Sarah Jones MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that she does in her constituency, and I send my condolences to Josh’s family, who will still be reeling after their loss. I agree with her that organisations such as Break Tha Cycle and Street Fathers do incredibly important work that we need to support. The target from this Government is that we should have a massive increase in our neighbourhood police officers, and we expect those officers to have a role going into schools and building relationships. We know that those relationships can be powerful. With those neighbourhood officers, we are trying to have consistency and to professionalise the neighbourhood route, so that people want to stay in it, rather than moving on up through the ranks and moving away from it. We want to have some continuity. We are also working to ensure that they are not abstracted, which is the other challenge that we have, particularly in large cities. When we have our proper cohort of neighbourhood officers, those people can be involved in their local schools, as we would expect them to be.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the Liberal Democrats welcoming the plan. I join the hon. Gentleman in praising the Ben Kinsella Trust and Patrick Green. Patrick has been brilliant throughout the development of the strategy, as have the members of the coalition that brought together a group of people, many of whom have lost loved ones in very difficult circumstances, to push for action to stop other people losing their loved ones. I pay tribute to all of them. The funding for the plan will come from across Government, not just the Home Office. Home Office funding amounts to about £130 million—a substantial sum—but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is leading on the Young Futures hubs, the Department for Education is leading on interventions in schools, and the Ministry of Justice is making a huge investment in the youth justice system, so there is a big cross-Government approach. I have done a lot of work over the years on the public health approach. It is quite simple; it basically says that violence is catching. If people have violence in their life, they are more likely to be violent. Someone who was in a domestic abuse situation as a child is more likely to be violent; people who join a gang are more likely to become violent—it is relatively straightforward. The interventions that we are putting in place are designed to prevent those crimes and stop that violence spreading. That is why the figures on violence are coming down, and we are seeing the first shoots of success. On the numbers, there has been a 0.6% drop overall in the number of police officers from March 2025 to September 2025—that is a very small drop. The key question is: what are our police officers doing? Having 12,000 officers behind desks is not right; they should be out in our communities. Obviously, some of them need to do jobs that do not involve being out on our streets, but we want our officers out on our streets. We have always said—we said it in our manifesto—that the 13,000 will be a mix of new officers, police community support officers and redeployed officers. We are introducing new technology, so that we can free up the equivalent of 3,000 officers’ time. It is much better for that 13,000 to be a mix of officers; it means that we have already been able to deliver 3,000, some of whom are already trained officers, so they know what they are doing. If we were just recruiting new people, there would be the challenge of new officers not having the experience that others have. We have always said that we would be taking a mixed approach. The point is that we are putting 13,000 police officers into our communities and neighbourhoods, which is what the public want. Those officers will help to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime, and knife crime too.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend and I take the same approach, and knife crime is such an important issue in our constituencies. It is front and centre of everything that we do and think about. She is right to say that from tragedies come exceptional people doing exceptional things, and those people need support. She is also right to ask the question about long-term sustainable funding. The funding on youth justice interventions is long-term, and our local authorities have now got long-term funding, too. The funding for our violence reduction units has been for just this year, but I very much hear the call that long-term funding helps those organisations to plan much better for the future.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to the police in Bedfordshire, who I know are doing a really good job. Among all the agencies he talked about, the NHS has a really important role to play. Of course, we put youth workers into most of our A&Es, so that if a young person who has been stabbed comes in, we have some chance of intervening with them to get them out of the cycle of violence they are involved in. The brilliant investigative police officers at the new National Knife Crime Centre will be investigating the sale of knives online. That will be a focused piece of policing work, and the Government are providing £1.7 million for it. Those officers will look at the sale of knives online and go after the people who are selling them illegally. Increasingly, we are seeing young people in the grey market buying knives in bulk and selling them to each other. We are going to make that very difficult for people to do, but where it does happen—where knives are coming in from countries that they should not be coming from, where age verification checks are not being done, and where companies are making money in a way that is not legal—we will come down on them like a ton of bricks.