Crime and Policing Bill

Siân Berry Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The speaking limit is now reduced to four minutes.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I will not be able to speak to all the amendments that Members have worked so hard on and that I have supported so many times by putting my name to them, but the Members know that I support them. New clauses 21, 25, 13, 18, 10, 43 and, in particular, new clause 122 are all important proposals that the Government should listen to. I do not support new clause 7 from the official Opposition, and I cannot support new clauses 2 and 3, as I do not believe there is any evidence that those measures would help make sex workers safer. We have to respect evidence and listen to sex workers and their voices on these issues.

Principally, I rise today to speak to my new clauses 26, 27, 109, 30 and 49, and new clause 50 from the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel). First, new clause 26 would require the Home Office to publish quarterly data on antisocial behaviour orders, including the number of times that stop-and-search powers were used prior to such orders being issued and the protected characteristics of individuals who receive those orders. That is important scrutiny to make sure the powers are being exercised fairly.

New clause 27 would enable regulations to vary the ability of police forces to use stop-and-search powers. Specifically, it would require the Government to suspend the use of those powers by any police force subject to Engage status under His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services. If a force has reached the point of requiring formal monitoring due to systemic issues, it is right that the most intrusive and abused police powers are subject to heightened scrutiny or even suspension.

New clause 30 would prohibit the deployment and use of certain forms of “predictive” policing technologies, particularly those that rely on automated decision-making, profiling and artificial intelligence, to assess the likelihood that individuals or groups will commit criminal offences. My hon. Friends will recognise that danger. Such technologies, however cleverly sold, will always need to be built on existing, flawed police data, or data from other flawed and biased public and private sources. That means that communities that have historically been over-policed will be more likely to be identified as being “at risk” of future criminal behaviour. As I have always said in the context of facial recognition, questions of accuracy and bias are not the only reason to be against these technologies. At their heart they infringe human rights, including the right to privacy and the right to be presumed innocent.

Crime and Policing Bill

Siân Berry Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

Before the Bill reaches the other place, I urge the Government to think again about clause 114, and to see whether they could clarify some of the definitions, bring forward guidance and maybe halt the Bill’s implementation until there has been a much more thorough consultation with a wider section of the community. We all want the democratic right of protest upheld; I have never heard anyone in this House argue against that. However, we want that done in a way that does not cause harm to anyone, or deny people their democratic right to express their opinion. In this coming period, given international affairs, we will see more demonstrations, so it is important to get their management right through more effective legislation.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I rise to speak to amendments 4 to 8 on child criminal exploitation. I thank the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson) for their speeches and proposals.

I voice my support for amendment 21, tabled by the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), which would prevent driver’s licence information obtained by the police being used for the purposes of intrusive facial recognition and gathering biometrics, and amendment 164 tabled by the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), which would remove clause 108 and the ban on face coverings in protest situations. The hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) has also tabled mitigating amendments on that subject; amendment 184 would create exceptions, and not just defences, relating to health, work, and religious faith coverings. I also support amendment 185, which proposes an equality review. I hope the Government will look at them all.

I welcome the efforts in the Crime and Policing Bill to protect vulnerable children, and I particularly welcome the introduction of a new offence of child criminal exploitation, which will signal to perpetrators that coercing, manipulating and exploiting children into criminal activity is child abuse and will be treated as such. Criminals are exploiting thousands of vulnerable children; Children In Need data shows that more than 15,000 children were at risk of exploitation in 2023-24, and that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

The perpetrators of exploitation include serious organised crime gangs, which are well versed in taking advantage of legislative gaps. Even though the Bill takes a huge step forward, areas of it must be strengthened if we are to protect children and bring the perpetrators of that abuse to justice. That is why I have tabled amendments 4 to 8.

First, amendments 4 and 5 would amend the wording in clause 38 to ensure that the offence includes activities that put children at significant risk and are linked to criminal conduct but are not in themselves criminal offences. Examples of this include carrying large amounts of cash on public transport, being used as a look-out or decoy, and guarding unsafe accommodation alone. Amendment 6 expands the definition of “exploitative activity” to ensure that preparatory acts, such as grooming and coercion, are captured by the offence.

I welcome the Minister’s comments earlier, and am grateful for the engagement with these amendments, but it is not yet obvious to me how referencing only the facilitation of future offences covers the gaps that would be closed by amendments 4 and 5, and amendment 6 seems to have been only partly addressed. I would therefore welcome further clarification, or a discussion of the issue with the Minister, ahead of consideration in the other place.

