want to copyright the term “Wild West of street crime”, as we have got used to it.

Amendment 436 goes to the heart of a police accountability. That is the wider issue here. It seeks to put on a statutory footing the imperative to provide timely data in respect of enforcement, openness and transparency. It is not necessarily about interfering in the operational effectiveness or decision-making of the police, but it is about openness, transparency and restoring the faith and trust that taxpayers should have in their local police. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is not in his place. I am sure he discharged his duties commendably in Leicestershire, but, frankly, the police and crime commissioner model has not worked. I speak as someone who used my maiden speech in the other place in June 2005 to call for elected police commissioners. I am afraid that it has been a damp squib. The relationship between senior police officers and the commissioners, to whom they should have had accountability, has not worked out in the way it should have done. I applaud the Government for the decision to discontinue that.

We see egregious examples of apparent two-tier policing. Robert Peel is probably turning in his grave now when he looks at the antics of the chief constable of the West Midlands, who colluded with Islamist thugs and their representative, the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Perry Barr, in preventing Jewish fans from attending a game in our second city. He also lied twice to a parliamentary committee, seemingly with impunity. He has now left the service with a large taxpayer-funded pension.

The question is: do the police actually care what elected politicians and Ministers think? I am not sure that is the case. There have been lots of cases of alleged two-tier policing. More recently, one has to look only at the comparison between the policing of the Palestinian hate marchers in our capital from October 2023 and, for instance, the banning of a Walk with Jesus rally in east London or the heavy-handed policing of farmers protesting at the Government’s tax policies at the end of last year. This is not a political issue. It is an issue of the undermining of policing by consent and that is bad news for all of us.

Data is needed for the justice system, particularly the police force, both to work effectively and so that they can be scrutinised by lawmakers and the public. Public perception of our police matters. We want our police to be perceived positively by the public based on evidence that they are doing their jobs well. Public perception of the police is currently low, and crime rates appear to be high. Data on enforcement would both be a motivation for effective policing and help them to be held accountable—and, more importantly, give an accurate public image.

We currently have a crisis on our hands in respect of law enforcement in England and Wales. Knife crime in England and Wales rose by 78% between 2013 and 2023; even when the population growth was factored in, this was still a 68.3% rise. In 2024, 31.5% of all robberies committed in London’s Met police area involved stealing mobile phones—this increased from 21.6% in 2021. Noble Lords will know that the Committee considered my amendment on the theft of mobile phones, ably introduced my noble friend, earlier this month. In-person theft offences—which, according to Policy Exchange, is where an item is stolen from a person but, unlike a robbery, no force is used or threatened—the percentage of cases is even higher and represents between 68.5% and 72.6% of offences during the last four years. London has faced a dramatic surge in theft from the person offences: a 170% increase in the three years up to 2024. Also, there were nearly 95,000 shoplifting offences in the year to June 2025, a 38% increase on the previous year.

This amendment is about enforcement data. The police are not always effective in dealing with these crimes. In the year to March 2025, the Met solved 5% of burglaries and robberies reported to it. It solved less than 1.5% of reported bike thefts and less than 8% of shoplifting offences. In 2024, only 0.6% of theft from the person offences were solved. This declined from just 1.1% in 2021. Public perception of the police is becoming worse. In 2022, 50% of Londoners thought that their local police were doing a good job; in 2025, that had dropped to 45%.

Police forces across England and Wales should publish data annually on the enforcement of offences so that the public and lawmakers know how successfully crimes are being policed. The public also deserve to know this information. If the rate of crime is increasing, so then should the rate of enforcement. We must support the Peelite principle of policing by consent. We need to collect, collate and analyse data to restore public confidence. That is why we need to support my noble friend’s amendment, as I have today. I hope the Minister will give consideration to what is essentially a cross-party amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I totally support Amendment 436 on the collection of enforcement data; the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, have explained well why I do. But I am rising to speak to Amendment 437 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, calling for a review of police paperwork. I will just explain why. I have put my name on a number of amendments that require more data collection, which might sound contradictory. But we need more granular and accurate data, while ensuring that data is streamlined and necessary, rather than collected just for the sake of it. In that sense, there is no contradiction.