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Yes, and that is why we are introducing this amendment; we want to provide clarity that it should be considered. We have a community—in particular, the Jewish community—who are suffering and afraid, and they have spoken to us and to many people many times about the impact of cumulative protests outside places of worship and other places. We are responding to that. This is one change in the grand scheme of public order legislation, but it is a very important one for that community.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I cannot tell whether my right hon. Friend will have to hand himself in at some point in time. I think probably not, but I can remember debating that particular issue when the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said that he was going to lie down in front of bulldozers. We have debated these issues on protests many, many times. Guidance does not normally come to this House for approval. That would not be appropriate. I need to stress that the police take the definition as it is, in terms of its natural meaning, but I take the point. The point is that we need to ensure that we get these things right, and I will work with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council on getting this right. I would also ask the House that, when Lord Macdonald has looked at this plethora of emerging legislation, we should consider that and look at what he recommends. Of course, if he recommends that we accept changes to the law, we will debate those things in the proper way in this House if we introduce that legislation.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for raising that, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft, who I suspect will speak to it later. I agree that in many cases honour-based abuse is perpetrated not by a single individual but by an extended family or other group of persons. The challenge we have with the amendment is that the definition in the Bill adopts the usual legislative conventions whereby references to the singular include the plural unless otherwise indicated. Therefore, the statutory definition already applies where abuse is perpetrated by more than one person. However, we do want to develop the statutory guidance so that that is completely clear for everybody.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am just in the middle of a sentence. Several forces have sadly recruited people without the proper vetting processes that should have happened. By the time the previous Government left office, they had recruited the 20,000, but how many of them are sitting behind desks? Twelve-thousand of them are. If the right hon. Lady thinks that is where those officers should be, that is fine, but we believe that our officers should be in our neighbourhoods, which is what we are ensuring. We are also getting rid of the burden of bureaucracy, built up under the previous Government, that wastes so much police time. In the next couple of years we will free up the equivalent of 3,000 full-time police officers just through use of new technology, AI and new processes will bring this ancient system, which lots of police officers are still working under, into the modern age.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The rise is much slower and the charge rate has gone up by 21%. Clearly, action is more important than numbers, and this Government are taking action. That is why, for example, the shoplifting charge rate has increased by 21%. Many Members have spoken about fly-tipping. I absolutely accept the strength of feeling on fly-tipping. I think it is repulsive, and most of our communities are affected by it. Whether it is the large fly-tipping in our rural communities that is driven by serious organised crime or the everyday fly-tipping that we see in our cities, we need to do more to tackle it. The Government have published the waste crime action plan, which will make a substantial difference to how we approach waste crime, including the Government paying for the removal of the most egregious sites. In parts of the country we have seen reports in the press of huge waste sites. We are also committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up their mess. Under this Bill, people who use their vehicle to fly-tip will potentially get nine points on their licence. That goes further than what the Opposition had previously suggested. So we are acting, as we should. We did not agree with the Lords amendment that proposed that local authorities should have to clear all sites, including private sites, because of the very significant costs that would be required to undertake that. We do not think that can be put on to local authorities just like that. But I assure hon. Members across the House that we are taking significant action on fly-tipping and we will continue to do so.