Secondly, amendment 7 would remove clause 38(1)(b), which currently amounts to a defence if the perpetrator reasonably believes that the child is over 18, unless the child is under the age of 13. While such provisions are common in other areas of law, in the case of criminal exploitation, this clause risks undermining the prosecution of perpetrators due to the well-publicised issues of adultification and racism within the criminal justice system. The recent Independent Office for Police Conduct report into race discrimination and the Alexis Jay report on criminally exploited children on behalf of Action for Children both highlight the roles of adultification and racism in the criminalisation of children, and how it leads to failures in safeguarding responses specifically, but not only, for young black boys. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 is clear: children cannot consent to their own exploitation, and this principle must be upheld by our removing this part of the offence.

Finally, amendment 8 to clause 53 would insert the words “aged 18 or over”. This would ensure that children could not be criminalised under the new offence of cuckooing. It would recognise that they are more often than not the victims, not the perpetrators, in these situations. The children targeted are often very young and extremely vulnerable, and they need protection, not prosecution. These amendments are not merely technical; they are essential. They reflect the lived experiences of children, and the findings of numerous reports and reviews that provide compelling evidence of the need for a more robust and child-centred legal framework. I urge all Members of the House to support these proposals. Together, we can take a decisive step towards better protecting vulnerable children from exploitation.

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

Before I move on to the amendment I want to speak about, I thank the Minister for the speed with which the Government have brought forward this Bill. It addresses important issues around protecting retail workers and tackling shoplifting and antisocial behaviour—issues that communities such as the towns and villages that I represent feel have been overlooked all too often. I really welcome the Government’s urgency of action in recognition of the great campaigns fought by many unions, including USDAW, and also of the real sentiment of my constituents that these crimes need to be taken far more seriously.

Today, though, I want to focus my time on amendment 19 to clause 94, in the name of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson), which brings forward important legislative action on spiking. I do so on behalf of a constituent. I will call her Sarah today because, understandably, she has asked to be kept anonymous for the purpose of the story she wishes me to share with all Members, but that in no way diminishes the great bravery that she has shown in her work on this. It is a real privilege for Members of the House to meet constituents who, having experienced deeply traumatic, incredibly difficult moments in their personal life, show a resilience and depth of character that lots of us could not even dream of, and who turn their pain and personal trauma into a powerful force for change. That is deeply true of Sarah, and of so many women right across the country who have been victims of spiking.

Sarah’s story is her own, but it has themes that will resonate with far too many people here and across the UK. It starts on her birthday. Like most of us, she was looking forward to celebrating her birthday with her friends. They had organised drinks in a nearby town, and the night started off filled with fun and joy. It ended, though, with Sarah alone, traumatised, confused and unable to speak, in a car park outside the venue after she was spiked. Sadly, this horrific act is one that far too many women across the country are falling victim to. After she was spiked, Sarah tried to do what she could. She had lost control of her words. She tried to call out for help, but she felt unable to. An ambulance was called, but did not know what to do. It waited there with her, but did not take her to hospital or make sure that she got the aftercare and testing that she needed. She was left to fend for herself.

What is really tragic is the fact that on top of all that trauma, and despite how difficult that moment in the car park must have been for her, it was not the only time in this experience that she felt alone. At every step—when she engaged with the police and the authorities, and when she pushed for action—she was ignored. There was insufficient action and insufficient focus. There was minimal follow-up and no prosecution, and the police took no further action on her case.

Facial Recognition: Police Use

Siân Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I thank every Member here for coming to this debate and I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for securing it in the first place.

I have worked on this issue for many years. In my previous job, I attended and observed the first deployments of live facial recognition by the Metropolitan police, which is many years ago now. Since then, the gap between its increasing use and the lack of a legislative basis has grown wider and wider. In that time, many thousands of people have had their personal data captured and used by the police when there was absolutely no reason for that. Many people have been misidentified, but the accuracy issue is not my main concern.

The unlegislated use of the technology is incredibly worrying. In my previous job on the London Assembly, I asked the Met and the Mayor of London many questions about that. I asked for watchlist transparency, but I did not get it. I heard the initial promises—“Oh, it will be very transparently used, we will communicate it, and no one will have to walk past it without knowing.” All those reassurances just faded away, because there is no real scrutiny or legislation. We need to debate the subject from first principles. As other Members have pointed out, we have had proper debates about identity cards and fingerprint and DNA data, but not about this extremely intrusive technology. It is more concerning than other technologies because it can be used on us without our knowledge. It really does engage our human rights in profound ways.