The review of paperwork is necessary to identify and cut out all the endless and needless form-filling that police officers are forced to do. Whenever you talk to rank and file police officers, one of the most voluble frustrations that they voice is the ever-growing regime of paperwork and bureaucracy. They complain that they did not sign up to become pen-pushers and this is hardly what they envisaged when they joined the force.

More seriously, we have just heard a very moving debate on the mental health challenges faced by some police officers. I do not want to be glib, but when you talk to police officers, they will often say that they are tearing their hair out and completely demoralised because of the amount of bureaucracy that they face—so it is worth bearing that in mind.

The impressive multiplication of the number of forms the police have to fill out could be interpreted as indicative of the scientification or the professionalisation of police work, as the bureaucratic regime’s apologists would have us believe. I think the duplication of information, which is often banal, indicates a stifling bureaucratisation of policing and a trend that is reiterated by officers as impeding their ability to respond to crime or engage in proactive crime solving.

I want to use an example from some years ago. I was a victim of a very nasty, unpleasant mugging. I reported it to the police, as one does, and they were hyperactive in their response. I got a very nice letter reassuring me that they were there for me as a victim. got a form to fill in, asking whether I had had the right kind of support as a victim. I even had a follow-up phone call to find out why I had not filled out my form and to make sure I was okay. The problem was that at no point did anyone visit me in the sense of attempting to apprehend the person who had committed the mugging. That never came up. It was all about my feelings about being a victim of crime, rather than solving the crime. Imagine how much paperwork went into that. I was bemused, but infuriated as well.

We would like this review to ask how paperwork has proliferated. Certain people argue that the process-driven approach to policing is created by risk aversion—the police covering their own backs, potentially. It might be that it is an obsession with communication. There is certainly a lot of press releasing done, tweets put out and so on. The main thing is that we have to get to the bottom of what is creating it. I think—there will be a discussion on this on a later group—that a lot of the work generated does not have anything to do with core policing. When I talk to police officers I know, they say they are engaged in a wide range of activity related to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, which are also bureaucratic in terms of the kind of things that they have to do. We heard about non-crime hate incidents on a previous group. How many hours are spent investigating those? There is also a great deal of paperwork being generated by that, and hopefully we have seen the back of them.

Perhaps this amendment is kicking at an open door. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister because the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has made similar points. It seems that cutting red tape is a part of what the Home Office is trying to do, so I am delighted about that.

I have a couple of reservations. I am slightly worried that the solution for cutting red tape that has been put forward is a greater use of AI. I am all for sensible use of technology, but I note that West Midlands Police recently took a shortcut and cut back on a lot of hours of paperwork that would have been wasted in a proper investigation in relation to the Maccabi Tel Aviv football game with Aston Villa. The problem with that shortcut and paper-saving exercise was that as a consequence it came up with a non-existent football match to justify the banning of the Israeli fans, as we know. Recent research by businesses has shown that for every 10 hours apparently saved by the use of AI, four hours are used checking errors and fact-checking AI output. They have had to bring in extra staff to do that particular type of work.

Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville- Rolfe, on her reservations about the licensing of police officers. I am afraid that fills me with horror. Credentialism is notorious for being more bureaucratisation. If you want any evidence, just look at the university sector and what is happening on that in certain sectors.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her continued interest in improving transparency and accountability in policing. She will know that I am outcome-focused myself, and that I try to ensure that we get outcomes. I note the support from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Davies of Gower, for Amendment 436.

The Government have taken significant steps to improve the visibility of police performance. I draw noble Baroness’s attention to the newly established police performance framework. That framework, supported by the Home Office’s police performance unit, provides a robust mechanism for monitoring enforcement activities across all 43 current police forces in England and Wales. This includes the priority offences that the noble Baroness mentioned, such as shoplifting, knife crime and theft.

