1. That a Select Committee be appointed to consider and make recommendations on the following proposals:
(a) a retirement age for members of the House of Lords; and
(b) a participation requirement for members of the House of Lords.
2. That in relation to these issues the Committee shall consider and report to the House on:
(a) The impact of a retirement age on the House and, in particular, its size and functioning,
(b) The impact of a participation requirement on the House and, in particular, its membership and functioning, and
(c) Options for the implementation of a retirement age and participation requirement including without primary legislation. These options should include transitional measures, where appropriate.
And that the following members be appointed to the Committee:
Anelay of St Johns, B, Blunkett, L, Chandos, V, Hayman, B, Manningham-Buller, B, Mattinson, B, Parminter, B, Sherbourne of Didsbury, L, Smith of Hindhead, L, Suttie, B, Taylor of Bolton, B (Chair).
That the Committee do report by 31 July 2026;
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the evidence taken by the Committee in the last session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
That the evidence taken by the Committee be published, if the Committee so wishes; and
That the Report of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House.
Conduct Committee
That Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers be appointed a member of the Select Committee.
King’s SpeechDebate (3rd Day)Principal topics for debate: Justice, home affairs and the union3.23 pmMoved on Wednesday 13 May by That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as follows:“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate on the Government’s plans for home affairs, the justice system and the union. I express my gratitude to His Majesty for delivering the most gracious Speech.
I want to say at the outset that, in the 15 months since I came into your Lordships’ House, I have been awed by the amount of expertise, experience and wisdom to be found here. On that subject, I am sure that many noble Lords will have noted that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is to make his valedictory speech today after 16 years in your Lordships’ House. We shall miss him. His contributions, like his books, have always been learned, penetrative and eloquent, and he has never been afraid to tell us straight what he thinks. To have leading political historians in this House has added knowledge and quality to our debates. Because the noble Lord has already said this publicly, I am sure he will not mind me referring to the fact that he suffers from Parkinson’s disease. In fact, so does my own father, who was 90 last weekend and is going strong. I am sure your Lordships will all join me in wishing the noble Lord good health, long life and continued happiness.
I also look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Case, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
In opening this debate, I have two themes: the protection of the public and rebuilding trust in our public institutions. We will do this at the national level but we will also work with the newly formed devolved Governments because people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and here in England, expect to see their Governments working together to deliver for them.
We all long for the sunlit uplands where the economy is so strong that there is money to pay for everything that we want and deserve. While I, as a proud member of this Labour Government, firmly believe that we are on the right path to greater economic strength, we all have to accept that at the moment we cannot afford everything that we want to do, so hard choices have to be made. But the lodestar for this Government is these two principles: fairness and opportunity for all people across the United Kingdom.
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her speech outlining the Government’s legislative programme for the new Session in the area of justice and home affairs. I was particularly impressed, if I may say respectfully, that her speech managed both to defend her husband and to revive “Dixon of Dock Green”, a combination not often encountered in modern criminal justice policy. Like her, I look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, whose route to high office in the Church was assured when she was ordained in Liverpool.
I also look forward, of course, to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Case, whose route to becoming Cabinet Secretary was assured when he had as his doctoral supervisor, I understand, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield. Like the Minister, I also pay tribute to the noble Lord in what I understand is to be his valedictory speech. He is one of the House’s greatest historians and constitutionalists. His wisdom and scholarship have enriched our political life for many years. According to Wikipedia, which might be accurate on this point at least, when created a life Peer he said:
“I hope I can help the House of Lords a bit on constitutional matters. I’ll certainly give it my best shot”.
I think I speak for the whole House when I say that there are few, if any, better shots.
I am going to focus on the justice and constitutional aspects of the programme, and my noble friend Lord Davis of Gower will have more to say about the Home Office and immigration matters. Before turning to the substance, I cannot help observing that the gracious Speech is admirably confident in declaring what His Majesty’s Government “will” do; in current political circumstances, a little more conditional drafting might have been prudent. One is tempted to suggest that “may” rather than “will” is currently the operative auxiliary verb, because so much of the programme before us bears the unmistakable imprint of the current Prime Minister’s constitutional philosophy, although I doubt those words have ever crossed his own lips.
My Lords, I will restrict my remarks to the Government’s proposals for policing. At the start of the last Session, many of us hoped for a serious reforming agenda after too many years in which our public services stagnated and, in too many respects, went backwards. Nowhere is this truer than in policing. We therefore await details of the police reform Bill with great interest.