For all those reasons, the use of facial recognition by the police has been challenged by the Information Commissioner, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, the Biometrics Commissioner, London Assembly members, of whom I was one, Senedd Members and Members of Parliament here. The only detailed scrutiny of the technology has resulted in calls for a halt to its use; I am thinking of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. The Justice and Home Affairs Committee has also called for primary legislation. That is the absolutely key question. The EU has had the debate and looked at the issue in detail, with the result that over there what is used so much by the UK police is restricted to only the most serious cases of genuine public safety. That absolutely needs to happen here.

The legislation needs to look not just at police use of the technology, but private use. I have seen its use by private companies in the privately owned public space in King’s Cross. Data from there has been shared with the police; the police initially denied knowing anything about it and then later apologised for that denial. If private companies are collecting data and sharing it with the police, that needs to be scrutinised. If private companies are using the technology, that needs to be legislated for as well.

[Dawn Butler]

The hon. Lady is making an incredibly powerful speech. Is she aware of the Big Brother Watch campaign to try to stop large shops from capturing people’s faces and saying that they are shoplifters? They then get stopped in other places, but they are not aware of that process.

[Siân Berry]

Yes, I am aware of Big Brother Watch’s excellent campaigning on this issue. It has identified a serious breach of human rights. There is the potential for a serious injustice if people are denied access to their local shops based on a suspicion that has put them on a watchlist that may or may not be accurate. There is no oversight. We need to debate these things and legislate for them.

I tabled a written question to the Minister about putting regulation and legislation behind the police use of live facial recognition. The answer stated that the technology is governed by data protection and equality and human rights legislation, and supplemented by specific police guidance. I do not believe that police guidance is sufficient, given the enormous risks to human rights. We need a debate on primary legislation. I hope that the Minister will announce that that process will start soon and that this unlawful grey area will not be invading our privacy for much longer. This issue is urgent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Siân Berry Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. What steps her Department is taking to increase public trust and confidence in policing.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

14. What steps she is taking to monitor and maintain standards of police conduct.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

Restoring confidence in policing is one of the core aims of the Government’s safer streets mission. That means ensuring robust responses to the crimes that devastate lives and corrode our communities. We are also committed to improving police standards, and will announce steps to strengthen the police misconduct and vetting system shortly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

As the Home Secretary laid out, extra neighbourhood policing is important not just because we need more police on our streets, but because when our constituents—shop workers and those who own businesses—call the police, if they get no response confidence drops. The neighbourhood police that there will be across the country, including in Cornwall, will help with confidence, not just with crime.

[Siân Berry]

I thank the Minister for her answers. We have seen a toxic culture in some police services, including WhatsApp messages that are racist, homophobic and sexist, displaying deep prejudice. Will she clarify when the multiple recommendations from the Home Office review into the process of police officer dismissals will be actioned, including changing the law so that those who fail re-vetting can be more simply dismissed?

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more that we need to strengthen this area, with women especially feeling less confidence over the last few years. We will announce in due course—I promise the hon. Lady that we are working on this at pace—how we are going to ensure that police conduct and vetting systems are fit for purpose, to bring back some of the trust that has been lost.

Violent Disorder

Siân Berry Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Clearly, we want to see increasing living standards right across the board. That is immensely important. We also need a serious and sensible debate on a range of policies, including on crime, immigration and other issues that the Home Office is responsible for. We have to take much stronger action to counter the kinds of online radicalisation that we have seen, whether we are talking about far-right extremism or Islamist extremism. That is why we are setting up a new review on countering extremism. We also have to ensure that those committing disorder and violent crimes take responsibility, because there is no excuse. No policy issue or living standards can ever excuse the kind of violence, racist attacks and disorder that we saw.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

The ugly, racist mob violence in our towns and cities this summer was incited and organised by far-right groups, often using electronic platforms including Telegram and X. For example, on Telegram, groups have distributed instructions for making petrol bombs. Locations of hotels housing migrants and offices of immigration lawyers were also shared. Elon Musk, the proprietor of X, has greatly amplified some accounts that promote racist violence in our cities, while failing to take action to remove others. In the Home Secretary’s response, will she look at options for prosecuting those who own platforms that may have enabled or committed crimes under section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member will be aware that full implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023 has been long delayed and is still needed. One of the provisions of the Act is a requirement on social media companies to remove illegal content. Many of the examples that she raises are of illegal content that is still available online, which is shocking and irresponsible. That is why we need the speedy implementation of the Act, starting with the requirement to remove criminal content. Social media companies should also take much broader responsibility for ignoring their own terms and conditions, their responsibility towards communities and public safety. They need to take that more seriously.