The noble Baroness mentioned the White Paper; I will respond by trailing some of the announcements that were made in the White Paper yesterday. A key one was that the Home Office will this year introduce an initial sector-facing police performance dashboard that will enable chief constables and local policing bodies to analyse the transparent, high quality and operationally significant data that all three Back-Bench speakers sought. This will empower forces to deliver improvements through strengthening their understanding of where they are performing well and where they can learn from practice in other forces to improve. The framework has been designed to be flexible, and there will be a midpoint review in middle of 2027-28 to allow for the inclusion of any new priorities that might be brought forward. The Government believe that this is an appropriate mechanism for considering additional offence categories, rather than—with due respect to the noble Baroness— mandating them in primary legislation.

I took to heart the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that requiring police forces to publish enforcement data on a fixed list of offences might add burdens and administrative duplication, particularly when many of these offences are already captured through a range of other mechanisms, and contradict the later amendments to reduce police bureaucracy. That is an important factor to bear in mind when we consider this proposal.

Furthermore, the police and the CPS are required to comply with the Director of Public Prosecutions guidance on charging, which applies to all offences where a criminal charge may be instituted. This guidance ensures that investigations meet evidential and public interest tests before prosecution. Compliance for that is monitored through an internal assessment framework between the police and the CPS that is crime agnostic and used only for management purposes. A statutory duty to publish enforcement data for selected offences might duplicate those arrangements and divert resources from front-line policing.

In summary on Amendment 436, yes, we need to improve, but we have put in place some mechanisms. We will monitor those mechanisms and, I hope, return to them in due course, without the legislative requirement proposed by the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness’s Amendment 437 goes to the heart of the core issue of productive use of police time. I again note the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for this amendment. The 2023 Police Activity Survey, provided by the Home Office, gave us significant insights into how police time is used. We are planning to repeat that survey this year, and I hope it will again help us to understand a bit more about the policing landscape.

The 2023 productivity review, sponsored by the College of Policing’s Centre for Police Productivity, prioritised the rollout of productivity-enhancing capabilities, such as the use of AI and robotic process automation, to reduce the time spent on administration. I know that there are concerns about AI, and I have heard them raised today in Committee. However, when properly used, AI can reduce bureaucracy. In Autumn 2024, we launched the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme to explore how we can improve productivity and efficiency savings.

Yesterday, the Government published the policing White Paper, From Local to National: A New Model for Policing—I have a copy to hand for ease of reference. In that White Paper is a comprehensive package of reforms that address the issues in the noble Baroness’s amendment. I refer her to paragraph 91, which says:

“Another area of extensive paperwork in policing comes from the requirements of the criminal justice system. In the months ahead we will work with the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service (alongside the Attorney General’s Office) to examine changes that could reduce the burden on policing. As part of this work, we will look at a number of areas including the disclosure regime and redaction, the use of out of court resolutions, charging and joint police-prosecution performance metrics. We will do this alongside consideration of any new or emerging evidence, such as the implications of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations for criminal court reform”.


We therefore recognise that that is an important issue.

I also refer the noble Baroness to paragraph 293, which says:

“It is expected that in its first year Police.AI will focus on some of the biggest administrative burdens facing policing – including disclosure, analysis of CCTV footage, production of case files, crime recording and classification and translating and transcribing documents. This will free up 6 million policing hours each year”.


The Government are therefore focused on those issues, so I am not convinced that we need a legislative solution to deal with them. With this having been put in the White Paper—it is a brand-new document, and Members will want to have a chance to reflect upon it—the direction of travel is self-evidently there. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand that the core issues on which she is calling for a review are addressed in the document that I have just referred to the Committee.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am old enough to remember the last time that we looked at regional police forces. That was under the Minister’s erstwhile colleague, the right honourable Charles Clarke, I think, in 2008-09. There is some merit in the argument for amalgamating large forces. However, will the Minister confirm that AI is also important in supporting hyper-local community policing? A burglary takes place in the Met area every 11 minutes, and, tragically, a rape takes place every 54 minutes. There are big discrepancies between, say, Bexley, Richmond, Kingston and central London. Will the Minister ensure that Ministers are cognisant of the need to use AI to reinforce community policing, as well as the mergers of police forces at a very large level?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that. I refer him to the first line of paragraph 281 of the policing White Paper, which says:

“In policing, getting the right information into the right hands at the right time can mean the difference between life and death”.


