Crime and Policing Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 342

On 14 April 2026, the House of Commons voted by 281 to 70 to reject Lords Amendment 342 to the Crime and Policing Bill. The amendment, passed by the House of Lords, would have required specific evidence to be presented to a court before a youth diversion order could be granted in terrorism and serious harm cases. The Commons voted instead to support the government's alternative approach. Youth diversion orders are a new power in the Crime and Policing Bill designed to allow courts to intervene with young people at risk of involvement in terrorism or serious harm, with the aim of steering them away from offending. The Lords amendment would have written into statute the types of evidence a court must consider before granting such an order. The government argued this would create unhelpful rigidity and proposed instead that statutory guidance, rather than primary legislation, should set out what evidence courts ought to consider. The practical effect of the Commons vote is that the evidential framework will be set through guidance that can be updated without returning to Parliament, rather than fixed in the text of the law itself. The vote divided almost entirely along government-versus-opposition lines. All 279 Labour and Labour and Co-operative Party MPs who voted supported the government position, joined by small numbers of independents and the Ulster Unionist and Traditional Unionist Voice representatives. The Liberal Democrats provided the bulk of the opposition, with all 59 of their voting members backing the Lords amendment, alongside the Greens, Plaid Cymru, and a single Conservative. The Conservative Party was overwhelmingly absent, with 115 of its MPs not voting. The Lords subsequently returned to the question in a related division on 20 April 2026, where the Commons again prevailed, with 294 votes to 61, suggesting the upper chamber ultimately accepted the government's statutory guidance approach after a period of parliamentary back-and-forth known as ping-pong.