Crime and Policing Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 357

What happened: The House of Commons voted on 14 April 2026 to reject Lords Amendment 357 to the Crime and Policing Bill, by 278 votes to 73. The Lords amendment would have removed a legal protection known as the "historical safeguard" from the offence of encouraging terrorism. The safeguard protects statements about past acts of terrorism from prosecution where those statements may amount to glorification or praise but do not necessarily create a current terrorist risk. By voting to disagree with the Lords, the Commons preserved the safeguard in its existing form.

Why it matters: The historical safeguard limits the scope of the encouragement-of-terrorism offence under the Terrorism Act 2006. Without it, commentary on, or expressions of support for, past terrorist acts by proscribed organisations could be prosecuted as criminal encouragement of terrorism. The Lords amendment sought to remove that protection specifically for statements glorifying acts carried out by proscribed organisations, making it easier to prosecute such statements. The government's case, backed by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC, was that removing the safeguard risked sweeping in legitimate political and social discourse, including academic analysis, historical debate and commentary on controversial proscription decisions. The vote affects how the law balances counter-terrorism enforcement against free expression and political speech.

The politics: The division split largely along unexpected lines. The government, backed by all 277 Labour and Labour-Co-operative MPs who voted, carried the motion comfortably. The opposition in the lobbies came not from the Conservatives but from the Liberal Democrats, who provided 61 of the 73 no votes, joined by the Democratic Unionist Party, Plaid Cymru, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Traditional Unionist Voice and one Green MP. The DUP's position reflected longstanding frustration, voiced in the debate by Sammy Wilson, that existing law fails to prevent what they regard as glorification of IRA violence in Northern Ireland. The Liberal Democrats took the opposite view from their usual civil-liberties stance, supporting the Lords amendment on the grounds that glorifying acts of designated terrorist organisations should not attract the historical safeguard. This division took place alongside several other contested Lords amendments on the same day, with the government also defeating Lords amendments on protest conditions, money laundering and other matters in a series of votes on what ministers described as the largest criminal justice bill in a generation.