That is absolutely right, as is the point that the noble Lord made. AI, particularly how it develops over the next few years, will be critical in distilling information that can be used by police to investigate, capture and understand crime performance in any area. We have some significant expertise in the Home Office that is looking at those issues, and the direction of travel has been set in the White Paper.

In addition to the forces of good using AI, criminals are themselves looking at how they can use AI to better defraud people, so we need to be ahead of the game on that as well. In the White Paper, we are looking at AI in respect of both challenges. We are looking at how it is used by bad actors, and at how we can reduce, collect and analyse information and dissect trends in a much speedier way and take out physical paperwork. The noble Lord makes a very valid point about how that can be used at a local level, as well as on a national trend basis.

The points that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is making are very valid. When I was last doing the job of Police Minister in 2009-10, which was a long time ago, we had a review at the Police Federation’s urging. We have tried to reduce paperwork, because it is critical. Police officers should use technology to amass information on how we can prevent crime, bring prosecutions through the CPS and understand trends in local areas, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has said. That is the direction of travel in the White Paper. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I just looked about my person at my identification documents and found my House of Lords pass, which at least at this point does not record my birth sex. I suppose “Baroness” might arguably do the trick—or not, I do not know. I suspect it would not be enough for the supporters of these two amendments. I also looked in my handbag, and my two bank cards do not record anything approximating my biological sex.

In an earlier group, I heard noble Lords opposite speak very compellingly about what the police are up against and how they are tearing their hair out because of the bureaucracy. Last week, I agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in particular and other noble Lords opposite when they spoke to an amendment to ensure that, were there to be digital ID, the police could not demand that information on request in the street. A number of noble Lords made very strong and passionate speeches on that issue.

I wonder about the workability and the wider consequences of the amendment, were it to be added to primary legislation. It is very broad in scope, dealing with anybody who is subject to arrest or a charge or caution for any offence. It would place a firm obligation on the police to record the person’s birth sex and any discrepancy between that and what the person identifies as or what is on any documents that they present. How on earth is this to work without, I suspect, far more intrusive searching than is necessary for every offence, from a minor public order protest offence to shoplifting to insider trading? In each scenario, the police would be required to make a determination of the person’s biological sex, requiring a fairly intrusive examination and challenging and questioning. That would be quite a traumatic and degrading experience for anyone and might be disproportionate to the offence being investigated.

I agree that crime can be highly gendered; we know that because all we have learned about violence against women and girls, but I fail to see that this kind of determination is necessary at the point of arrest for insider dealing or even for a protest offence. And, if we are talking about headaches for the police, I can imagine in a large protest every arrestee being briefed by their comrades and colleagues deliberately to identify in a mischievous way just to give the police a headache.

I ask noble Lords to think again about the contradictions in the positions that they are taking on this very long Bill. Workability, proportionality and whether this kind of intrusion into the lives of not just people who have changed sex or are transexual but of anybody who is subject to arrest and charge, particularly a woman with short hair, for example. I am reading stories about women who have had mastectomies for breast cancer being challenged in gym changing rooms because of the way they look.

I ask noble Lords to think about the wider consequences and the proportionality of what they propose.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. All of us who care about the safety, security, integrity and autonomy of women are also concerned about, for instance, a so-called trans-inclusive strip search policy which allows, for instance, a 6 foot 4 inch man who self-identifies as a woman to search a very vulnerable young woman at a police station. That is an issue of great concern, and were we to adopt this amendment, it might be ameliorated.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but that is a separate issue—it is about who is allocated to which duty at the police station, and it is perfectly reasonable for the police themselves to organise who conducts a strip search and who conducts a strip search on whom. That is not what the first or second version of the amendment is about; it is about an obligation on the police to make a determination of the biological sex of anybody they are arresting, charging or cautioning. It comes from noble Lords who, as I understand it, oppose compulsory digital ID that could conceivably require some determination at the point of registration. I applauded those compelling speeches last week from noble Lords about that being too much of an intrusion on the citizen who is innocent until proved guilty at the point of encounter with the police. How are the police going to do this?

