Luke Taylor MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 21 May 2025 · Chronic Urinary Tract Infections · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is absolutely right. Many of our modern medicine practices are designed around avoiding the build-up of antibiotic resistance. The intention is to allow high-dose, effective antibiotics to be available when required, yet so many sufferers tell us that when they go to the doctor because they require those antibiotics, they are denied them. If this is not a case where those effective antibiotics must be used, even though resistance must be avoided, there cannot be a better example of the mismatch between intention and practice. I will come on to that in more detail, but I thank the hon. Member for making that point. The misdiagnosis of chronic UTIs does not lead to effective treatment and compounds sufferers’ agonising pain with awful frustration. At their most vulnerable and weak, they are being forced to prove that what is happening to them is real. That is Kafkaesque, and it is totally wrong. The key problem appears to be that specific National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines do not exist for chronic UTIs in England, and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network guidelines do not exist for the condition in Scotland. NICE guidelines for acute and recurrent UTIs exist, but as I have outlined, they are not fit for purpose for this chronic condition. How can GPs and urologists provide and recommend proper care, as the first point of contact with the patient, when there are no clear clinical guidelines? Without guidelines, many medical professionals are practically blind to the condition. They cannot prescribe the right antibiotics to relive patients’ pain because chronic UTIs are not even on their radar. Chronic UTI specialists do exist, and they recognise the condition and can help treat symptoms, but without proper guidance GPs and urologists, unintentionally or not, block patients from reaching them and refuse their requests for referral. Many chronic UTI sufferers have post-traumatic stress disorder from their interactions with medical professionals, never mind the suffering from the condition itself. I have heard stories of patients being essentially gaslit by medical professionals, told that the concern is all in their heads, denied antibiotics and given antidepressants instead. It seems that some GPs and urologists have dismissed the illness as a women’s problem and have told patients just to deal with the pain. That is not medicine; it is misogyny. I urge the Minister to push for the creation by NICE and SIGN of guidelines on chronic UTIs that are distinct from those on recurrent UTIs. That is long overdue and will hopefully bring to an end those kinds of interactions between suffering patients and GPs, but that alone will not be enough. There have to be better treatment offers for chronic UTI patients further down the pipeline. Right now, there is just one NHS specialist clinic in the entire country: the lower urinary tract symptoms clinic at Whittington hospital in London—one clinic for a nationwide illness. It offers fantastic support for patients, but waiting times are too long. We all know that waiting lists are far too high across the NHS— I commend the Government for their approach to bringing waiting lists down generally—but for chronic UTI sufferers forced to compete for the time of a solitary clinic, the effect is even more pronounced. Sufferers wait months, even years, for help if they are lucky enough to secure a referral in the first place. Even once patients get to the clinic, relief is still not guaranteed. The LUTS clinic offers long-term, high-dose antibiotics that can treat the symptoms, but they bring only partial relief, leaving many dragging themselves through life exhausted, drowsy and still in pain. That is not really living; it is enduring. Worse, the antibiotics do not work for everyone: about 30% of patients cannot tolerate them at all. Imagine the despair of being in that 30%. The situation would be scandalous enough if it were simply the case that, in desperation, many chronic UTI patients turned to private healthcare, spending thousands of pounds that they do not have just to access the bare minimum of care, but it is more awful than that. Some are forced to go to even more extreme lengths and choose risky, experimental procedures just to lessen their suffering. They fly abroad and pay unlicensed doctors more than £30,000 to have their bladders surgically removed. Let me say that again: people are choosing to have their organs ripped out in foreign countries because mainstream healthcare in the UK offers them nothing. For some, those risky surgeries offer relief, but for many the infection is already in their kidneys, and they return from the operation bladderless and with multiple complications. Some suffers, with few options left, make a choice that should haunt us in this House. Rather than live another day like that, they take the most extreme choice of all: to take their own life. That is not how people should be living in modern Britian, and that is why we should spare no expense in researching better treatments and, of course—as so many dream—a cure. I argue that the Government have an obligation, no matter the prevailing economic circumstances, to expedite the day that that becomes a reality. Promising medical trials already under way in the UK show real potential to transform how we treat chronic UTIs. Those treatments are ready to progress to human trials; the only thing standing in the way is funding. I urge the Minister to look into the roadblocks to getting more funding to the trials, and to come forward at the earliest opportunity with a plan to put conditions that are under-diagnosed and under-prioritised, such as chronic UTIs, at the front of their research agenda for this country’s biomedical research industry. I would be happy to put the Minister in touch with some of those working at the cutting edge of treatment in this field. I have told the story of chronic UTI sufferers and their longing for relief—a relief the Government can help them seek if they back their cause—but I remind the House that the condition exists in a much wider context: health issues that mainly impact women are consistently neglected and routinely dismissed. We know that women wait longer in accident and emergency departments. We also know that just 5% of global health research goes towards conditions that exclusively