These Benches agree with much of the direction set out in the recent White Paper, particularly the ambition to strengthen neighbourhood policing and address the workforce, skills and training issues that are central to a successful, modern police service. This Bill provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for long-overdue structural change, but will this ambition be matched by the necessary political will? I sincerely hope so.
We are on our sixth Home Secretary in six years. Reshaping policing requires sustained commitment, not a revolving door of leadership. Do the Government have the focus to carry through bold reform when the Home Office is consumed by so many other priorities?
The real test of the Bill is whether it will improve investigations, deter lawbreaking, and give witnesses and victims a better response when they turn to the police for help. It must also remain faithful to the core principles that have underpinned British policing for generations: policing by consent, local accountability, impartiality, and restraint. That is the standard against which it will be measured.
Much attention is focused on plans to merge forces and create a national police service, but structural reorganisation will mean little if we ignore the reality that front-line policing demand routinely exceeds capacity, and policing is permanently struggling to cope. For too long, politicians have colluded in the fiction that all demand can be met, when everyone on the front line knows that it cannot. The burden is pushed downwards, to be absorbed by officers and staff who must find their own ways to ration resources, while Ministers avoid confronting those trade-offs openly.
My Lords, before the full debate begins—I know your Lordships are looking forward to a full and fascinating debate—I note that we have 77 speakers today, and therefore the advisory speaking time has been set at four minutes. I therefore encourage your Lordships to stick to that, to give the later speakers a fair crack of the whip and so that we can achieve a reasonable rising time. I know that being a Whip is not a path to popularity, but I hope your Lordships will forgive the Whips if we feel the need to intervene if people exceed the advisory time beyond what the House thinks is reasonable.
My Lords, I welcome the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Case and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
I am not looking forward to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, not because I do not think it will lighten our spirits and we will enjoy his wisdom, but because it is his final speech. I for one will miss him very much from this Chamber. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, of the King’s visit to Golders Green, which was endorsed by the House. I will pick up another thing that the King has recently done, for those who missed it: he endowed on Peter—the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—the Order of the Garter. His qualities have been noticed not just in this House but beyond.
In the gracious Speech, I noticed 17 references to “security”. As the former head of the Security Service, more regularly known as MI5, I thought that was quite a lot and I welcomed it. I will just say a few things about the current national security threat, derived largely from the current head of the service in a speech he made in October.
Russia is attacking us on all fronts through cyber, influence operations, exploring our underwater cables, drone attacks, sabotage and murders, as well as conventional espionage. China is engaging in cyber, in influence operations and politically; it is seeking to exercise influence over the diaspora and is stealing our technology. Iran is sponsoring violence and terrorism and exacerbating antisemitism at a substantial level. Additionally, al-Qaeda and ISIS are still there. While we had hopes that Northern Ireland was peaceful, we had a car bomb there last month. Since I retired, we have also had extreme right-wing terrorism.
The most frightening thing—again deriving from the October speech—is that last year, 235 people were arrested for terrorism in this country, one in five of whom was under the age of 17. I touch on my sadness that the gracious Speech did not refer to under-16s on social media.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to respond to His Majesty’s gracious Speech today. I too look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Case, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
We face serious challenges at home and abroad, and I continue to pray for those who carry responsibilities of office as we seek to meet these challenges together. At my installation at Canterbury Cathedral, I spoke about the presence and importance of hope. As a Christian, I believe that we have hope because we have a God who walks with us, even when circumstances feel overwhelming.
The work of integration has never been more urgent. We have witnessed a deeply concerning deterioration in intercommunity relations. I therefore welcome the commitment in the gracious Speech to do more to protect the Jewish community following the recent appalling attacks. In doing so, I wish to assure both Jewish and Muslim communities of my support as they face the unacceptable rise in hate crime, intimidation and hostility. The Church of England has long held that the right of all people to practise their faith without fear must be protected. We have also seen religious identity misused to intimidate and divide. Let us be clear: to follow Jesus Christ is to love your neighbour as yourself, to love without exception and to seek the flourishing of all.
We must address the pressures facing people and communities today, while ensuring that systems for new arrivals are fair. We must undertake the harder task of bringing communities together, of making strangers neighbours, and of ensuring that all who reside here have both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to our shared life. This becomes far more difficult if those refugees for whom we hold responsibility lack clarity about whether or when they may be required to return to their country of origin. We embed insecurity rather than stability when those seeking British citizenship are put through a decade-long game of immigration snakes and ladders.