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

To be clear, a perpetrator is someone who is convicted, not anyone who is arrested. As I tried to suggest in response to the comments about incarceration, it is much easier to justify greater intrusion at the point of conviction, particularly if someone is going to prison. I do not think this is about drafting; it is about the practical policy the amendments are proposing. How on earth is it viable to put this obligation to be the determiner and decision-maker over somebody’s biological sex? Is it reasonable to put that on every constable? I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench, because he served as a police officer for many years and with some distinction. He may know better than I whether this will be welcome for police officers in their everyday duties, for every arrest and every offence.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has been courageously raising these issues of gender identity and sex, over many years and before it was fashionable, through the prism of wishing to protect the safety and security of women. I applaud her for that. I also thank my noble friend Lady Cash, who speaks with great professional expertise and experience.

Notwithstanding the passionate case put by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, it is surely the case that policy, particularly when we are dealing with sensitive issues such as crime data and violence against women and girls, which is rightly a government priority, should be formulated and delivered on the basis of robust, peer-reviewed, empirical evidence. Who can logically argue against that? That is what the amendment is principally about.

We have heard about the Sullivan standard. The context in which we are working in putting forward this amendment is that sex is a protected characteristic and the Equality Act 2010 has been clarified by the Supreme Court. It is extremely disappointing that the Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, continues to obfuscate and delay proper timely guidance being issued by a number of bodies in respect of, for instance, access to single-sex spaces. The Supreme Court stated plainly that under the Equality Act, “sex” refers to the material reality of being female or male. That determines how single-sex spaces function in a mixed-sex society, from women’s changing rooms to prison, and justifies excluding men where doing so is necessary and proportionate. That remains the case, which is why this amendment is very important. It is in that context that it would hopefully be incorporated into the legislation.

As we know, the Sullivan review was commissioned in February 2024 with the aims of identifying obstacles to accurate data collection and research on sex and gender identity in public bodies and the research system, and setting out good practice guidance for how to collect data on sex and gender identity. Sullivan recommended that:

“Data on sex should be collected by default in all research and data collection commissioned by government and quasi-governmental organisations … The default target of any sex question should be sex (in other words, biological sex, natal sex, sex at birth). Questions which combine sex with gender identity, including gender identity as recognised by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) have a mixed target”.


She also recommended that:

“The Home Secretary should issue a mandatory Annual Data Requirement (ADR) requiring the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales and the British Transport Police (BTP) to record data on sex in all relevant administrative systems. Relatedly, police forces should cease the practice of allowing changes to be made to individual sex markers on the Police National Computer (PNC)”.


This is about public trust. That is why my noble friend is quite right to refer to the situation of Police Scotland, which in November 2025 moved officially to record the biological sex of all suspects. The chief constable stated that it will ensure that

“by recording accurately biological sex, our crime data is accurate”.

The Scottish experience proves that it is possible to maintain a respect-based approach in person, using preferred pronouns in custody, while ensuring that the official record reflects the material facts needed for “statistical rigour”. The deputy chief constable of Police Scotland, Alan Speirs, confirmed that recent legal rulings provide the necessary clarity that “sex” in law refers to biology. This gives police the mandate to record it as such without infringing on the Human Rights Act or the Equality Act.

If police forces do the wrong thing on this, it can result in calamitous situations. I declare my interest as a member, at least for the next month, of the British Transport Police Authority. The British Transport Police, without any proper guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council or Ministers, decided unilaterally in autumn 2024 to launch a transitioning and non-binary search guidance policy, which meant that even individuals without a GRC were permitted to search anyone, including a woman, provided that the person doing the searching, for instance, said that they were a woman—even though they were a biological man.

That advice was quickly rescinded. I argued, as a member of the authority, that it was a disastrous mistake. It cost many thousands of tax pounds in legal fees that the force has had to pay as a result. The organisation Sex Matters launched a possible judicial review against that decision. It took the focus away from policing, front-line activities and operational efforts in order to engage in virtue signalling on the basis of the preferences of the chief constable and the senior officers at the British Transport Police. It did not do anything about the 11% clear-up rate for offences of violence against women and girls that, unfortunately, remains prevalent on the transport network in this country.