or disproportionately affect women. Even though 15% to 20% consult doctors for chronic pain, it was only this year that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists introduced an optional training module on chronic pain for trainee doctors. Inquiries such as Paterson and Cumberlege laid bare the systemic failures in how women’s health is treated in this country, but implementation and cultural change have lagged far behind the words. I have wondered many things since I first heard stories of chronic UTI sufferers, but nothing has unsettled me more than the lingering thought that if more men were affected by the disease, we would have had better treatments decades ago. That is an oft-used cliché but it comes up time and again. The Minister has heard today about the scale of unimaginable pain that those with chronic UTIs experience. She has heard about the broken diagnostic system that stops too many sufferers getting the help they need. She has heard about the roadblocks to developing better treatments that are standing in the way of relief. I simply reiterate my asks. Will she and her officials meet me and these brave sufferers to hear more about the specific actions that the Government need to take to clear the roadblocks? Will they commit to pushing for the NICE guidelines to be brought up to date to reflect the latest understanding of this disease? Will they outline what steps they are taking to combat the wider problem of the neglect of women’s health issues? Chronic UTI sufferers deserve so much more.

• 20 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I admire the Prime Minister’s faith that this deal may well end the tired arguments of the past, but judging on today’s display, I think we need to end the Conservatives—the tired party of the past to my right—before that is the case. A generation of young people have missed out on the opportunities offered by the Erasmus scheme due to the disastrous Brexit deal negotiated by the Conservatives. We are encouraged by the words in the deal about the Erasmus scheme, but what is the timescale for offering that opportunity to our young people once again?

• 16 May 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 15 May 2025 · Youth Services · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) on securing this debate, because youth services are critical infrastructure in our communities. They are not luxuries, or a nice-to-have; they are a vital lifeline, offering young people safety, support and opportunity at the time they need it most. There can be no doubt that we are, perhaps more than ever before, engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of young people. There have been debates and panics in this place and throughout the nation for generations concerning the challenges facing young people, but what is different in this moment is the sheer scale of the collapse in physical community spaces and, as we are here to focus on, youth services. Many great points have been raised already, but I will focus on the most egregious consequence of not protecting and enhancing youth services: knife crime. In the fight against knife crime in London, these services are vital, because knife crime is not only a criminal justice issue but a public health issue. Like any other public health crisis, the solution lies in early intervention, community-based support and sustained investment. That starts with our youth services. In the past 15 years, youth services across England have been cut by more than 70%. That is more than half of youth centres gone, thousands of trained youth workers lost, and communities left to pick up the pieces. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that when a youth centre closes, young people aged 10 to 17 become 14% more likely to commit a crime. In areas already battling poverty, inequality and deprivation, a youth centre can mean the difference between safety and tragedy. In London we saw more than 16,000 incidents of knife crime last year. That is thousands of families affected and lives changed forever. We know that young people susceptible to committing this form of violence require sustained relationships with services that can help them choose safer paths and that can offer children that vital third space when schools are struggling to maintain a learning environment and home is a worryingly hostile place. They are services that protect young people’s mental health in such troubling environments, and it is fitting that we are having this debate in Mental Health Awareness Week. Perpetuating the situation by failing to boost local council finances, whereby many councils have no choice but to cut youth services, is worse than short- termism; it is a failure to allow councils and other key stakeholders in the community to do what they want to do: invest in young people’s futures and keep them away from crime. In Sutton and Cheam I have heard that many skilled youth workers are deterred from working in these declining services, and not just because they are not equipped to do their jobs properly, but because the financial pressures mean short-termism in grants from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and a reliance on temporary contracts. We all know that local authorities are under immense pressure. Many are on the brink and, without proper funding from central Government, they simply cannot deliver what our communities need, so that must come first. But we Liberal Democrats are calling for more. First, we are calling for a statutory duty on all local authorities to provide youth services and pre-charge diversion schemes for young people up to the age of 25. Right now, access to youth diversion—the very intervention that steers young people away from offending—is a postcode lottery. That is utterly unacceptable. By making it a statutory duty, we would ensure that every young person in every community can access support before it is too late, not just after a crime has been committed. We also want to see a national youth strategy that is co-produced with young people themselves, not cooked up in Whitehall without their voices. If we are serious about solving the knife crime crisis, we must treat young people not as risks to be managed, but as partners in prevention, with huge potential to be realised. The public health approach demands early intervention, but early intervention cannot happen if youth services are simply not there any more.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  indicated dissent .