My Lords, after a week of fixation on personalities and personal ambitions, we can now return—I almost said “to sanity”—to the process of policies and the political direction of the Government. I am sure that they will want to make sure that their policies do not hinder but promote growth, and that the rewards of that growth go in a fair fashion to those who create the wealth—that is, the workers and the legitimate workless—not to those who choose not to work.
Having said that, I have two points to make about today’s debate. First, I very much welcome the immigration and asylum Bill. I am reassured by the present Home Secretary—I think she is probably the best for, say, 20 years. She recognises the problems that have been caused by uncontrolled immigration, not least under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. For two decades, it has caused considerable alienation among the public, not because they are all racists but because of endlessly increasing demand on public services at a time when the provision of public services, particularly during austerity, has been reduced continually. The problem has not been created by Nigel Farage and Reform. They have stepped into a vacuum which successive Governments have allowed to exist. They have used it, but they did not create it. I think our present Home Secretary recognises that, and I therefore fully support her efforts to finally tackle some of the worst excesses of the problem.
Secondly, I welcome the national security Bill. I remind the House that we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the biggest terrorist attack in our history: the liquid bomb plot to murder several thousand people in aeroplanes across the Atlantic. That plot was foiled by the vigilance of our security services, under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and here I must mention the noble Lord, Lord Evans.
It was a great thing that plot was foiled, but there were unintended consequences. The terrorists have not gone away. As one famous terrorist once said, they adapted: they shaped new, simpler and less vulnerable methods of murder—less vulnerable to detection—by individual acts of terrorism, using low technology such as knives, guns, cars, arson and opportunistic attacks on innocent civilians. They also targeted, in particular, the primary source of their hatred: the Jews—not just Israel. Anybody who can should look at the suicide videos which, fortunately, were ultimately of no use 20 years ago; they targeted the Jews. It is not just the state of Britain or the United Kingdom or Israel but individual Jews here and throughout the world. That is driven, of course, by extreme Islamism but it is now being succoured by the extreme right and, increasingly, the extreme left of politics. That should not surprise us. The extreme left; nationalism; the extreme right; extreme socialism; those were the intrinsic elements of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party of Deutschland.
My Lords, I realise that everyone has a great deal to say in this debate. Unfortunately, the advisory time is four minutes. There are a significant number of speakers. If everyone goes even half a minute or up to a minute over, it will really knock on the time. Can I please ask all noble Lords to stay within the four minutes allocated?
20 of 88 shown
I start with the protection of the public, because keeping our citizens safe is the most fundamental duty of all. This Government have two objectives: to ensure that law enforcement bodies have the tools to tackle emerging dangers while maintaining the trust and confidence of the communities they serve. This Government are introducing the biggest reform to policing in two centuries, designed to do three things: to respond to rapidly changing threats, to give confidence at a local level that communities’ priorities are listened to and acted on, and to increase democratic accountability.
Crime is evolving fast. Sophisticated criminal gangs are working both here and internationally, smuggling drugs and trafficking people into this country. The online world is making it easier than ever for sexual abusers and online fraudsters to operate—90% of crime today has a digital element, and fraud now makes up nearly half of all crime. We no longer live in the world of “Dixon of Dock Green”. I knew I could make that reference safely in your Lordships’ House, but when I said it to my children I got rather a blank stare. That rather makes the point for me that policing must evolve to tackle modern realities.
The police reform Bill will restore trust in policing. It will strengthen local policing by driving down waste, cutting bureaucracy, empowering officers in their communities and equipping forces with the technology and skills they need to keep pace with crime as it evolves. We are creating the national police service, which will provide a unified response to the most serious crimes, set stronger national policing standards and ensure that there is more consistency in how the police go about their work. While operational independence remains a crucial cornerstone of modern policing, this Bill will ensure that there is greater accountability to the public through their elected representatives. To achieve this, the Home Secretary will set national priorities, improving police performance and ensuring that standards are met across the country.
In addition, as part of protecting the public we must keep up with modern dangers. That is why the most gracious Speech also included proposals to tackle two of the greatest emerging threats: those posed by hostile states as well as by individuals. The tackling state threats Bill creates a powerful new tool to disrupt and deter the activities of state-linked entities and those acting in concert with them. This follows a recommendation made by the independent reviewer. Hostile states sponsor terrorism and create insecurity, so with this Bill we will create a new power for the Secretary of State directly to address organisations engaged in state-linked threats with new criminal sanctions.