I cannot understand how any noble Lord, on the basis of tackling crime and the objective of having the data available to allocate resources properly, can realistically argue against the amendment because it has the background of the Sullivan review and Ministers’ acceptance of the Supreme Court ruling in 2025. On that basis, the Ministers should look benignly on the amendment, because it is not onerous and draconian; it is realistic, fact-based and based on empirical research. Therefore, it should be adopted because, if nothing else, it would greatly improve the efficacy of this largely important Bill, which we on this side support. It would mean that police officers could properly address the issues with the facts behind them, rather than the ideological absolutism that unfortunately marked much of the debate and the hostility to collecting data in the criminal justice system on the basis of gender identity rather than sex. It is a good amendment, and I hope that the Ministers will be able to support it.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a great legal mind, I am afraid; I am not even a legal mind. Many people would argue that I am not a great mind either, so I have questions rather than a dictatorial philosophy.

The contrast between the original amendment and the one before us is quite revealing. “Biological” was taken out of the title, yet the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said she thought that biological sex was a material fact, so why was it taken out of the heading?

There was a very interesting reference to the gender recognition certificates, which I took a little bit of comfort from. Then, in the amendment before us, that reference was deleted. My second question is: is the reference to “official documents” being “proffered” regarded as the substitute? I would be very grateful for that clarification.

Perhaps the noble Lord on the Front Bench could answer this in his summing up: what assurances can we have that anyone accused is not forced out, even if the particular allegation is not related to sex and sexuality? How can we avoid people having to come out against their will?

I am still not sure why this issue is regarded as so vital. I am sorry, but there seems to be a lack of proportionality about this whole debate in the massive challenges that our police forces have today. Is it really that vital? I am not terribly convinced about that. I have questions more than anything, but I feel there is some disproportionality on this whole subject.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 438D would

“exempt the police from the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010, so as to ensure they are solely committed to effectively carrying out their policing functions”.

When I read that I wished that we could apply this exemption across the board. I wish that more public bodies would commit themselves to effectively carrying out their functions and not get distracted by the public sector equality duty. The police, I am afraid, have become far too embroiled in politicised equality initiatives—the EDI-ing of the police, as it has become known.

Briefly, I want to raise why this amendment is worth thinking about and why it is quite important. There is currently legal action being taken against the UK Civil Service over aspects of EDI practices, and specifically noted is official participation in Pride events. The argument is that taxpayer-funded Civil Service involvement in, for example, LGBTQ+ Pride marches, including civil servants marching in branded Civil Service Pride t-shirts, using rainbow lanyards at work and so on, is in breach of provisions in the Civil Service Code about being objective and impartial. This relates to the police as this recent legal action follows a successful legal challenge against Northumbria Police in 2025, where the High Court ruled that uniformed police officers marching in Pride marches breached police impartiality.

For the public, the idea of a politicised police force fuels the argument that the police may be unfair or discriminatory in who they target for, for example, non-crime hate incidents. Though we have seen the back of those, they were the blight of many a person’s life and destroyed many citizens’ lives. We need reassurance that the public sector equality duty has not been used to distract the police or to politicise policing. All the evidence would imply that it has been, and that is something that the Government should be concerned about.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend on the Front Bench. When Section 149 of the Equality Act came into effect, it was seen largely as benign. It very reasonably imposed an obligation on public sector organisations to treat people with fairness and equality and to ensure that there was equality of opportunity within the organisation and in the interface that those bodies had with the wider public, whether it was local government, the NHS or other bodies. However, it has unfortunately been the subject of Parkinson’s law, where the work expands to fill the category. Therefore, instead of focus on the managerial targets, action plans and strategy documents which would deliver demonstrable improvement in policing performance across a wide number of areas and criminal activity, there has often, regrettably, been an overfocus on the public sector equality duty.

As someone with a background as a human resources manager and practitioner, I believe that every decent leadership in every organisation should have a set of policies which deliver fairness and equality within the organisation. It should not be incumbent upon the Government to compel organisations to do something that they should already be doing. Many leading organisations in the public and private sector do so anyway because treating people with fairness and decency and giving them opportunity delivers better performance.