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I agree with her. This is the culmination of a lot of good work in the Lords and the Commons, from Members of all parties. MPs have pushed as hard as we can on this emerging technology, which is so dangerous and so high risk, and we have a Government who are committed to acting and doing the right thing. Everybody has worked really hard, together, to get us to a much stronger place. The power allowing courts to require the deletion of intimate images will also be available for the offence of breastfeeding voyeurism recording, and the new offence of sharing semen-defaced images. Online platforms need to do more to ensure that non-consensual intimate images are removed quickly, as my hon. Friend said, and not after the 24-hour timeframe envisioned by Lords amendment 256. To that end, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments 256 and 257 strengthens platform and senior executive accountability by making it a criminal offence for a service to breach an enforcement decision by Ofcom on duties to deal with and remove reported non-consensual intimate images. That means that senior executives of the service could be criminally liable for the breach. As well as taking this enforcement approach, the Government are also strengthening safeguards against malicious reporting. We will also bring forward regulations under existing powers in the Online Safety Act to amend schedule 8, so that Ofcom can require providers to be fully transparent about both the speed of intimate image removals, and how clearly and effectively platforms enable users to report such content.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I will not give way again on this point. We have already delivered 3,000 additional officers and police community support officers on to our streets and into our neighbourhoods—an 18% increase in neighbourhood policing since we came to power.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the challenge that the right hon. Gentleman is raising, and I know that DUP Members of Parliament in particular have raised these concerns before. The challenge here is that Lords amendment 357 would remove the historical safeguard for statements that glorify acts of terrorism committed by proscribed organisations. Our view is that these statements may not necessarily create terrorist risk and may result in the offence capturing legitimate political and social discourse and debate. I will say two other things to the right hon. Gentleman. First, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, strongly advised against the removal of the historical safeguard in his review of terrorism legislation following the 7 October attacks in 2023. Secondly, in the light of the concerns that have been raised in the Lords and by Members in this place, the Government will ask the independent reviewer to conduct a more detailed review of the encouragement offence within six months of Royal Assent. Let me turn to Lords amendment 359. It is a long-standing principle that has been adopted by successive Administrations that the Government do not comment on which organisations are being considered for proscription. Mandating that the Government review whether to proscribe Iranian Government-related organisations would violate this principle and tie the Government’s hands unnecessarily. The Government are already taking decisive action to deter threats from Iran, and we have committed to introducing a new state threats-based proscription tool. I turn now to Lords amendments 360 and 368 to 372 tabled by Baroness Kidron, which concern chatbots. The Government are clear that we need to act quickly to bring all unregulated AI chatbots within the scope of the Online Safety Act’s requirements on illegal activity. As I mentioned earlier, the Government are seeking to take a regulation-making power to do this, under Lords amendment 367. By taking this power, the Government will be able to remove any ambiguity over whether services like Grok are subject to the Online Safety Act’s provisions to tackle illegal content. This approach also allows us to design regulations that are effective, targeted and informed by necessary consultation with subject matter experts. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 372 commits the Government to reporting to Parliament by the end of the year on our progress to develop regulations.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is, of course, right about the growing concern around chatbots and the need for safety by design. I will come on to Baroness Kidron’s amendment and the Government’s response to it later on in my speech. Furthermore, the Government have brought forward Lords amendment 367 to take a power to extend the scope of the Online Safety Act 2023 to cover unregulated AI chatbots. It means that general-purpose AI chatbots, such as Grok, which allow the creation and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, will have to proactively remove that illegal content from their services or face enforcement from Ofcom. Taken together, the measures will deliver an effective ban on nudification tools. Given that, we do not believe that a separate possession offence, as provided for in Lords amendment 505, would make a meaningful difference, not least as many such tools are accessed online, rather than possessed. Where a person is convicted of an intimate image offence, we agree that it is vital that those images are deleted from the perpetrator’s devices. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 258 enables the courts to make an image deletion order following a conviction for an offence related to intimate image abuse. Breach of the order will be a criminal offence. The amendment also enables the courts to require the deletion of other intimate images of the same victim. This approach gives courts the required flexibility to consider the details of each case when applying their powers, while ensuring that the offenders are held accountable for compliance with the order.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  We are already, on the face of the Bill, extending the time to up to 72 hours. The point of the notice is to enable the time to get to court and apply for a closure. We are providing the extra time to do just that. We are also extending the powers to registered social landlords, so that they can also be part of that. We are already taking action. Of course, we will always keep these things under review. We will always consider what is said to us—even from the Opposition Front Benches—but the amendment today deals just with closure orders, and we have committed to consult on that.