But it is not just other countries that represent an evolving threat. We also need stronger protections against individuals who become fixated on violence and can and do cause serious real-world harm. The Southport attack in July 2024 was a stark reminder of why this is needed. We must protect the public from those who plan to commit a mass casualty attack, even if they do not have an ideological motive, so we will introduce a national security Bill with measures to tackle online extreme violence. We all know that exposure to the most graphic and extreme violent material can escalate to planning and conducting an attack. This Bill will criminalise the creation and sharing of extreme violence content, give law enforcement updated powers to take down cyber criminals, including introducing a cyber crime risk order, and criminalise the planning of a mass casualty attack such as the Southport attack.
I turn to my second subject: confidence in our public institutions. This Government are bringing forward several measures to rebuild that trust, to make sure that systems work as they should and to restore fairness and predictability. I start with a subject close to my own heart: our criminal justice system. Whether your Lordships belong to a particular political grouping or to none, I think we can all agree that our criminal justice system is struggling. We might disagree about who is to blame, but we all know that things are not how they should be in a mature democracy. There are grotesque delays in cases being tried, victims who feel that the system is weighted against them, guilty defendants gaming the system and innocent defendants whose lives are ruined by the many months, if not years, waiting to be cleared, by which time they may well have lost their jobs, homes and families.
All these things are closely intertwined: the delays make it worth while for the guilty to string things out, which in turn makes victims feel that the system is broken. Today, the backlog of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court is over 80,000. Without action, that backlog will continue to rise beyond the point of recovery, so we must act.
We are implementing a package of reforms. The first element is a record financial investment in the criminal justice system. We are funding unlimited sitting days in the Crown Court this financial year; as many courts as the Lady Chief Justice can give us, we will fund. That is part of a record £2.78 billion settlement for the courts and tribunals this year, which includes significant increases to legal aid to attract and retain the excellent lawyers upon whom the system depends. The second element is improving efficiency. We are working hard to give our response to the second part of the Leveson report but, by way of example, there will be more blitz courts, and we are making greater use of technology and artificial intelligence.
The third element of our package is to introduce modernising reforms. We will do this through the return of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. For reasons that, I must confess, I have been a bit mystified by, this has attracted huge controversy. The reason I am mystified by it is that this Government are doing only what pretty much every other Government have done in the past, including Conservative Governments. Let me explain what I mean. It has always been the case that only 10% of criminal cases are dealt with in the Crown Court. There are obvious reasons for this: jury trial is much slower and more expensive than in the magistrates’ court, which is why every Government reserve jury trial for the most serious cases—and what is meant by “the most serious cases” changes over time. Let me give a little illustration.
Picture the scene: on a sunny morning in 1971, a 23 year-old barrister set off to the Birkenhead Quarter Sessions to conduct his first jury trial. The name of that young man was Alex Carlile, known to this House as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and, as some of your Lordships know, my noble kinsman. In case your Lordships are wondering why I have embarked on this recounting of ancient history, the reason is this: the offence for which his client was being tried was driving with excess alcohol. It was a breathalyser case. I think your Lordships will now have the point. We do not try breathalyser cases in the Crown Court any more; they go only before the magistrates. As for the reason for that, I can do no better than to use the words of the late, great Gareth Williams QC, Lord Williams of Mostyn. In 1999, speaking in your Lordships’ House when he was Minister of State in the Home Office, he said:
“Things are not set in stone. Your Lordships will remember the introduction of the breathalyser provisions and the right to trial by jury. I remember that with perfect satisfaction and happiness because it kept many of us going in south and west Wales for many years running completely bogus defences—I can say this now—about whether the policeman was wearing his cap and, if not, whether it constituted full uniform. Eventually, the right to elect trial in breathalyser cases was wholly removed and transferred to the magistracy. One cannot set these matters in stone; one must take a sensible balance and build in judicial safeguards”.—[Official Report, 19/5/1999; col. 366.]
The party that had removed the right of jury trial for these cases was, of course, the party opposite. I do not say that to criticise them, but merely to make the point that this is what Governments do to keep up with modern life. They just move the line as to which cases are tried in the magistrates’ court and which require the greater time and resources of judge and jury in the Crown Court. We are a Labour Government. We did not come into office, and I did not come into your Lordships’ House, to remove jury trial. This is a sensible and proportionate response to the changing nature of criminal offences and the way in which they are prosecuted in the public interest, because the modelling is clear: investment and modernisation alone are not enough. We also need to reform.
