Crime and Policing Bill 2024-26: Lords amendments

Warning: This briefing discusses offences relating to sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, extreme pornography and violence against women and girls which readers may find distressing.

The Crime and Policing Bill 2024-26 completed its Lords stages on 25 March 2026. The Commons will consider Lords amendments on 14 April 2026.

The Lords made 532 amendments to the bill (PDF), 27 of which were opposed in the Lords by the government. The government has tabled motions in respect of the Lords amendments (PDF).

This briefing provides information on some of the most significant amendments. A table summarising all Lords amendments is provided at the end of the briefing.

The government has also published explanatory notes on the amendments (PDF).

Government amendments

Most of the amendments were proposed by the government, which has provided some supporting information in correspondence to shadow ministers. Among other things, these amendments were to:

• introduce a new offence of making available digital ‘nudification’ tools
• introduce new offences of creating semen-defaced images and taking and sharing screenshots of intimate images
• criminalise the possession and publication of pornographic content depicting choking or incest
• create new offences of rape or penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without regard to consent
• pardon anyone who, as a child, was issued with a caution or convicted of a historic ‘child prostitution’ offence
• introduce a new statutory definition of honour-based abuse and accompanying statutory guidance
• create a new offence of protesting outside the home of a public office-holder
• apply hate crime provisions (which require longer sentences for certain crimes involving hostility to someone’s race or religion) to the characteristics of disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity and sex
• create a child cruelty register, to operate similarly to the sex offenders register
• allow the government to amend the Online Safety Act 2023 by regulations to mitigate the risk of harm from AI tools

Non-government amendments

The Lords also agreed several non-government amendments, including provisions to:

• enable the Secretary of State to designate a group as an “Extreme Criminal Protest Group” and to make it an offence to be a member or to materially support the group (unlike proscribing terrorist groups, it would not be an offence to only express support for the group)
• create new offences relating to creating or providing an AI chatbot that can make illegal content
• abolish the category of non-crime hate incidents
• require the government to urgently review whether any organisations related to the Iranian government should be proscribed under terrorism legislation
• pardon women who have been convicted or cautioned for a criminal offence under abortion law in relation to their own pregnancies, and to delete relevant police records

Further information

The amendment numbers in this briefing are those provided in the Lords Amendments paper (Bill 416 59/1) and refer to the clause numbers of the bill as it was first printed for the Lords (HL Bill 111 (Corrected)). These are available from the bill’s publication page.

For information about existing provisions in the bill, see the following briefings:

• House of Commons Library, Crime and Policing Bill 2024-25 (produced for Commons second reading)
• House of Commons Library, Crime and Policing Bill 2024-25: Progress of the bill (produced for Commons report stage)
• House of Lords Library, Crime and Policing Bill: HL Bill 111 of 2024–25 (produced for Lords second reading)