THE Bishop of Derby, the Rt Revd Libby Lane, commended within the House of Lords last week “this Government’s mission to realize safer streets and . . . particularly the aim of halving each knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade”.
Speaking through the Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill on 16 October, Bishop Lane drew attention to “the Church’s statement in response to the controversy within the [Commons] on the decriminalisation of ladies searching for abortion”. She explained that the Bishops of Gloucester and Manchester couldn’t be present within the chamber but were following the controversy closely.
As chair of the Children’s Society, Bishop Lane said that she was concerned how the Bill “risks criminalising children forced or coerced into criminal activity”, despite its “unwavering commitment to guard children from harm — including child sexual abuse — and to enable them to flourish”.
She said: “This is a difficult time and the obstacles are real.” She concluded with a commitment “to think creatively, compassionately and constructively in our collective scrutiny of this Bill”.
Child abuse was debated thoroughly, with comments on its legal considerations over closing dates for reporting, and the way offenders are managed. Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrat) said that she feared “that mandatory reporting won’t be enough to create the culture of safeguarding this country so desperately needs”. She was keen for more training and greater accountability for “all those that work with children”, together with penalties for those “who fail to report”.
In her introduction to the controversy, the federal government minister Baroness Levitt spoke of “not only our manifesto commitments but . . . the careful stock-take we now have made from the essential parts of our criminal justice system and our determination to enhance the law where needed”. She pointed to neighbourhood policing, a clampdown on knife crime, and on violence against women and youngsters, the creation of “a latest offence of administering a harmful substance, including by spiking”, the criminalisation of certain violent depictions in pornography, and “a number of the key recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse” as beneficial by Baroness Casey’s review.
The Bill includes further measures to boost police investigation of technology-enabled crime and “the powers they should protect places of worship from intimidatory protests and protects specified war and other memorials, including the Cenotaph and the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, which have been the goal of protest motion”. Counter-terrorism is one other area, with “a latest civil order that may enable the police to intervene earlier to forestall young people engaging in terrorism and divert them from the criminal justice system”.
Several contributors spoke on how large the Bill was in its scope (“400 densely packed pages of laws in quarter-hour”), with many opting to concentrate on one or two specific parts of it, resembling abortion, which Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative) termed “an especially radical change . . . due to an ideological commitment to presenting abortion as a type of healthcare”. Baroness Hazarika (Labour) said that it was “absurd and unsuitable that in 2025 we’re arguing whether a girl must have the precise or the agency to decide on what she knows is best for her body and her health”.
Baroness Coffey (Conservative) referred to Luke 17.2 in relation to mandatory reporting of abuse: “I appreciate that the Bishops should not present in the controversy at this moment, but I’m concerned about . . . in relation to the confessional, and I’d have an interest to debate this further with the Minister, perhaps outside the Chamber.” Baroness Grey-Thompson felt that “the confidentiality duties for religious and medical sectors remain open to interpretation or to possible future exemption” and that the Bill “falls wanting the recommendations made in IICSA [Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse]”.
In summing up, Lord Hanson of Flint said of kid exploitation, child sexual abuse and the IICSA implementation: “We are going to have an enormous debate on this. We are attempting to satisfy the IICSA recommendations.” With abortion, he referred to “different pressures on that: some want that provision taken out and a few want it maintained. The Government will remain neutral on this matter and facilitate whatever Parliament agrees and settles on ultimately.”
The Bill was committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