I turn to the better and fairer immigration and asylum system that we promised the British people. We will not hesitate to remove those with no right to be here and ensure that our immigration rules are enforced. But I also say that this Labour Government will never shirk the responsibility of providing refugee status to those fleeing war and persecution. We will continue to meet our international obligations, while encouraging those who want to build a life in the UK to do so via safe and legal routes. What we see on our television screens unfolding in the English Channel is grotesque—vulnerable adults and children being exploited and put in danger—and it must stop.
We have made a good start: we have cut £1 billion from the asylum Bill, and we have increased the return of illegal immigrants by 31% since coming into office. However, it is absolutely clear that we cannot solve this by incremental measures alone; the task is too urgent and too big. The immigration and asylum Bill will introduce the most significant changes to the immigration system in a generation. It will restore order and control by tightening the application of Article 8, ensuring that “family life” means only the core family unit and addressing the misuse of the modern slavery framework. It will speed up the removal and deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals, as well as reducing the pull factors driving illegal migration.
We will create a new independent appeals body and a system that is fair and fast and commands public confidence, which will ensure the immediate forced removal of those who have exhausted all their appeals. We will ensure that refugees who do integrate, contribute and play a full part in our society will be able to come off basic protection and settle more quickly. These proposals will make our immigration system fair and fit for purpose and allow us to focus on those who genuinely need support.
A failure in accountability of those who serve or should serve the public has worn down public trust. His Majesty confirmed the carryover of two Bills designed to right past wrongs. The first will fulfil our manifesto commitment to get the public accountability law on the statute book. We are determined to deliver for the Hillsborough families after 37 long years, as well as the victims of other tragedies where the state was at fault, including infected blood, Horizon and Grenfell.
The Bill will introduce a duty of candour and individual accountability, and it will require honesty and frankness when things go wrong. It will put powerful new obligations on public bodies and officials to help investigations to get to the truth, and it will make sure that there is parity of arms at inquests, representing the largest expansion of civil legal aid in a decade. Taken together, the measures in this Bill will give individual citizens real and meaningful ability to challenge the state.
His Majesty confirmed the return of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. This Bill is also designed to rebuild public trust, as well as ensuring dignity for the families of victims. Many of those families have suffered so much down the years and simply want answers about what happened to their family members killed in the Troubles. We will therefore reform the current system of addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland. This includes measures to enhance next-of-kin participation, safeguard witnesses, including our veterans, and bolster confidence in the reformed legacy commission. This is a proportionate and workable approach to addressing this dark period in our history.
I know that, in the best traditions of your Lordships’ House, the debate to follow will allow for a full and interesting discussion of this Government’s agenda. I would welcome discussion with any of your Lordships, from whichever party or group, about any or all of these plans. This Government are keen to draw upon the experience and wisdom in this House, about which I spoke at the beginning of this speech. Where we can achieve consensus, we will do so. The most gracious Speech set out this Government’s approach to keeping the public safe and restoring trust. We are determined that, by doing so, we can build a better future for us all.
It is an approach to policy and political life in which the instinctive answer to almost every social problem is not stronger institutions, stronger families, stronger civic culture or greater democratic resilience but instead another statutory duty, another regulator, another criminal offence or another extension of state authority. This Government and their programme speak the language of moderation and pragmatism, but beneath it lies an unmistakably lawyerly belief that society can be reordered from Whitehall by legislative design and managed compliance. It is a vision in which politics becomes litigation by other means, and in which the state readily, steadily and constantly expands, while responsibility is transferred upwards from citizens and communities to officials, regulators and courts.
Before turning to the matters that divide us, I want to turn to a matter which ought to unite us. His Majesty chose to address antisemitism in, I think, the second or third paragraph of the gracious Speech, and with respect, he was right to do so, because the fight against antisemitism goes directly to the themes of justice, public order and national cohesion which underpin this debate. I am sure the whole House joins me in recording our gratitude to His Majesty for his visit to Golders Green last Thursday. It demonstrated moral leadership, solidarity and an understanding that the rise in antisemitism is not some marginal or community-based concern but a direct challenge to the values and cohesion of this country, and that challenge is increasingly visible on our streets.
