Crime and Policing Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 334

What happened: The House of Commons voted on 14 April 2026 to reject Lords Amendment 334, which would have abolished non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) in statute. The motion to disagree with the Lords passed by 356 votes to 90. The government's position was that full statutory abolition was unnecessary because it had already committed to scrapping the existing NCHI code of practice and had accepted a College of Policing review recommending a tougher replacement national standard.

Why it matters: Non-crime hate incidents are records kept by police of incidents that are perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice but do not meet the threshold for a criminal offence. Critics argue that recording such incidents chills free speech and can appear on enhanced background checks, affecting people's employment. The Lords amendment would have removed the legal basis for recording NCHIs entirely. By rejecting it, the Commons preserved the government's preferred path: replacing the current code of practice with a stricter national standard rather than an outright ban. The practical effect is that NCHIs will continue to exist in some form, but under revised and, the government argues, more robust rules.

The politics: The vote divided almost entirely along party lines. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour and Co-operative Party, the Greens, and Plaid Cymru all voted with the government to reject the Lords amendment. Conservatives, the Democratic Unionist Party, Reform UK, and the Traditional Unionist Voice voted against, backing the Lords position of full abolition. A small number of independents split both ways. The result reflects a broader pattern visible across the day's votes on the Crime and Policing Bill, with the government comfortably defeating Opposition attempts to restore Lords amendments that had been rejected on grounds of going further than ministers were prepared to accept.