Sarah Jones MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

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

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  There is a powerful group of Ministers working very hard on that. Not least among them is my colleague in the Home Office, the Minister for Safeguarding, who is leading the wider work on violence against women and girls. There is a whole programme of activity, whether by Ministers or officials, across DSIT, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to make sure that we get these things right. They are complex, and they involve Departments working together, stepping up and taking responsibility for this work, which is very much ongoing. We want to get this right; that is why we have set the 12-month timescale. The important thing is not only the outcome of that work, but the power to make regulations, as we will, that give effect to that outcome. Lords amendment 311, introduced by Lord Walney, seeks to grant a power to the Secretary of State to proscribe organisations deemed to be extreme criminal protest groups. The Government understand the concerns expressed in both Houses about the sustained impact of criminal activity by certain protest groups, and, where such conduct meets the threshold for a proscription order under the Terrorism Act 2000, the Government will act, and have already acted. However, we are not persuaded that the introduction of a proscription-lite regime is necessary or proportionate in instances where that threshold is not met. This view is shared by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who recently expressed concerns about the adverse consequences of this amendment for the established proscription regime in the Terrorism Act 2000. I urge hon. Members to read the four-page note that he published online last week.

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

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  My hon. Friend will have debated these issues in this place, and I think there will always be a debate about the right to protest and where we draw a line in this country. I am very happy to have further conversations with her on that wider issue. Jonathan Hall set out in his letter—I can pass it on to my hon. Friend, if she has not seen it—why he does not think that this amendment will work, and that is why we are not persuaded on this occasion. I am, of course, happy to have further conversations with my hon. Friend on this. Turning to Lords amendment 333, tabled by Baroness Buscombe, I fully agree that the Government, local authorities and law enforcement agencies need to do all they can to tackle money laundering and associated criminality on our streets. The high streets illegality taskforce, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in her most recent Budget, will examine the use of enforcement powers in this light, including the closure power. It will have a £10 million budget to support its work. While we support the principle of extending the duration of closure orders, we should first consult to avoid any unintended consequences on legitimate businesses or residential premises. Accordingly, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 333 will enable us, following targeted consultation, to extend the maximum duration of closure orders and, if necessary, to make different provision for commercial and residential properties. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt), have been campaigning on high street illegality, and will no doubt speak about it later. I want to assure them and others in this place that we know that we need to go further, as we will, not just on this measure, but on the wider challenge of high street illegality. We will be very keen to work with Members in this place on that work.

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

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  I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point, which we have discussed before. As he knows, the announcement that the amendment would be made was given by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack and the protest that followed. It has not come from nowhere; it has been debated and suggested by policing colleagues for some time. The Government’s view was that this Bill is a vehicle we could use to introduce this legislation, and that we should take the opportunity to do so. I know that he disagrees with that decision, but we made it because we feel this is a necessary step, given the situation in which we find ourselves. I want to be really clear again about what the amendment does and does not do. Marches can only be banned in very, very specific circumstances, as happened with the al-Quds march recently—the first time a march had been banned since 2012. The amendment will make no difference to that whatsoever. It will make no difference to what march can and cannot be banned. An assembly cannot be banned at all, as there is no legislative basis for that, so again, the amendment will make no difference at all. It already is the case, and it has been since 1986 when the Public Order Act was introduced, that the police can consider cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions on a protest. A condition could be the time that the protest is allowed to take place, the route that the protest can go down or the number of people allowed on that protest. Since 1986, the police have had the ability to consider cumulative disruption when they look at whether they should impose conditions. The amendment means that they have to look at and consider the impact of cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions.