On Saturday afternoon, London witnessed two very different marches. One march was under the banner of Palestinian activism and the other was addressed by Tommy Robinson, but there was one deeply disturbing point of convergence between them. At the first march, a banner declared, “End Zionist control of the UK government”. At the second march, a banner demanded, “End Zionist occupation of Britain”. They were different crowds and different political tribes, but it was the same ancient poison, the same conspiracy theory, the same obsessive belief that Jews—or Zionists, used as a euphemism—secretly control Governments, societies and nations. The far left and the far right now increasingly resemble two mirrors facing one another, reflecting the same hatred back and forth in slightly different language. One wraps it in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism, the other in the rhetoric of nationalism and racial grievance, but beneath both lies precisely the same antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The overnight news is no better. Police are investigating another violent physical attack in Golders Green in the early hours of this morning. The Metropolitan Police has asked the organisers of the Nova festival exhibition to take down the main sign and keep the location a secret—not as censorship but as a protective measure. The fact that an exhibition commemorating young people murdered at a music festival should require covert policing and counterterrorism precautions before it can safely open in London in 2026 is a disturbing reflection of the climate we face in Britain today.
His Majesty the King has, as I said, shown leadership and moral clarity. We now look to the Government to show leadership and legislative clarity. That means moving urgently to proscribe the IRGC in full. Last Thursday, in the other place, the Security Minister said that the Government would bring forward fast-track legislation “in the coming weeks”. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify later tonight precisely when the Government intend to bring this legislation before Parliament and whether it is intended to commence the Bill here or in the other place.
At the centre of the Government’s programme for justice reform is the courts modernisation Bill. We have been consistently told that these measures are necessary to tackle court backlog and restore confidence in the criminal justice system. We on these Benches do not dispute the seriousness of the backlog. Victims are waiting years for justice and defendants are left in limbo. There is a real risk that cases collapse under the weight of delay. But the fact that a problem is serious is no justification for some of the alarming solutions proposed.
A jury trial should not be viewed as an administrative inconvenience. It is a central safeguard of liberty in our constitutional order. The right to be judged by one’s peers has endured precisely because it protects the individual from the unchecked power of the state. It commands public confidence in a way that no technocratic reform or efficiency drive ever can or will. Indeed, the strongest arguments in favour of jury trial have come from the Government. The Prime Minister, in his previous incarnation as the Director of Public Prosecutions, said:
“The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance”.
Likewise, the current Lord Chancellor was described as finding juries in his 2017 review into racial bias in the criminal justice system to be
“the only stage … without racial bias”.—[Official Report, 2/12/25; col. 1750.]
He recognised that juries are not obstacles to justice but defenders of fairness and equality under the law.
One point that the Minister did not deal with but that I would ask the Government to think about is this: we have a judiciary in this country of the highest quality, but it is not reflective of the society in which we live. At the moment, we, so to speak, get away with it in our criminal justice system because juries are representative. If we do away with juries, and defendants walk in and see a judge and perhaps two magistrates who do not look like them, nor come from where they come from, speak like them or share the same life experiences, that will to lead to demands for different ways of appointing our judges and, perhaps, for radical reform of our judiciary. I gently ask the Government to think about this very carefully. We might not get what we wish for.
These same figures, the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor, who in the past were so confident in the strength of the jury system, now ask us to accept that juries have become barriers to efficiency. Under this Government, therefore, the proposal reflects not only a change of policy but a collapse in principle.
Let me take on the Minister’s point about the change of offences that go to magistrates and juries. Of course there have been changes over the years, but we are talking about serious cases. Under these reforms, offences that attract sentences of up to three years’ imprisonment may be heard without a jury. Many sexual assault cases will fall within scope, and fraud and theft cases may be heard by a judge alone. Those, if I may pick up the Minister’s phrase, are among the most serious cases. For the Government to suggest that these offences no longer warrant the constitutional safeguard of a jury trial is a profound shift in the balance between citizen and state; it reflects a stripping away of individual citizens’ rights.
That is particularly the case because one of the most alarming elements of the Bill is its retrospective effect: its impact on those already awaiting jury trials. Defendants who have already exercised their lawful right to elect a Crown Court trial now find that right about to be removed, according to the Government’s Bill, after the fact. Parliament is being asked to change the rules midway through the process for individuals who made their decisions based on the law as it stood at the time. That is unfair, and it will be seen throughout the country as profoundly unfair.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this debate is that the evidence, which the Minister did not really touch on, increasingly points against the Government’s case. Last week the chief executive of His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service confirmed that cases are being resolved at a faster rate than forecast because sitting days have increased and courts are operating more effectively. Lifting the cap on judicial sitting days—which the Government should have done when they came into office and not only after the Lady Chief Justice asked for it—has begun to reduce backlogs in key regions across England and Wales.