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member talks about us being a sovereign nation and being able to choose our trade deals. I assume we will get a vote in this place on the shape of a future trade deal with the United States, so that we are able to examine it, vote and exercise our parliamentary sovereignty.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman not see the fragility of a European defence that is dependent on key items of American hardware, which he correctly identifies that we do not have, and which it will take decades for us to replicate, operate, integrate with our systems and train people on? Does he not see the fragility of our defence if President Trump or another incoming US leader says, “Actually, you’re on your own. We don’t care about the defence of Ukraine”?

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  On a slightly more constructive point, does the Minister agree that calls for the process to allow asylum seekers to work after they have been in the country for three months would allow them to integrate more closely with their communities and to earn money to support themselves? A measure to change the arrangement from 12 months to three months would make a massive difference to asylum seekers, reduce the bill for hotels and allow people to contribute to the communities they want to be a part of.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has given three fantastic reasons that my hon. Friend has given for lifting the ban, but such a move is also popular with the public: 80% of people polled backed the right for asylum seekers to work. Moreover, 45% of asylum seekers would be classified as critical workers. Does my hon. Friend agree that there are, in fact, four fantastic reasons why the Government should lift the ban?

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Again, I invite the Minister to respond to the specific point about the 1,700 fewer officers in London. Whatever the circumstances, people today are concerned about crime, including tool theft and sexual offences. We can argue back and forth about the note from the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), which said that there was no money left, about austerity or about how long memories go back. If there are to be cuts to the number officers next year in my constituency of Sutton and Cheam, and across London, let us address the issues at hand about how we mitigate the impact on our residents tomorrow.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. There can be no denying that we are entering a new world with the advent of new technologies that fundamentally reshape the relationship between citizens and the state. There is probably no more vivid an example of that than live facial recognition technology, which is rightly causing great concern among people across London and throughout the UK. I am, for instance, concerned about the installation of permanent cameras in Croydon, just next door to my community in Sutton and Cheam. In Sutton itself, the use of roaming facial recognition cameras has already caused anxiety among local people, not least the thousands of Hongkongers who call Sutton home, many of whom escaped exactly this kind of potentially abusable surveillance from the Chinese Government, only to find it trying to take root in Britain. That anxiety has often been met with the unfair and often disproven riposte that if someone has done something wrong, they have nothing to worry about. It is undeniable that without proper safeguards, this technology can be a negative force, through either human malpractice or, perhaps just as worryingly, technological shortcomings. Research from the US has shown that the technology can be racially biased, struggling to distinguish between non-white people, because it was trained on white faces. Research from the Alan Turing Institute has shown that a version of the technology developed by Microsoft has a 0% error rate in identifying white men, but a 21% error rate in identifying dark-skinned women. Those would be worrying facts in their own right, but we are talking about liberty and justice—the two cornerstones of our democracy. We must be very careful about adopting technology that undermines that, and any sensible legislator would want safeguards in place. Anything that further erodes minority communities’ trust in the police must be resisted and avoided. Our neighbours in the EU have done just that, limiting the use of this technology unless it is absolutely necessary for security or rescue, and requiring judicial oversight or an independent administrative authority to facilitate its safe use even in that case. New clause 19 would see us follow our European neighbours in making sure that the technology is deployed only in limited circumstances and with the maximum oversight. Our proposed measures—including a new oversight body and new powers for the Information Commissioner’s Office to monitor the use of this tech—present a path forward that we urge the Government to take. If we do not, we will continue to languish without a proper legal framework while permanent cameras are installed. For the technology to be embedded