I apologise to the Committee for mentioning again my experience on the British Transport Police Authority. At the end of October 2023, I was invited to attend a workshop on diversity, equality and inclusion. That cost the taxpayer £29,000 for, essentially, two days of a workshop, some handouts and some supplementary material which contained contested theories around critical race theory, white privilege and microaggressions. I declined to attend the first day; the second day was much more productive because it was focused on the senior management objectives of the British Transport Police. This expansion of the public sector equality duty has been inimical to the main objectives of policing, which are to tackle crime and protect the safety and security of our citizens—on the railways, in the case of the BTP, and in the wider country.

There is a special case to be made that policing is different because it has the responsibility, as a corporate entity within the Peel principles, to police by consent and to treat people equally irrespective of their age, race, religion or ethnicity. There is an issue of undermining the trust and faith people have in the police if we concentrate too much on a duty which is quite divisive, contentious and controversial.

For those reasons, I support my noble friend’s amendment and look forward to the Minister’s answer. I hope that he will at least engage with the argument. He is shaking his head—I do not know why, because we have not yet concluded the debate. He should know better than to dismiss any noble Lord before the conclusion of a debate. For the reasons I have enunciated, I hope that the Minister will at least engage with the debate in a thoughtful way, which is what we normally expect from him.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the public sector equality duty exists so that our public services in the UK, which are funded by all of us, obey the laws on equalities. It is there because that is not what used to happen—and sometimes it still does not happen. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that all he had to do was watch the recent television programme about the goings-on—the racism and misogyny—in one of our local police stations to know that we need these things on our statute book. As a veteran of the Equality Act 2010, I am very proud that we have them there. I hope my noble friend the Minister will give his usual defence of, “It’s Labour that always triumphs and always puts forward equalities, because that is actually important for our society”.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for outlining the core, essential use of the public sector equality duty. I note that the Government’s website says:

“The Public Sector Equality Duty … requires public authorities to have due regard … when exercising their functions, like making decisions … It is intended to help decision-makers, including Government ministers, to comply with the duty”.


It does not talk about Pride marches or the detail of training.

Section 149 of the Equality Act says:

“A public authority must … eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act”.


I do not think the police could argue with anything there. It must also

“advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.

That speaks to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about some of the very poor, racist behaviour we have seen from a few individuals. It must also

“foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it … A person who is not a public authority but who exercises public functions must, in the exercise of those functions, have due regard to the matters mentioned in subsection (1)”.

I have quoted that very short section because the descriptions by some previous speakers in this short debate have made it sound like something completely different. I would be very worried if the police no longer had to follow the public sector equality duty as set out in the Equality Act. We can all argue about whether we do or do not like going on training days, or about a certain amount of money being well spent or not, but we really want to see discrimination eliminated, and that is particularly important in the police.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said on the last group that we all need common sense and practicality. The PSED is the tool that does that, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for outlining the detail. He is right that the police should follow the law; the point is that the PSED and the impact assessments also fit within that. Getting rid of the PSED would mean that unlawful discrimination might well be missed, and that would be dreadful. He also said that it is not down to the police to deliver equality. I think the Equality Act differs on that and, given the work the police do, we would be pretty horrified if they suddenly said they did not have to deliver equality.

One of the ways that racism can be eliminated from the police is by ensuring compliance with the PSED. It is not the PSED itself at fault, but what is going on inside police authorities. That is why, for the third group today, we are talking about the importance of the White Paper on policing that has just been published, which will change the culture and ensure that that stops. We on these Benches believe that the PSED is a vital tool for the police to deliver that.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, cannot both be right. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is making the case that the public sector equality duty is a tool to tackle racism. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made clear, the appalling, racist events at Charing Cross took place a year ago, 14 years after the PSED came into being. Surely it has not worked and a cultural change has to happen from within the organisation, as well as complementary legislation being imposed. On this occasion, it does not seem to have worked in that part of the Metropolitan Police.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to support the public sector equality duty in legislation and to say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that there are times when you know before anybody has even spoken that you are not going to agree with the premise of the argument. This is one of those occasions. I am not going to agree with the premise of the argument, but I will not repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said. I will only in part repeat part what she said by referring to what Section 149, the public sector equality duty, is.