Of course we need more judges and more IT, but we also need more courts actually capable of sitting. Last week 10% of courts capable of sitting did not sit because there are such problems with the court service and the way courts have been maintained. These are long-running problems, but the answer is not to abolish juries; the answer is to deal with the criminal justice system.
There is a fundamental lack of legislative coherence at the heart of the Government’s policy. When justifying these reforms, the Lord Chancellor claimed that defendants are “gaming the system” by electing Crown Court trials for relatively minor offences. The Minister for Courts in the other place asked:
“Do we think that someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky from a minimart should receive the right to trial by jury?”
Well, I can answer her question: yes, her own Government think that. The Government’s Crime and Policing Act, which received Royal Assent a matter of weeks ago, restored low-value shoplifting offences to the ordinary either way regime, thereby preserving the defendant’s right to a trial by jury in the Crown Court for low-level shoplifting offences. Why were these low-level shoplifting offences sufficiently serious to justify a jury on an either way offence, whereas now we are told that they are so minor that jury trial should be removed?
What makes all this especially troubling is that the basis for this policy has fundamentally changed. When it was introduced, we were told that it was necessary to reduce the backlog; it was all about efficiency. The Criminal Bar Association, the Law Society and the Bar Council said, “Where is the modelling?”, but the modelling was not there. Now we are told something completely different: that it is a matter of principle. Sarah Sackman told the House of Commons that even if there is no backlog, this is what the Government are going to do. It is no longer being advanced as an emergency administrative response to pressure on the courts; it is being advanced as a matter of constitutional principle.
If this really was a principled constitutional change to the relationship between citizen and state, between accused and jury, and between the Executive and the administration of justice, why was there not a word about it in the Government’s manifesto? Indeed, even if the reason for it was to reduce the backlog, I have to tell the Minister that, when we sat on different sides, we were constantly being berated about the backlog by what was then the Opposition—the backlog was not a state secret. So, even if this is an answer to the backlog, it still should have been in the Labour Party’s manifesto. This is an emergency response. I do not know whether it has come from No. 10 or from the Attorney-General. I doubt, however, it will survive under any future Prime Minister.
This matters. The electorate were given no indication whatever that a Labour Government intended to dilute or curtail long-standing rights to trial by jury. Constitutional change in this country derives its legitimacy not merely from parliamentary arithmetic but from democratic consent. It is precisely in circumstances such as these that your Lordships’ House has, I suggest, a particular constitutional duty: not to frustrate government for the sake of opposition but to require Ministers to justify profound constitutional change openly, candidly and before the electorate, rather than presenting it after the event as an inevitable technocratic necessity.
The right to jury trial has endured for centuries because it protects the liberty of the citizen against the power of the state. Once diminished, it will not easily be restored. This House should therefore approach this element of the Government’s programme with the utmost caution. That is assuming, of course, that the next Prime Minister—who might be with us in a matter of weeks, and surely within months—does not conclude that Mr Lammy’s earlier instincts on these matters were rather sounder than his later ones and quietly leave these proposals where they belong, in what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has taught us is the long catalogue of constitutional mistakes wisely abandoned before they could do lasting harm.
This has to stop. We need an honest, public conversation about what we are asking the police to do and what we are prepared to fund. Innumerable chief constables have told me that their key ask is greater clarity about the role and mission of the police. New responsibilities must come with the funding to match, and when difficult choices are made, they must be owned collectively, not pushed down, as now, on to local forces.
The Government want a more active Home Office setting national priorities. But the question remains: who will decide what is to be deprioritised? What politician will admit that without significant extra investment, some tasks can no longer be done to the same standard? If everything is prioritised, nothing will be. Can the Minister tell us how much of the investment for these new national structures is expected to come from savings within policing itself?
The Liberal Democrats’ priority is to protect local policing. We want every community to have guaranteed access to a police counter, not in buildings resembling Fort Knox that alienate the public. We want hubs in familiar places, such as supermarkets and post offices, so that people can report a crime, get advice, or pass on their concerns as they go about their daily lives. In too many areas, policing is verging on irrelevance, called upon only in the direst of emergencies. We must restore the Peelite principle of the police as part of the community, not a distant ancillary service.
We welcome the end of the failed police and crime commissioner experiment, but its replacement must be better, not just different. Shifting powers from one underscrutinised politician to another is no answer. Policing must be accountable to the communities it serves, and day-to-day operations must be protected from political interference. We must not drift towards a model where the police answer more to Whitehall than to local residents, even as we sensibly reduce duplication and improve the sharing of data and intelligence.