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to see the return of this Bill—the largest criminal justice Bill in a generation—to this House. The Bill will support the Government’s mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade, and give our police and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to tackle antisocial behaviour, sexual violence, terrorism and online harms. The amendments made in the House of Lords support these aims. Given the number of Lords amendments, I will focus my remarks on the Government amendments made in response to commitments given on Report in the Commons last June by my predecessor as Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson)—she was sitting on the Front Bench earlier—before outlining the Government’s response to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) rightly raised concerns about the depiction of strangulation and suffocation in pornography, an issue which was also highlighted by Baroness Bertin’s independent pornography review. As set out in our violence against women and girls strategy last December, the Government have announced our intention to criminalise the possession and publication of pornographic images that depict strangulation and suffocation, and Lords amendments 261 and 262 give effect to that commitment. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) rightly pressed the Government on when we would deliver our manifesto commitment to make all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence. I am pleased to commend Lords amendment 301, which extends the existing racially and religiously aggravated offences to cover hostility based on sex, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) pointed to the long-term impact, including on employment opportunities, for those convicted of the offences of loitering and soliciting while under 18. Lords amendments 270 and 271 therefore introduce a new disregards and pardons scheme for anyone convicted or cautioned as a child for those offences. I will now turn to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, Lords amendment 2 seeks to bar the issuing of fixed penalty notices by enforcement companies and contractors for profit. The Government do understand the concern about enforcement agencies issuing fixed penalty notices where there may be a financial incentive to do so. To be clear, local agencies are expected to issue fixed penalty notices only when it is appropriate and proportionate to do so. However, Lords amendment 2 risks weakening crucial enforcement action to tackle antisocial behaviour. Our amendments in lieu instead provide that statutory guidance will address the need to ensure that the issuing of fixed penalty notices by authorised persons is proportionate. On Lords amendments 6 and 10 to 12, I fully appreciate and understand the damage that fly-tipping can do to our communities. The Government’s waste crime action plan, published on 20 March, sets out proposals to radically improve enforcement in this area, including by granting courts the power to impose between three and nine penalty points on the driving licence of those convicted of fly-tipping where driving a vehicle was used in or for the purposes of the offence. Our amendment in lieu implements this commitment. Turning to Lords amendment 15, on its introduction the Bill provided for a maximum four-year prison term for those convicted of a new offence of possession of a weapon with intent to cause unlawful violence. While this was drafted in line with other possession offences, the Government accept that the intent element of this new offence justifies a higher maximum penalty. Our amendment in lieu therefore provides for a seven-year maximum rather than the 10 years provided for in the Lords amendment, which we believe is disproportionate given that this remains a possession offence. Lords amendments 255, 256, 258 to 260 and 505, introduced by the Government and by Baroness Owen and Baroness Bertin, all seek to further tackle the proliferation of demeaning and degrading intimate images online. The Government share these aims, and we are clear that intimate image abuse is completely unacceptable. Lords amendment 255, brought forward by the Government, will criminalise the making, adapting and supplying of nudification tools. These tools use artificial intelligence to create deepfake, non-consensual intimate images, many of women. While creating, sharing and threatening to share non-consensual intimate images is already illegal, this amendment goes further, and criminalises the developers making and supplying these tools. As well as the criminal duties, once this new offence is in force the requirements of the Online Safety Act 2023 will kick in. This means that social media services will be required to take down content that supplies nudification tools, and search engines will have to reduce the visibility of search results linked to these tools.