It says:

“A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to … eliminate discrimination”—


or should the police not be looking at making sure that they eliminate discrimination in their dealings? On harassment, should the police not be ensuring that they are not involved in harassment in their dealings? On victimisation, should the police not be involved in ensuring that they do not victimise in their dealings? It goes on to refer to

“any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act”.

It says in this Section, which the noble Lord wishes to remove from legislation, that the police or any public authority should

“foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.

Section 149(5) says:

“Having due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to … tackle prejudice, and … promote understanding”.


Does the noble Lord think that the police should not have a role in tackling prejudice and promoting understanding? That is what he is saying by seeking to remove this piece of legislation. The section goes on to say:

“The relevant protected characteristics are—age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation”.


Does the noble Lord believe—he obviously does, since he has tabled the amendment—that those protected characteristics should not be ones that the police seek to take into account when dealing with these matters?

The noble Lord has put a perfectly fair argument, but it does not take my listening to it in detail to know, as I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that it is not on my core values list or my core approach to how we deal with policing, and it is not how the public sector equality duty is designed. It is designed to embed day-to-day work in all our public authorities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, that leads to better outcomes for individuals and for communities. For policing, the duty is vital to maintain public trust and legitimacy. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterson and Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the Peelite principles mean that the police police with the consent of the community. If they did not take into account the duty not to discriminate, victimise or harass then I am sorry, but that is not a police service that would secure the support of the community in its policing.

Compliance with this duty is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is a practical tool, but one with a moral under- pinning, for better decision-making and accountability. Removing the duty would risk undermining confidence in policing, particularly among those communities that are in the protected characteristic list in Section 149 of the Equality Act.

There are times when we can have a debate, have an argument and, potentially, listen to areas where we will have some movement from either the Opposition or the Government. This is not one of those times. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment now but, if he brings it back on Report, I will take great pleasure in asking every Member of this House to vote it down.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I will allow the Minister to dismount from his high horse on this. The fact of the matter, as he knows very well, is that between the election of the Labour Government in 1997 and 2010, when the Equality Act came in, there was still a concern, based on a moral underpinning by the then Labour Government, to improve equality in the workplace and elsewhere. My party brought forward, for instance, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which tackled discrimination. The Minister’s party, very rightly, brought forward the Race Relations Act 1976. It is not a moral imperative solely for the Labour Party and this particular Government. There is, however, an argument to be made about bureaucracy and whether the focus is too much on EDI, which prevents senior management and officers at the operational level concentrating on keeping people safe and tackling crime. That is the point that we are making, not that we on this side do not care about people being treated fairly and equally in the workplace and elsewhere.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

From my high position on my horse, I say to the noble Lord that we will take a different view on that. From the position of a very high horse, I think that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would be damaging to community relations, to community cohesion, and to the police’s ability to police effectively. It would give carte blanche to the type of events that have happened in certain police stations in London in the last few weeks. It would also, dare I say it, remove the floor from the policing principle that we do not tolerate those things.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, says that certain things have not happened; he mentioned, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that some standards have not been raised in the time of the Equality Act. I remind him that there will be somebody speeding today, and somebody stealing from a shop today. There might even be a murder today. It does not mean that people would not break the law because we did not have that legislation.

The key point is that, with the Equality Act, we are trying to set a public duty that public authorities act with fairness irrespective of the protected characteristics listed in that Act. I think the police would want to—never mind should—be held to that level of account. That is why I have come to the judgment that I cannot support the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. That is a fair political disagreement between us. I have not done that in a way that says anything bad about the noble Lord’s motives. It is simply that, for me, there is a difference. There is blue/red water between us on this. I am happy to say that I hope he withdraws the amendment today; however, if he does not, we are willing to make those arguments on Report. I hope that, with the support of the Liberal Democrats and others, my noble friends and I would stand up for what we think is right about the Equality Act 2010.