before safeguards have been properly considered would be a democratic and civil liberties tragedy and would put us on a path to a creeping digital authoritarianism. To put it another way, it would be unfair even on those who have to use the technology. Currently, police services across the country seem to set their own rules on usage, without the proper guidance. To protect them from bad intelligence leading to awful miscarriages of justice, they deserve clarity, just as much as the public do, on the right way to make use of this tech. Nobody seriously doubts that this sort of technology and other major advancements in fighting crime will continue to arrive on our shores. The question is how we wield the new powers that they afford us in a judicious manner. That has always been the task for legislators and enforcers. Forgive the trite idiom, but it remains true that with great power comes great responsibility. How we protect privacy and liberty while keeping ourselves safe in the hyper-digital age is a central question of our times.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The premise of the Minister’s point is effectively that sufficient legislation is already in place to combat these crimes. The response to an freedom of information request that I submitted to the Met police showed that in London, in the last five years, nine in 10 tool thefts went unsolved. The fact that that failure has been allowed to continue under the existing legislation suggests that legislation is not sufficient. I support the proposed new clauses because something needs to change to stop these incredibly damaging crimes, which are affecting not just the livelihoods, but the mental health of our valuable, essential tradespeople and their families.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister has set me up nicely with that point, and I will come back to it later. The Met police are going to reduce their staff—including officers and police community support officers—by 1,700 next year. The Government are attempting to present a case that the legislation is sufficient at present, and that they are providing more officers and resources to police forces to combat the increase in these crimes. Whoever’s fault it was—and we all make points about the cause, the cuts, when the cuts started, and what conditions were prior to them—if the Met police will suffer the loss of 1,700 officers next year due to the funding situation, and the legislation is currently letting down tradespeople, I would gently push back that either the measures in the legislation or the resources are insufficient to solve an issue that we all generally agree exists today.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. As things stand, there is no specific criminal offence of domestic abuse in England and Wales. Instead, such cases are prosecuted under a patchwork of broader offences: common assault, actual bodily harm and coercive control. While those charges may reflect elements of abuse, they too often fail to capture the sustained pattern nature of domestic violence. The legal ambiguity has far-reaching consequences. Under the Government’s own SDS40—standard determinate sentences 40%—scheme, high-risk offenders, especially those who pose a continued threat to public safety, should be exempt from early release, but owing to the lack of specific domestic abuse offences, perpetrators charged under more general categories, such as common assault, remain eligible for early release. In effect, abusers walk free while their victims live in fear. That is not a technical oversight; it is a systemic failure, and it has rightly been challenged by Women’s Aid, Refuge, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and other voices we cannot afford to ignore. That is why I welcome both the proposed amendment to the SDS40 scheme and the Domestic Abuse (Aggravated Offences) Bill, brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde). That Bill would create a defined set of domestic abuse aggravated offences, recognising the context of abuse and making such offences clearly identifiable in the criminal justice system. If adopted, the reform would not only enhance the visibility of domestic abuse, but close the dangerous loopholes in relation to early release. It would bring the law into alignment with the lived experiences of victims and send a clear message: domestic abuse is not a private matter; it is a public crime and will be treated as such.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in support of new clause 13, as well as Conservative new clauses 27, 96 and 98. We had a long discussion on this issue, but it is worth repeating as often as possible that tool theft is a devastating crime that cost tradespeople more than £94 million last year. Research from NFU Mutual shows that one in three tradespeople now live in constant fear of violent thieves. Some have been attacked with crowbars and other weapons just for trying to protect their tools from being ripped out of their vans. At the February rally in Parliament Square organised by Trades United, I heard from campaigners about tradespeople not letting their vehicles out of their sight, and about thieves cutting off the roofs of their vans to steal tools. It was heartbreaking. We hear about the impact on those tradespeople and their families, including suicides and mental health problems. Despite the back and forth, I think we should make it absolutely clear that this issue needs to be addressed, and that powers must be given to the police and courts to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. Tool theft is more than just standard assault or theft; it is an assault on tradespeople’s hard work and their livelihoods. It is time to acknowledge that danger to their entire livelihoods and lifestyles.