Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 16th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I follow the noble Baroness by apologising to your Lordships that I was not here for the commencement of the Minister’s speech, but I heard the great majority of what he said, and I was also present for the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Walney and Lord Pannick.

I want to emphasise my considerable support for subsection (4) of the new clause proposed by Amendment 311, which deals directly with the concerns that I expressed in Committee and on Report. I am deeply troubled by the fact that people who are expressing support for Palestine Action in the streets of London are in fact using shorthand simply to protest at what they think is going wrong in Gaza and the West Bank. I do not think that those people should be charged with or arrested for terrorism. The proposed new subsection deals directly with that, and I think it is a very useful way forward. I very much hope that in the review, or if any amendment to the Terrorism Act is brought forward, the provisions of that subsection would be incorporated into any change of law, because that subsection makes it plain that, unless somebody is doing something which is really in furtherance of a criminal offence, they are not to be treated as a terrorist simply for demonstrating.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before we have any other contributions, I remind your Lordships that there is a very clear rule here, that if one is not present in the Chamber for the beginning of a group it is unacceptable to participate. Apologising and then proceeding is not the way that we do it.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, just before we progress, while the noble Lord on the Woolsack is absolutely right in what he has just argued, I have just witnessed three Members of this House not complying with the Companion. While my noble friend was wrong to do what he did, it is not for the noble Lord on the Woolsack to point out failures of procedure—it is for the Government Chief Whip or Deputy Chief Whip, who is present, to do so. If we all start not meeting our own individual responsibilities or discharging them properly, none of us is going to be complying with the Companion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I urge noble Lords to support Amendment 334 and declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. The Minister will tell noble Lords that the amendment is unnecessary because the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have recommended the abolition of the non-crime hate incident regime and the Government have amended the Bill to repeal the statutory NCHI code of practice.

However, we knew all this when we voted for the amendment on Report. The Minister stood where he is about to stand and said all this a few weeks ago. The amendment repealing the code of practice had already sailed through unopposed. He told us what was going to be in the joint report and, lo, that is what is in the joint report. This was all priced in when this House decided to vote for the amendment. Nothing has changed, so there is no reason why any noble Lords should change their minds about supporting it.

I have already set out the case for the amendment, which I remind noble Lords was co-sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, a Liberal Democrat, and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, a former Metropolitan Police commissioner, so I will not waste your Lordships’ time by repeating those arguments, but I would just like to make a couple of points.

The joint report, while welcome, has left some loose ends, such as: what will become of historic non-crime hate incidents sitting on police databases? Is there a risk that they will be disclosed in enhanced criminal record checks if a person applies for a job as a teacher or carer, as there was under the old regime? I remind noble Lords that one person had a NCHI recorded against his name for whistling the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” every time he saw his neighbour. Another was recorded for someone claiming that a newly elected independent councillor cared more about the people of Gaza than the people in his ward. That comment was recorded as a non-crime hate incident. The joint report had nothing to say about what would become of these historic NCHIs, and there are still tens of thousands, if not more, sitting on police databases.

Our amendment made some very modest demands to deal with this outstanding problem. The first version, which we tabled in Committee, asked for all historic NCHIs to be deleted, but at a meeting between the co-sponsors of the amendment and Sir Andy Marsh, the CEO of the College of Policing—and I am grateful to the Minister for arranging that meeting—we were told that for the police to go through all their databases and delete historic NCHIs would be a huge administrative undertaking and a waste of the police’s time.

We accepted that and revised our amendment. The version before noble Lords and on Report asks only that any NCHIs that the police come across in the course of their work be deleted, and not all of them but just those that do not meet the new, higher recording threshold of the successor regime. It would also ensure that if a member of the public discovered that an NCHI had been recorded against them via a subject access request—I remind noble Lords that members of the public are not always informed when they have NCHIs recorded against their names—and they requested that the NCHIs be deleted, the police acted on that request, provided that the NCHIs in question did not meet the new, higher recording threshold of the successor regime. These are modest demands. The noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Strasburger, and I listened to Sir Andy Marsh, and we came up with what we believe is a reasonable compromise.

The same is true when it comes to disclosure. Originally, our amendment asked the police to stop disclosing non-crimes in enhanced DBS checks altogether. No one, we thought, should be prevented from getting a job because they have committed a non-crime. But Sir Andy Marsh persuaded us that there are some very limited circumstances in which chief constables should disclose information about non-crimes in enhanced DBS checks: things employers should know—a point also made by several noble Lords during the debate in Committee. We accepted that too. So our amendment—the one we voted for on Report and which is before this House today—seeks to limit disclosure only to those historic NCHIs that do not meet the new, higher recording threshold. It is, we think, another reasonable compromise.

We listened to the College of Policing. We listened to noble Lords who expressed reservations about our original amendment. We listened to the Minister when he made valid points in Committee. We listened, and we revised our amendment accordingly. I think the fact that what we were asking for is so modest and so reasonable is why our amendment won a Division in this House. It won not because it attracted any support from Labour or the Lib Dems but because it commanded such wide support among the Cross-Benchers and the non-affiliated, who I believe recognised the reasonableness of what we were asking for.

However, the Government have not listened. They have not tabled an amendment in lieu or offered any concessions in the run-up to this debate. They have just cast our amendment aside and have dismissed the concerns of this House as beneath consideration. They have acted, in a word, unreasonably. I think I now have no choice but to move this amendment again so that the Government will be forced to engage with our concerns and to come back with their own reasonable compromise. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, has set out his reasons for insisting on his Motion Q1, which would delete records that the police hold non-crime hate incidents in certain circumstances which he outlined, even when the police had a concern about the pattern of behaviour and that it might lead to a crime.

I take issue with the comments that the noble Lord has made in that the whole Motion talks only about this very narrow area of what should be held and reviewed. The concerns that we have from these Benches are about the repetition of proposed new subsections (1) and (2), which say that non-crime hate incidents

“must not be recognised as a category of incident by any police authority in the United Kingdom”,

and that:

“No police authority or police officer may record, retain or otherwise process any personal data relating to a NCHI”.


Noble Lords will remember that we were lucky enough to have the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, with us after the College of Policing report was published, and he pointed out that there is a balance between free speech and the targeting of vulnerable people. Other noble Lords spoke movingly about this balance too, including the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, from her and her family’s own experience. So from these Benches, we were pleased when the Government laid their amendments on Report, which set out that balance between freedom of speech, which must be protected, and threats to vulnerable people. Their proposal to use anti-social behaviour mechanisms to record in the future is understandable and appropriate, and we hope that it will work out well. We will wait and see whether it really works.

We on these Benches believe that the combination of the Government’s amendment that is now in the Bill and the new guidance in the College of Policing report provide the balance that is needed to ensure that there is freedom of speech. However, the police will have the capability under the anti-social behaviour legislation to protect the most vulnerable in our community, especially if they are targeted by someone whose behaviour is escalating and the course of that pattern of behaviour could in itself become a crime such as harassment or, even worse, just progress more severely into an actual crime.

If there was nothing on any records up to the moment that a crime was committed, the police would not have been involved. For many vulnerable people who have harassment and other things going on, waiting that long deters and delays police action. There is a difference between that and passing the information on about the files. I believe that the Government’s amendments have dealt with that. On these grounds, we will not support Motion Q1.