Crime and Policing Bill Report Stage: Amendment 174

What happened: On 17 June 2025, the House of Commons voted on Amendment 174 to the Crime and Policing Bill during its Report Stage. The amendment was defeated by 335 votes to 194. Report Stage is the phase of parliamentary scrutiny in which the full House of Commons considers proposed changes to a bill that has already passed through committee examination.

Why it matters: The Crime and Policing Bill is a wide-ranging piece of legislation touching on police powers, criminal justice, surveillance, and protections for victims. Amendment 174 represented an attempt by opposition parties and some independent members to modify the bill's provisions, broadly from a civil liberties perspective. The government's successful defeat of the amendment means the bill continues on its original course without the proposed changes, preserving the government's preferred approach to crime and policing reform.

The politics: The vote divided almost entirely along government versus opposition lines. All 329 Labour and Labour Co-operative MPs who voted did so against the amendment. Support for the amendment came from the Conservatives (101 votes), the Liberal Democrats (68 votes), Reform UK (8 votes), seven independents, Plaid Cymru (4 votes), the Greens (4 votes), and the Democratic Unionist Party (4 votes), while the Social Democratic and Labour Party joined the government with 2 votes against. The breadth of opposition support, spanning from Conservatives to Reform UK to the Greens, illustrates an unusual cross-ideological coalition united in challenging this particular aspect of the government's bill.