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

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  Let me just finish explaining what we are doing and then I will come on to picketing. If there is a risk of serious public disorder, senior police officers can impose conditions. At the moment, they can consider cumulative disruption as one of the aspects they take into account when deciding whether to impose conditions. To be clear, imposing conditions means things like moving where a march is going, limiting the hours that it can work under or limiting the number of people. They can already take into account cumulative disruption, but we are changing that so that they must take that into account—they must think about it. That does not change the guardrails of sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act; it just says that at the moment they can consider cumulative disruption, but in future they will consider it. That is the amendment. On this Government’s belief in the right to strike and to protest, of course that is sacrosanct and nothing has changed in our view on that. We do not believe that this legislation will stop the right to picket. I know that lots of Members will have views on that and will not be satisfied, but we will always defend the right to strike, and we have absolutely no desire to infringe lawful picketing at all.

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

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  Yes.

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

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  This Government believe in the fundamental right to protest. We will never change our view on that. It does have to be balanced with the responsibility to look after our communities. This Government are seeking to get that balance right. We are making a change to the cumulative disruption legislation through this Bill, which we brought forward in the Lords, and several Members asked about that. Of course, normally legislation is introduced here, but amendments are introduced in the Lords by Government and have been by this Government—it is not uncommon. We have had an opportunity to debate the issue today, and I have listened carefully to all the speeches that hon. Members have made.

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend, and pay tribute to the Women and Equalities Committee and its work. As I said, this has been a journey, and a lot of Members from both Houses have played a really important role. Ministers in the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Home Office have been listening very carefully to what MPs have been advising. I am very pleased that we were able to respond. In addition to bringing in the take-down duty, we will give statutory backing to a register of non-consensual intimate images. Amendments (a) and (d) in lieu of Lords amendments 259 and 260 will enable the Government to designate a trusted flagger, most likely the revenge porn helpline. That will give Government backing to a trusted source of NCII content that can be used by platforms and internet service providers to identify those images. The amendments will also enable the Government to make further provisions, by regulations, on the operation of the register, following a scoping exercise. Those provisions include provision for the Secretary of State to impose requirements on providers to share hashes, and other information deemed necessary, with the register. Hashes, for the benefit of the House, are unique codes used to mark non-consensual intimate images. The scoping exercise will allow us to evaluate the technical requirements, so that we can ensure that the register can be used by victims, platforms and internet service providers to remove or block NCII content. As Lords amendment 260 recognised, proceeding by regulations will enable us to properly evaluate the requirements necessary to ensure that the register operates as effectively as possible. Turning to two more amendments from Baroness Bertin, Lords amendments 263 and 265, I think we in this place all share her determination to stop the spread of dangerous, demeaning and illegal pornographic content online. On Lords amendment 263, I completely agree that there is a need to curtail the depiction of step-incest pornography, in cases where what it portrays is illegal. The Government’s amendment in lieu will extend the new offence of possession and publication of incest porn to include depictions of step-incest where one of the persons is portrayed as being under 18. Additionally, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 265 addresses the concerns raised by Lords amendment 265 by criminalising the possession or publication of pornography that depicts an adult credibly role-playing as a child. That makes it clear that content that mimics and risks normalising child sexual abuse will not be tolerated. But we will not stop there. As well as introducing those offences, the Government have committed to producing a delivery plan for how we can close the gap between the regulation of online and offline pornographic content. What is illegal offline should be illegal online. Lords amendment 264 rightly raises concerns about how we best strengthen safeguards against the sexual exploitation of persons appearing on pornographic websites, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft on Report. We agree with the principle and the need to address this issue, but further work is required across Government on considering what the most effective approach would be to strengthening arrangements to ensure that persons appearing in pornographic material are aged 18 and over, and consent to the material being shared online. Government amendments (a) to (f) in lieu of Lords amendment 264 place a duty on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the outcome of this work within 12 months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent, and introduce a power to make regulations giving effect to that outcome.

