Crime and Policing Bill introduced
The Government has today (25th February 2025) introduced the Crime and Policing Bill in the House of Commons.
The Bill introduces various provisions that give effect to recommendations made in a number of Law Commission reports. These include the following (click on link for further details of recommendations and each project):
- Confiscation of the proceeds of crime
- Offences related to intimate photographs or films and voyeurism
- Encouraging or assisting serious self-harm
- Criminal liability of bodies corporate and partnerships where senior manager commits offence
- Child abduction
Confiscation
The Bill implements most of the recommendations made by the Law Commission for reform of the confiscation regime for England & Wales in Part 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (and the Bill also makes equivalent provision for Northern Ireland). The reforms improve the process by which confiscation orders are made, ensure that orders made are realistic and proportionate, and improve the enforceability of orders.
Intimate images
In the Intimate Image Abuse report, the Law Commission recommended a suite of offences relating to the taking a sharing of intimate images without consent. Offences of sharing intimate images without consent were introduced in the Online Safety Act 2023. The new offences in the Bill give effect to the Commission’s recommendations in relation to taking intimate images.
Encouraging or assisting serious self-harm
In the Modernising Communications Offences report, the Law Commission recommended that encouraging or assisting serious self-harm should be a criminal offence. This offence was partially implemented in the Online Safety Act 2023 by introducing a new offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harms by means of communications. The Bill introduces a broader offence that covers encouraging or assisting serious self-harm both by communication and by any other means, thus giving full effect to the Law Commission’s recommendation.
Criminal liability of bodies corporate and partnerships where senior manager commits offence
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 reformed the identification doctrine in line with one of the options for reform recommended in the Corporate Criminal Liability options paper, though only with respect to certain economic offences. This provided a new statutory route to corporate liability where a senior manager committed a specified economic offence while acting in the scope of their authority. The Bill extends that identification doctrine to all criminal offences in England & Wales (rather than limiting the doctrine to economic offences).
Child abduction
In the Simplification of the Criminal Law: Kidnapping and Related Offences report, the Law Commission recommended extending the offence in section 1 of the Child Abduction Act 1984. That section makes it an offence for a parent or other person with similar responsibility for a child to take or send a child out of the UK without the consent either of the other persons with responsibility for the child or of the court. The Law Commission recommended that the offence should also cover situations where the child is taken or sent out of the UK with consent but then kept or detained outside of the without consent. The Bill gives effect to that recommendation.
Exposure
The Bill also extends the offence of exposure in section 66 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in line with the cyberflashing offence that we recommended in our Modernising Communications Offences report, and that was introduced in the Online Safety Act 2023. In that report, we noted that the existing fault element of the exposure offence was “relatively restricted”, although the offence itself was outside of the scope of our report, so we made no formal recommendation in that respect.