Policing and Crime Bill

Latest News

The Policing and Crime Bill has now completed Lord’s Committee Stage and the Bill now progresses to Report Stage. You you can read the transcript of the Committee debates on the parliament website . Like Committee Stage, Report is an opportunity for line by line debate on the Bill. The Bill has been tabled to have two days at Report; 3rd and 5th November.

Background

In May 2008, the Government announced its intention to introduce a Policing and Crime Reduction Bill in its draft legislative programme. The Bill is the Home Office’s flagship Bill for 2008/09 and was introduced by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons as the Policing and Crime Bill on 18th December 2008.

The Bill will:

increase the effectiveness and public accountability of Policing;
protect particularly vulnerable members of our society including women and children;
prevent serious and low level crime and disorder from taking root in our communities;
reduce crime by improving the recovery of criminal assets and international judicial co-operation; and
enhance security planning at UK airports.

The Bill covers five key areas: policing, protecting vulnerable people, serious and low-level crime and disorder, airport security, and organised and international crime.

Protecting Vulnerable Groups

The Bill will help protect vulnerable groups including through measures to:

tackle demand for prostitution by introducing a new strict liability offence and it will increase police powers to close premises associated with prostitution related offences for a set period;
protect vulnerable individuals by widening the circumstances in which sex offender prevention orders and foreign travel orders can be applied for and increasing the penalty for the offence of failing to provide access to suspected encrypted indecent photographs of children;
increase the efficiency of the Criminal Records Bureau, including enabling it to disclose ‘right to work’ checks to employers who request to use this service and making amendments to strengthen the working of the planned new Vetting and Barring Scheme;

Serious and low level crime and disorder

The Bill will help prevent serious and low level crime and disorder taking root in our community by:

introducing gang injunctions to increase the prevention of gang-related violence by managing gang members
introducing a new general code of practice relating to the sale of alcohol to ensure more responsible sale of alcohol by on and off trade. This will include a small number of general licensing conditions applicable to all licensed premises and will also enable the police and local authorities to attach licensing conditions to groups of premises in an area experiencing high levels of alcohol related crime and disorder;
strengthening police powers to deal with young people drinking alcohol in public for example, removing the requirement to prove intent to consume alcohol in public before confiscation, and creating an offence of persistent possession of alcohol in a public place;
lowering the number of times a premise can sell alcohol to young people before incurring a penalty and toughening the penalties for those premises;
providing for the mutual recognition of football banning orders between E&W and Scotland to clamp down on football hooliganism on both sides of the border; and
giving greater powers to local people and Local Authorities to control the opening and regulation of lap-dancing clubs.

Airport Security

The Bill brings benefits to industry and the public by ensuring:

enhanced inter-agency co-operation in establishing airport security arrangements with greater clarity of roles and responsibilities;
a systematic regular assessment of how threats to an airports are being mitigated;
local stakeholders, including the police, border agencies and other private sector parties, will become partners in the process of agreeing and delivering a security plan for their airport;
enhance airport security planning at UK airports both locally and nationally as Airport Security Plans will help ensure more effective deployment of resources to mitigate threats; and
a consistent funding process for dedicated police activities at airports that ensures police authorities are reimbursed by airport operators for agreed dedicated policing costs, in turn benefiting the taxpayer.

Organised and International Crime

The Bill will implement the main recommendations of the Asset Recovery Action Plan, help protect the public, and reduce organised and international crime by:

making a number of small amendments to clarify customs powers;
strengthening the arrangements for recovery of assets obtained through criminal means; and
improving the efficiency of arrangements for judicial co-operation between UK and its international partners.

Information about the policing aspects of the Bill can be found here.

You can also read the impact assessments and equality impact assessments on the main Home Office website . Other documents relating to the Bill including the Government response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and letters from Lord West which can be found here.

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