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

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  I do not know how many times we have to rehearse this: the previous Government cut police numbers by 20,000 and decimated neighbourhood policing. They then had a sudden change of heart and said that they would replace those 20,000 police officers, who were recruited with such haste that several forces, including the Met, have sadly—

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

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  There are already powers for the seizure of vehicles, and that is already happening, including in my area. Vehicles can be seized and crushed, and I think we should be doing more of that, not less, when it comes to antisocial behaviour. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who spoke about Lords amendment 361 and our amendment to make it legally sound. As I said, the Government do not have a view on this, because it is an issue to do with abortion, and it would not be correct to take a view on that. She asked when it would come into effect, and I can tell her that it will apply as soon as the Bill receives Royal Assent. Obviously, decisions on particular cases up until that point are for local police, but I heard what my hon. Friend said. I want to touch on the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) about aggravated offences. Building on what I said to the Opposition spokesperson—

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

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  Through our taskforce, which is funded with £30 million, we will look at a whole range of opportunities on what we can do. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the reason we have a situation where people are money laundering and using illegal shops in many different ways on our high streets is because the previous Government failed to do anything about this growing problem, but we have introduced money and action to tackle it. We will also be tackling the huge challenge we have with our high streets more widely, which was left to us by the previous Government, by introducing a high streets strategy, which we will bring out in the summer. We are also dealing with the fact that neighbourhood policing collapsed under the previous Government, which has meant that the epidemic of everyday crime is not being tackled as it should be—

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

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  I am pleased that we are debating this issue today, which is what we should be doing here, and I am sure that hon. Members will be talking about it more in the several hours that we have to debate these issues. This already exists in law, in that the police are able to look at cumulative disruption when considering whether to impose conditions. We are not redefining “cumulative” at all, or changing the parameters of sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act; we are simply saying that when the police are looking at whether to impose conditions, they must look—rather than they can look—at cumulative disruption. That is a small change that will make a big difference to people who are currently scared and intimidated by persistent protests, outside mosques and Jewish places of worship in particular. Madam Deputy Speaker, I should conclude. I hope that I have demonstrated that we have sought to engage constructively. As I have said, I urge the House to support all the changes that we are suggesting together today with the Government amendments brought from the Lords.

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

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  I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 263.

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend for raising the challenge that Becca has faced, and I congratulate her on the work that she has done in bringing that to the House. The Government are neutral on this part of the Bill, as is right and proper. What we seek to do with our amendments is ensure that it is legally workable. That is our role in this space. I hope that I have demonstrated that we have sought to engage constructively with the non-Government amendments carried in the Lords.

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

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  I accept that there were more officers—not by population, but in terms of actual numbers—when the Conservatives left office than when they took office. [ Interruption. ] But let me ask the House about something else that happened: by how much did shoplifting rise in the last two years of the Conservative Government? It rose by 60%—

• 26 Mar 2026 · Lucy Letby Case: Conduct of Cheshire Police · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on securing this debate and on being a formidable campaigner for the causes that he cherishes in this place. Given the time available, I do not have long to cover the range of issues. These are serious criminal cases. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is currently undertaking a review. In that context, it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on the outcome of those processes; we must let them take their course. A meticulous and lengthy investigation led to Lucy Letby being identified as a suspect and arrested in July 2018 in respect of the significant rise of neonatal deaths and acute, life-threatening collapses of newborn infants. I am sure we all think of the parents of those children. As I have had children in neonatal units and born into special care baby units, I can only imagine their suffering in what they have been through. In November 2020, the Crown Prosecution Service authorised multiple charges of murder and attempted murder against Letby. The CPS deemed that there was a realistic prospect of conviction and that it was in the public interest for the cases to proceed to trial. Lucy Letby stood trial from October 2022 to August 2023. She faced 22 charges related to 17 babies, and she was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven of attempted murder. Letby was also found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder, and the jury was unable to reach verdicts on two other counts of attempted murder. In September 2023, Letby submitted an application to the Court of Appeal against her convictions. The application was heard by three senior justices in April 2024. The justices refused the appeal. From June to July 2024, Letby was retried in respect of one of the previous attempted murder charges. Letby was found guilty, for which she received an additional whole-life order. Following that conviction, Letby submitted an application to appeal to the Court of Appeal. During October 2024, a new bench of three senior justices heard the appeal, which was again refused. I set that out to make clear that there has been a proper process, involving independent assessment by the Crown Prosecution Service, trial by a jury and two appeal processes, which has resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Lucy Letby.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Lucy Letby Case: Conduct of Cheshire Police · Hansard source