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the work that my hon. Friend’s Committee has done and will continue to do in this space. It is very important that we have good analysis of what the problems are that we need to solve. She is absolutely right that the problems with AI chatbots are evident, significant and concerning, and that more work needs to be done in this space. If there is work that we can do sooner rather than later, I am sure that my colleagues in DSIT will do that, and I commit to working with them to do what we can as quickly as we can. Finally, hon. Members will recall that on Report, the House decided to disapply the criminal law relating to abortion in respect of women acting in relation to their own pregnancy. Their Lordships agreed amendment 361, which would provide for automatic pardons for women previously convicted or cautioned for an abortion offence in relation to their own pregnancies and for the deletion of certain details from court and police records. I stress that the Government remain neutral on the substance of clause 191 and Lords amendment 361, but we have a duty to ensure that the law is operationally and legally workable. Accordingly, we have tabled amendments (a) and (e) to Lords amendment 361 to ensure that the deletion of details from relevant official records can operate as intended.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not agree with my hon. Friend. This was announced by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack, when lots of protests took place immediately after the attack. The cumulative disruption and the impact that had was there for all to see. We have no desire to reduce people’s right to protest, and nor would we ever. There is a lot of misinformation about this change in the law, implying that we are in some way increasing the bans on protest. To be clear, the rules on banning protests are very strong, and bans can be introduced only in very significant circumstances. Indeed, we have no rules to ban assembly, so the idea that we are banning protest is just wrong. We are responding to communities who have recently been feeling the pain of repeated protests, sometimes outside faith organisations—synagogues, in particular. In those cases, we believe that the police should look at the impact of cumulative disruption when they, and not the Government, are deciding whether to impose conditions on those marches.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes her case very clearly, and we can agree that we need to design out those kinds of issues. The challenges are in what we do and how we do it—those are the challenges we had with this particular group of amendments. Obviously there is wider work being done on violence against women and girls and how the Online Safety Act is to be rolled forward, and that work is really important, but we are talking about this particular group of Lords amendments on chatbots and the challenges with them. That is why, through amendment (a) in lieu, we commit to reporting by the end of the year on our progress to develop regulations. We are clear that regulation is a more effective and proportionate tool than the criminal law for addressing risks from AI chatbots and setting industry best practice. Incorporating currently unregulated chatbots into the scope of the Online Safety Act will ensure that such regulation applies extraterritorially, which is crucial when dealing with international companies. The Government’s approach is also broader in scope than the content of amendments 360 and 368 to 372. Those amendments would not capture image generators creating non-consensual graphic images of women or online AI chatbot toys such as Gabbo. The Government’s amendment in lieu does capture such services and allows them to be clearly brought under online safety regulations.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Yes, he is a shadow Minister—I am very happy to give him his correct title. Britain is a country that will not tolerate hate, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth said. She spoke about aggravated offences relating to disability, trans and sex, and bringing those into line with the existing aggravated offences. That will support victims, and not just in terms of potential sentencing and justice; it will mean that victims can access more support, which I very much welcome, and I am glad that she does too. Turning to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the issue of the glorification of terrorism—oh, I see he is not in his place; I will come back to that issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) has been doing so much work on a number of different areas, not least all of the Lords amendments that relate to porn. She gave a really powerful speech about how pain for women is increasingly perceived as equalling pleasure for men, and she spoke of the need to tackle that in many different ways, because sexualised violence online can become violence in real life. I am glad that she welcomed the step-incest amendments, which are absolutely right, as well as those on people trying to look like children, which she called “barely legal content”. I heard her message about proactively verifying age and consent and about bringing in the timetable to deliver that as soon as we can. My hon. Friend also talked about honour-based abuse. We understand and agree with her, as well as other hon. Members who raised the importance of realising that often it is not a single crime but involves a whole group of people. We need to ensure that is clear in all the training done on identifying and responding to this form of abuse. Therefore, alongside the statutory guidance, we are developing additional free learning modules for professionals who work with victims and perpetrators of honour-based abuse. That includes a general module as well as dedicated modules on multi-agency responses. Together, those modules will strengthen statutory professionals’ ability to recognise the signs and to manage cases appropriately and safely in practice. I hope that is reassuring to my hon. Friend. I turn to Lords amendment 312, which many hon. Members spoke to. There are a number of things to say on our cumulative disruption amendment. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), who talked powerfully about his position, which I respect. I agree that protest and the right to protest is part of the lifeblood of the Labour movement, and that progress is rarely—if ever—handed down without first having been campaigned for. I understand his concern, and the concern of everyone in the House, that we balance the right to protest with the impact of protest. We have had many debates on that in this place over the past few years. The Home Secretary asked Lord Macdonald to review public order legislation and hate crime legislation, because we have had lots of different pieces of legislation and there is a need to take a holistic look at that to see whether it is right. Lord Macdonald has not reported yet; he will do so within a few months, and we very much look forward to what he has to say. I hope that when he does report we can consider his recommendations in this place and discuss all his findings together.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The role of this House is to debate, which is exactly what we are doing now. I listened, for example, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who talked about his experience with the Metropolitan police in recent times and his sense that he had lost confidence with the way that they were making decisions on protests. I hear all those things and am happy to have more conversations. I am sure that the police would be happy to as well. I will just say—this does not have an impact on anything that I think about what the law should be on protests—that there has been a 600% increase in the number of protests over the last couple of years. There has been a huge increase in the number of people protesting and the physical ability of the police to just deal with that in terms of resources is not insubstantial. They spend a huge amount of time on this, as we all know, and our neighbourhood officers are often abstracted. That is right and proper—I am not suggesting otherwise—but it is a challenge for the police, particularly in the big urban parts of our country, to have to manage the impact of these protests. To repeat, the cumulative disruption amendment does not change the guardrails of the powers to impose conditions. It does not change anything about the need to balance the right to protest in the European convention on human rights with the Public Order Act. None of those things will change. What is changing is that we are saying that the police will consider cumulative disruption, rather than that they can consider cumulative disruption.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  We do not know what Lord Macdonald is going to recommend. He has terms of reference that we have agreed, which are to look at public order legislation and hate crime legislation and to consider whether it is fit for purpose or whether it needs amending. Of course, we will consider carefully whatever he brings forward and we will act according to what we think is right. He is a man of great note who has done a lot of things in his past—he is a former Director of Public Prosecutions—and we will of course listen to whatever he says.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  As I have said, the police have had the power to consider cumulative disruption since 1986. If right-wing protesters were protesting every day outside a mosque, that would be my definition of cumulative disruption. The police balance every day the powers they are given from the laws we pass. We are increasing the training that our public order police officers get. We are ensuring that they have access to the right training and resources because that was a problem identified under the previous Government. We are trying to clarify through this piece of legislation that cumulative disruption is an important factor and should be considered when the police consider whether to impose restrictions on protesters. To repeat, we are not banning protests; it is about the imposition of restrictions, and that is all. The other place has properly asked this elected House to think again about a number of issues. Let us send a clear message back to their lordships: we have listened and agreed a number of further changes to the Bill, but after some 14 months of debate, it is now time for this Bill to complete its passage, so we can get on with the task of implementing the Bill and making all our communities safer. Amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 263 . Amendments (b) to (g) made to Lords amendment 263. Lords amendment 263, as amended, agreed to. Amendments (a) to (e) made to Lords amendment 361. Lords amendment 361, as amended, agreed to , with Commons financial privileges waived. Clause 4 Fixed penalty notices Motion made, and Question put , That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2.— (Sarah Jones.)