In relation to police use of AI, the belated promise of a worldleading regulatory framework is very welcome, but in one of the most heavily surveilled democracies, it is surely the minimum the public should expect. Regulation is still lagging far behind the technology, even as the Home Secretary urges forces to adopt AI at pace and scale. Public anxiety about a drift towards a surveillance society is real, and international experience shows how easily such tools can be misused. Troubling early signs of misuse here at home only reinforce that risk. We will therefore press hard to ensure that any new legislation is genuinely robust and enforceable.
Finally, I share the concern about the increasing amount of ping-pong—but when the only way to have sensible ideas properly considered is to press them repeatedly, those of us who want to contribute constructively are left with little choice. In the debates on the last policing Bill, we repeatedly argued for proper safeguards on facial recognition, only to be told, time and again, that it was premature. Weeks later, the Home Office proposed those very safeguards. I am delighted the case was finally accepted, but I hope it does not become the pattern. The public want us to work across party lines to improve public services, especially in the fight against crime. They do not want point-scoring; they want visible improvements in policing and public safety. If the Government are serious about reform, they must show it not only in what they say and how they legislate but, crucially, in how they listen.
I will also say a little word in defence of Prevent at this stage. It is often pilloried; obviously, there was the most recent and notorious case of Southport. However, without it, the efforts to stop young people getting on to violent tracks, whether terrorism or extremism, are likely to be less successful.
I turn to tackling antisemitism and growing threats from states, protecting people from extreme violence and improving cyber defences. I think the whole House would applaud those aims of the Government and we look forward to the legislative frameworks for doing that. I have just one word of caution. The solutions to these problems will come not from law but from people—from the men and women from my organisation and the police, and more broadly—seeking to stop it.
This brings me on to Hillsborough. Who can dispute that the public deserve trust from their public servants? Of course they do. Who can dispute that the families concerned in this and other cases have suffered enormous anguish, from not just the event but the aftermath and the treatment of it? Therefore, the concern I am going to raise is difficult to raise because it sounds unsympathetic. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, as I am going to go slightly over four minutes; I know this is a bad precedent, but I need to say these things. Nor is it the case that I think my former service should not expect accountability and oversight—that is why we sought a parliamentary committee long before we got it. However, there are three problems here and the House will need to work hard to ensure that this Bill does not compromise national security.
The three problems, briefly, are these. The first problem is that this will take people off current work, plus lawyers, to deal with the requests. How much and how extensive is hard to judge, but it will remove people from front-line work. The second problem is that we get a great deal of intelligence from foreign services. They may be cautious about sharing that with us if it cannot be protected. Thirdly, human sources who work for us at risk of torture and death may be—it all depends on the detail—reluctant to offer their services if they think that their identity will be compromised. That said, I know this House will consider this important legislation very carefully and scrutinise it closely.
As human beings, we are naturally drawn to those who resemble us or reinforce our views, particularly in times of adversity and scarcity, yet such instincts do not lead to a flourishing society. Our debate on immigration can, however, be a source of hope: that attitudes can change, that fairer societies are less divided, and that daily life alongside people of different backgrounds reduces fear and suspicion. Through its presence in every parish across England, the Church of England helps build communities where people know and care for one another. In doing so, it builds bridges and fosters relationships across lines of race, faith, class and more. In these acts of mutual care, the seeds of belonging are sown. It is this patient work of integration and community building that policy-making must support. My prayer is that we will see a renewal of hope in our country, a rejection of hatred and division, and a turning towards one another. This is where true pride in our nation is found.
There is much more in the gracious Speech that I cannot address today. However, I note the announcement of a draft conversion practices Bill and remind the House that, in 2017, the General Synod of the Church of England voted in favour of such a ban. I urge the Government to consult widely and wisely on this draft legislation, so that meaningful progress can be made.
Finally, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for his service to this House and nation. He has been a source of wisdom, particularly on Church-state relations and our constitutional settlement. I thank him for placing his expertise at the service of this Chamber and I wish him a happy, peaceful and well-earned retirement.
When it is embedded like that—this is my final point—within civil society, it cannot be countered by the security services alone; that can be done only by civil society. It was defeated 80 years ago by the united resolution of the whole of the British people, including their united civil resistance to the poison of antisemitism at home. We need that again and urgently.