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This year, the Met police will cut more than 1,700 officers, PCSOs and staff. I invite the Minister to intervene and correct me on that if necessary, as it would seem to suggest that there was an error in the figure given earlier. A correction cometh not. That figure will include the loss of the parks police team and of officers placed in schools, who have been so critical in maintaining early intervention in those settings and diverting young people away from a life of crime. They have also improved relationships between young people and the police, ensuring that young people can trust the police when they have information that might lead to crimes being prevented or solved. Those officers are dearly needed today. The £260 million shortfall below the required budget in London will also create a 10% cut to the forensics teams, which includes the investigation of offences such as tool theft, sexual offences and many other crimes. There will be an 11% cut to historic crime teams and a 25% cut to mounted police, who police festivals, sporting events and the protests we see happening so much more regularly in central London. There will also be a 7% cut to the dog teams that provide support to officers going into dangerous and challenging situations, leaving them unsupported and potentially at risk. There will also be reduced front counter operating hours, and there are even hints about taking firearms off the flying squad. One might ask, “Why are these cuts relevant to this new clause?” The cuts throughout the Met police will inevitably lead to more abstractions from outer London police forces. In particular, the cuts to mounted police and dog teams will pull officers from outer London, including from Sutton and Cheam, which will leave our high streets less safe, our residents more fearful of being victims of crime and more crimes going unsolved. That demonstrates the absolute necessity of community policing, as well as the need for guarantees to be put in place so that those cuts do not happen, which will affect my residents and residents across London. New clause 16 would also require an annual report that would give clear and transparent information on officer numbers, PCSO numbers, costs and the real-world impact on crime and public confidence. I urge Members to support this new clause.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  We would like to press the new clause to a vote, please. Question put , That the clause be read a Second time.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In response to the specific comments from the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West, this measure relates entirely to existing footage and would allow access to existing footage. I thank the Minister for addressing the points made. At this point, are happy to withdraw the new clause. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 12 Domestic abuse aggravated offences “(1) Any criminal offence committed within England and Wales is domestic abuse aggravated, if— (a) the offender and the victim are personally connected to each other, and (b) the offence involves behaviour which constitutes domestic abuse. (2) In this section— (a) ‘domestic abuse’ has the meaning given by section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and (b) ‘personally connected’ has the meaning given by section 2 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.”— (Luke Taylor.) Brought up, and read the First time .

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Based on the comments and reassurances, I will be happy to withdraw the new clause. I would be interested in being involved in any discussions and updates as they come forward. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 22 Duty to follow strategic priorities of police and crime plan “(1) The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 is amended as follows. (2) In section 8(1) (Duty to have regard to police and crime plan), for ‘have regard to’ substitute ‘follow the strategic priorities of’. (3) In section 8(2) for ‘have regard to’ substitute ‘follow the strategic priorities of’. (4) In section 8(3) for ‘have regard to’ substitute ‘follow the strategic priorities of’. (5) In section 8(4) for ‘have regard to’ substitute ‘follow the strategic priorities of’.”— (Matt Vickers.) This new clause would require Police and Crime Commissioners to follow the strategic priorities of the police and crime plan rather than have regard to it. Brought up, and read the First time.