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend, who I know feels strongly about this issue, as do many others—I very much respect that position. I met him a few months ago, when the review had just started. The review has yet to conclude, but it will do so in the coming months. The work that Lord Macdonald is undertaking is quite substantial, and I know, having received updates on what he is doing and who he is talking to, that it is wide and is taking a bit longer than expected, but that is in order to get it right. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) will know that the cumulative disruption amendment was announced by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack. Perhaps we will come to this more in closing the debate, but I think there is a lack of understanding in some quarters—I do not mean my hon. Friend—about the nature of that amendment. To be clear, sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 empower senior police officers to impose conditions on processions and on public assemblies respectively. They can impose conditions only under certain criteria to prevent serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption. We are not changing sections 12 or 14. At the moment, the police can consider cumulative disruption when looking at whether a protest should have conditions imposed on it.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the broad agreement across the House with, I think, the great majority of the Lords amendments, particularly those brought forward by the Government. Those amendments further strengthen the powers of the police, prosecutors and partner agencies to tackle violence against women and girls, online harms and hate crimes. We have sought to engage constructively with the non-Government amendments carried in the Lords. As I set out in my opening speech, in many instances we support the intent behind these amendments and our concerns are about their workability, not the underlying objectives. In that spirit, let me turn directly to some of the points raised in the debate. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), seeks to disagree with Lords amendment 301. Let me be clear: this is not a move by the Government to police lawful speech, and these provisions do not criminalise the expression of lawful opinions. Extending the aggravated offences does not create any new offence. This amendment extends an existing aggravated offences framework, which operates in relation to race and religion, to cover additional characteristics—namely, sexual orientation, transgender identity, disability and sex. This framework applies only where specific criminal offences—offences of violence, public order, criminal damage, harassment or stalking—have already been committed and where hostility is proven to the criminal standard. This is not about creating new “speech crimes”; it is about ensuring that where criminal conduct has taken place, and that conduct is driven by hostility towards a protected characteristic, the law can properly recognise the additional harm caused. That is an important distinction. Freedom of expression, legitimate debate and strongly held views remain protected, but where someone commits an existing criminal offence and does so because of hostility towards a person’s identity, it is right that the criminal law should be able to reflect that seriousness through higher maximum penalties. The hon. Member for Stockton West is simply wrong if he thinks that the same end can be achieved through sentencing guidelines. It is about equality of protection, not the policing of lawful speech. I will now come to measures debated on the epidemic of everyday crime. Lords amendment 333, on closure powers, was raised by a number of hon. Members. I want to pay tribute to the dodgy shops campaign being run by my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt). I agree wholeheartedly with their aims. If we do not tackle dodgy shops, it is very hard to do the wider work of bringing back our high streets. I completely share the concerns raised about the rise of illegality affecting so many of our high streets. It is for exactly that reason that the Home Office has established the cross-Government high streets illegality taskforce, which will be backed by £10 million a year for the next three years—£30 million in total. The taskforce is already working at pace to develop a strategic long-term policy response to money laundering and associated illegality on our high streets, including other forms of economic crime, tax evasion and illegal working, and to tackle the systemic vulnerabilities that criminals exploit. The initiative was announced in the 2025 Budget and, as I said, is supported by significant funding. Strengthening the closure powers available to local partners in tackling criminal behaviour on the high street is part of that mix. Our amendment in lieu accepts that and will enable us to go ahead and do it. The push from my hon. Friends is to do that at pace. We will of course work as fast as we can on the consultation on closure orders that we have agreed to do. I hear the message loud and clear that we need to go fast, but the purpose of the consultation is to ensure that we get this right—that we make the distinction between private and public property, and the complications that might come from that.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  My point was that the basis of cumulative disruption has been in the law from the Public Order Act 1986. In terms of the definition, the police use their discretion on the definition—that is absolutely the case—and they have done so since 1986, when they were able to consider that. I will say a couple of things on that basis. The police have to balance the rights of freedom of assembly and speech that are enshrined in the European convention on human rights—they have to do that. When they are considering what they do with protests, they have to balance and consider those rights, and if they are going to impose conditions, that has to be done under specific areas, which might be serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community. When and if this Bill is passed and we move forward, I will commit to working with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to make sure that the guidance is as clear as it can be. However, the definition of cumulative disruption is just its natural meaning, and the police have had that power since 1986.