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  I will of course take that away. We are always looking at ways to improve the IOPC system. I was with the IOPC earlier today talking about its transformation programme and the work we are trying to do. The right hon. Gentleman made a number of remarks about Cheshire constabulary—he can have his view. His Majesty’s inspector, through his Peel inspections, has in fact given it some of the highest ratings in the country, with two “outstanding” ratings and four “good” ratings, as well as two graded “adequate”. I put that on the record in the context of this conversation. In that context, it is important that we as Members of Parliament should not undermine public confidence in the police and the criminal justice system. We need to be careful to avoid implying impropriety where none has been established. The right hon. Gentleman said that he will write to the DPP. He will take that through its course. I end by reminding the House that this country uses due process, and due process has been followed in the convictions of Lucy Letby, with a trial by jury, upheld on appeal. I remain confident of that and of the effectiveness of Cheshire constabulary. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I also wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everyone else here a happy Easter.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  We have set an ambitious but essential target to halve knife crime in a decade, and we are already seeing results. Since the start of this Parliament, knife crime has fallen by 8% and knife homicides are down 27% to their lowest level in a decade, but we must and will go further. We are working on the final plans for our cross-Government plan to halve knife crime, which we will publish soon.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman thought that the way to tackle crime was to recruit more officers and put them behind desks, so I will not take any lessons from him. Stop and search is a powerful and important tool in tackling crime—nobody would disagree with that—and it is part of a range of interventions with which we can tackle knife crime. Knife-enabled robbery, for example, has plummeted in areas in which we have focused our resources since the election. We must use all the tools in our armoury, and stop and search is one of them.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  We are introducing legislation to bring in a new offence of child criminal exploitation. Our county lines programme works extensively not just to tackle the criminals and to shut down the lines, but to safeguard young people. More than 4,000 safeguarding referrals have been made since July 2024, so while we are catching the criminals, we are also protecting the children.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Public Order Legislation: Religious Expression · Hansard source

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  This Government are committed to building a strong and integrated society where people can express their religious identity without fear of harassment. Guidance is set out by the College of Policing in its professional practice guidance. The Home Secretary has also commissioned Lord Ken Macdonald to undertake an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation, which will consider whether police powers strike the right balance between protecting the public and upholding the right to lawful protest. We look forward to his recommendations soon.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Public Order Legislation: Religious Expression · Hansard source

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  I join the hon. Gentleman in condemning the attack. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that our British values of diversity, tolerance and freedom of religious belief are one of our country’s greatest strengths, and we all have a role to play in ensuring that we uphold them everywhere we can.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that England and Wales policing, which I am responsible for, will get the support it needs and bear down on criminals in exactly the way it should.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  As well as increasing the number of police officers on our streets and in our neighbourhoods, we are introducing respect orders to tackle antisocial behaviour. We are seeing shop theft charges going up in our town centres, and we are taking a targeted approach in policing, so that we really tackle our town centres. We take antisocial behaviour very seriously. We will continue to ensure that we make our streets safer—and they are becoming safer. They will be even safer when we have 13,000 additional officers on our streets.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I think Boris Johnson closed a lot more front counters than Sadiq Khan has, but that is a different issue. We are putting more funding into frontline policing. We want police on our streets and in our neighbourhoods—not behind desks, as they were under the previous Government—and that is where the public want to see them.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yes, and we are looking at that issue as we speak, making sure that we strike the right balance. At the moment, there is a huge cost to policing from football matches and other events more widely that is not covered. That support is not there, so we think it is right that we look at the issue.