• 8 May 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. I rise to speak in support of new clause 9, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). We seek a simple but critical improvement to public safety: the interoperability of CCTV systems across our railway network. Currently, rail operators maintain CCTV systems that are not integrated with British Transport police or the local territorial forces in the areas they serve. This technological gap is not just a logistical inconvenience, but an active barrier to justice and public protection. This issue came to light in a very practical context. My hon. Friend became aware of a spike in bike thefts at St Albans City station. Despite the presence of cameras at the station, the police faced severe limitations on their access to the footage they needed, which delayed investigations and reduced the chance of recovering the stolen property. At the other end of the Thameslink line, at Sutton station, I have had an expensive e-bike stolen and two other bikes dismantled—the theft of a saddle made my ride home from work one night particularly uncomfortable. This is not just about my cycling challenges, but about broader criminal activity on our railways, including antisocial behaviour, assaults and, most gravely, threats to the safety of women and vulnerable people using our public transport. When someone is attacked or harassed on a platform or in a train carriage, time is of the essence, and having the ability to quickly retrieve and share CCTV footage can make the difference between justice and impunity. New clause 9 would fix this problem by requiring rail operators to ensure that their CCTV systems are compatible with law enforcement systems, enabling faster, more co-ordinated responses when incidents occur. In an age when we expect smart, connected infrastructure, this is a common-sense step that aligns with public expectations and operational necessity. In the age of Great British Railways, it would be an opportunity to streamline and standardise the systems used by our currently fragmented rail system into a single, interoperable system that improves the experience and safety of riders. I urge the Committee to support the new clause not because it would improve security on paper, but because it would make a tangible difference to the safety and confidence of passengers across the rail network.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I wish to raise concerns, as I did in my intervention, about the practicalities of the amendment. Although the hon. Member for Windsor did come on to discuss the case of Hong Kong protestors, we have seen an increase in surveillance by the Chinese state and the Hong Kong authorities of overseas protestors, and transnational repression of democracy activists is an increased worry for many of our residents. I worry that the amendment hinders the freedom to protest without worry of identification and family and friends being targeted elsewhere. This is not only about Hong Kong practising transnational repression in our country, but that is a useful example on which to base my objection. Under amendment 51, those seeking to come to a protest and exercise their democratic right would be required to register in advance and have some sort of certificate or permit that would then have to be checked, one by one. I think that puts an additional barrier in the way of exercising our democratic rights. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way, because I think this is a helpful query: will there be any differentiation between last known locations and live tracking? Obviously, tracking devices can be removed and batteries can run out. Will a last known location be considered sufficient evidence of an item’s current location, or will a live location be needed to prove that the item is currently in that position?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Can the hon. Gentleman give examples of how this will be enacted? Would the person who has permission to wear a face covering be given notice by the police? Would they be given a permission slip that they will wave above their head when they are taking part in a march, or does he imagine this as a tabard that they wear that allows them to cover their face? Can he give some examples of how he imagines this would be implemented in practical terms?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell, as always. The Liberal Democrats very much welcome the measures in clauses 78 and 79 to give the police and courts more powers to reduce vehicle theft. It is disheartening to see so much car theft in our cities, particularly London. In south-west London, a regular complaint of residents is that the police are not able to do anything about it. The police themselves are struggling. The technology has become an arms race, and these clauses are needed to keep up with thefts that are becoming so much more technologically advanced. It is depressing that a litany of old-fashioned manual theft prevention measures are now necessary again—people are having to use steering locks and wheel clamps—because the police cannot keep up with the technology that thieves employ. We are very supportive of these measures to give the police the tools they need to crack down on this incredibly distressing form of theft.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I broadly back the powers in the clause. However, I have been involved in two cases in which an item was tracked but the tracking was not sufficiently accurate to ascertain the address. I was witness to a neighbour banging on the door of another neighbour’s home, demanding that he be let in to retrieve his phone, which he claimed had been tracked to that address. The police had been called, but they were not able to enter. When the resident came home, it was demonstrated that the phone was not at that address; it was actually five doors down. The individual had dropped the phone while walking home, and another resident had picked it up, brought it home and was looking after it until they could take it to a police station. That individual had been incredibly agitated. Under these measures, if the police were called and the tracking information showed that the phone was at a particular address, the inaccurate data would have allowed the police to enter the property incorrectly. Are there appropriate safeguards in relation to the accuracy of the location information that is used? What measures are in place to compensate people when errors are made? The second example is that, when my bike was stolen, I followed its tracker and went to the house where it seemed to be located. I called the police, who attended. The bike was not in the house; the tracker was actually in a van that was parked on the street outside. Again, if entry to the property had been obtained under these measures, there would have been damage and an incorrect entry to a resident’s home. These powers seem like a good idea. The hon. Member for Stockton West called them common sense, but what seems to be common sense usually omits serious thought. Without an additional step of scrutiny, I do not think tracking information is sufficiently accurate to ensure these powers are used appropriately. I therefore invite the Minister to provide a bit more reassurance that thought will be given to accuracy and that mitigations will be in place to compensate residents when the measures are used incorrectly. We must not put residents and citizens at risk of property damage for reasons beyond their control.