Part of Crime and Policing Bill - Committee (4th Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords at 5:30 pm on 27 November 2025.
Baroness Kidron
Crossbench
5:30,
27 November 2025
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his Amendment and his fierce following of this issue, and for bringing it to our attention. I recognise that this is a Home Office Bill and that some of these things cross to DSIT, but we are also witnessing crime. The Home Office must understand that not everything can be pushed to DSIT.
Your Lordships have just met the tech Lords. These are incredibly informed people from all over the Chamber who share a view that we want a technological world that puts kids front and centre. We are united in that and, as the Minister has suggested, we will be back.
I have three very quick points. First, legal challenges, operational difficulties and the capacity of the NCA and ofcom were the exact same reasons why Clause 63 was not in the Online Safety Bill or the Data (Use and Access) Bill. It is unacceptable for officials to always answer with those general things. Many noble Lords said, “It’s so difficult”, and, “This is new”, with the Online Safety Bill. It is not new: we raised these issues before. If we had acted three or four years ago, we would not be in this situation. I urge this Government to get on the front foot, because we know what is coming.
I really feel I must say my final two points. One is that I spoke last Friday to engineers from a company that I will not name and I asked them about safety for chatbots. They said, “Yeah, you can train them for safety”. I said, “Who does and who doesn’t?”, and they said, “Well, this one does and this one doesn’t”. It is totally technically possible to do these things. We are not looking for a perfect world; we are looking for a world in which technology companies are treated the same as fridge companies, hoover companies or any other company, where they cannot put out a product that is known to be unsafe—where they have to prove the safety, not have us prove it is unsafe.
Finally, I feel so frustrated, but I am going to say this anyway: there are parents out there with children who are hooked to these things. They are ringing me. I do not think an independent, unelected politician is the right person for a parent with a child who may or may not be going to commit suicide or may or may not be being groomed. That is for the Government. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 266 withdrawn.
Clause 63, as amended, agreed.
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As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
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