Crime and Policing Bill Published

The UK government has introduced the Crime and Policing Bill to Parliament, including criminalising spiking incidents.

This bill supports the government’s Safer Streets Mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade and rebuild public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. 

Measures in the Crime and Policing Bill will take back our streets by: 

1. Cracking down on crime and antisocial behaviour that blights our streets by: 

   • introducing respect orders to better enable police and others to tackle persistent antisocial behaviour
   • introducing a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker
   • repealing section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 which downgraded the police response to so-called low value shop theft
   • increasing the maximum penalties for offences relating to the sale of weapons whilst introducing a new offence of possessing a bladed article with intent to use unlawful violence

2. Giving the police the powers they need to better tackle criminal activity by: 

   • taking tougher action on drugs through an expansion of drug testing on arrest 
   • giving the police the powers they need to tackle theft by creating a new power to enter a premises without a warrant to search for and seize stolen goods, such as phones located using GPS tracking technology
   • giving the police greater access to the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency database to identify criminals
   • banning articles used to commit serious crime such as SIM Farms and electronic devices  used in vehicle theft

3. Rebuilding public confidence in policing and the wider criminal justice system by: 

   • giving chief offices of police forces the right to appeal the result of misconduct boards to the Police Appeals Tribunal
   • granting firearms officers subject to criminal proceedings anonymity up to the point of conviction

4. Tackling violence against women and girls by: 

   • strengthening the management of offenders in the community and introduce enhanced notification requirements on registered sex offenders, including a bar of them changing their names where there is a risk of sexual harm
   • giving victims of stalking the right to know the identity of the perpetrator
   • introducing a new criminal offence of administering a harmful substance (including spiking)

5. Protecting children and vulnerable adults by: 

   • implementing recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse including by introducing a new duty to report child sexual abuse
   • creating new offences of cuckooing and child criminal exploitation
   • introducing new offences related to  the taking of intimate images without consent
   • making grooming behaviour a statutory aggravating factor

6. Ensuring the police and intelligence services have the powers they need to protect the British people from terrorism and hostile state threats by: 

   • introducing a new youth diversion order, helping to manage the increasing number of young people arrested for terrorism-related activity
   • implementing other changes to terrorism legislation recommended by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation