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Mr. Ashby: If there is a video of someone committing a pornographic offence with an under-age child, that is evidence. If the person is identifiable on the video, why cannot he be prosecuted?
Mr. Marshall: Unlike my hon. Friend, I am not a lawyer. As I understand it from the lawyers, one cannot be prosecuted in the United Kingdom as a result of a video that shows one having under-age sex outside the United Kingdom--[Interruption.] I am glad that I am making myself clear even to lawyers. I am glad that a layman can educate a lawyer on the law.
Mr. Ashby: If the Bill becomes an Act, that will be evidence. It will be usable.
Mr. Ashby: If there is a conspiracy.
Mr. Marshall: I do not know whether that would necessarily be evidence of a conspiracy under the Bill, but it is the sort of matter that the Home Office inquiry will consider.
The Under-Secretary has been most patient--as patient as I have been with all the interruptions--in listening to the argument put forward by several of my hon. Friends, but perhaps it might be advantageous to the House if I were now allowed to start describing the Bill, rather than dealing with more interruptions, which seem slightly repetitious.
Clause 1 makes it an offence to conspire in England or Wales to commit certain sexual offences abroad. Conspiracy means agreement on a course of conduct. It would certainly include an arrangement between a tour operator and a client to provide travel facilities where an acknowledged purpose of the trip was the sexual abuse of children.
However, the matter goes wider than that. Many of those creatures, although they make their own arrangements for travel and accommodation, none the less
plan their trips with others of their kind. Such activity could amount to conspiracy and fall within the scope of the Bill.
The act or event must be an offence in the country where it was intended to take place--the so-called dual criminality test, which is an important safeguard. We in Parliament rightly consider that it is our function to pass laws that apply in the territory of the United Kingdom. We would take great exception if the law-making body of another country attempted to pass laws that would apply here. Equally, therefore, we must not attempt to export our laws overseas. The dual criminality test avoids that trap.
The conspiracy and incitement provisions would mean that travel companies could not organise holidays, and it would become illegal to publish booklets telling people about particular centres and hotels, and for rings of paedophiles to conspire together to suggest to others where they might go for their holidays.
Other clauses apply the Bill's provisions to other parts of the United Kingdom. For example, clause 4 applies them to Northern Ireland, and clause 5 introduces the schedule, which sets out the conduct in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that is covered by the Bill.
Clause 6 contains the Scottish provisions, which are framed slightly differently from those that apply in other United Kingdom jurisdictions, because of the differences in Scots law. Several offences caught by the Bill are in Scotland common law rather than statutory offences. However, the effect of the Bill is essentially the same in Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. Clause 7 makes the necessary provisions for commencement and extent.
The offences under the Bill are those of conspiracy and incitement, and the maximum penalties for those are the same as for the substantive offences being planned or encouraged. Thus conspiracy to rape would carry a maximum life sentence, as would conspiracy to commit intercourse with a girl under 13.
We have already discussed the concept of extra-territoriality. At this stage I intended to refer to the Bolin case, which has already been mentioned. There is a strong feeling that any rookie barrister would have succeeded in securing non-conviction in a British court, because of the way in which the evidence was collated and the witness trained by the non-governmental organisation, and the entrapment.
We should normally rely on prosecutions in the country where the offence is committed. As I said, there is the power to extradite, and we can extradite individuals where there is a prima facie case, whereas someone can be found guilty in the courts only if a case is proved beyond reasonable doubt. I am told that we can even extradite people to other countries with which there is no treaty.
We must recognise that the scale of punishment is also important. I was told the other day of someone being sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment in Thailand. I can think of no greater deterrent than being told that one will have to spend 50 years in the Bangkok nick. If any criminal were asked, "Where would you prefer to be imprisoned, Bangkok or Ford open prison?" most criminals would say that they would prefer the luxurious conditions in some British prisons to the anything but luxurious conditions in Bangkok.
At the conference organised by the Sieff foundation,I was impressed by the arguments of the police and others that individuals should be capable of being convicted on the basis of the videos that they brought back to the United Kingdom. A story was told at the conference about a man who committed an act of sodomy with a 12-year-old boy and brought back the video. When he was stopped at Heathrow, he could be charged only with possession of a pornographic video. That is not enough.
When the Government consider the matter, that issue should be closely examined. It is insufficient to charge such people with that offence. They should be damned by their own video evidence. That is the view of the police, and I understand that the Association of British Travel Agents would also like the Government to take that line, so that firms could put little leaflets in their brochures telling people that if they go to Thailand and misbehave, there is a risk of their being prosecuted in the United Kingdom. I welcome the Home Secretary's decision to review that idea.
I do not claim that the Bill would solve the problem. It must be solved in the countries themselves. Their Governments must recognise that it is a problem, and that it is their children who are being defiled, who at the age of 10 enter on a life of prostitution from which there will be no escape. They must put the good of their children and the moral health of their countries before the revenue from tourism. Indeed, their tourist revenue could increase if they got rid of that foul trade, so that people could say with pride that they had been to Thailand, whereas now a single person who has been on holiday to Thailand may prefer to keep it a dark secret, rather than advertise the fact to most of his friends.
Those countries must close the brothels on the back streets and ensure that their police are no longer the best police that money can buy, but become honest policemen, because corrupt policemen are the friends of the paedophiles.
Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East):
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon, South(Mr. Marshall) on his initiative with the Bill, on his diligence in researching the background material, and on the fact that he has not tried to oversell the scope of what is a rather limited Bill. I am glad to join him as a sponsor of it, but I suspect that, as he has implied, he is realistic about its rather small reach in terms of what will happen in practice.
That is partly a reflection not on the hon. Gentleman, but on the weakness of the private Member's Bill procedure. Such Bills make progress only if they have the full blessing of the Government, and this is as far as the Government would allow. On that understanding, I shall fully support the Bill. It has been introduced in the context of public anger--anger that deserves an effective response.
I was glad to hear that the hon. Gentleman attended the conference yesterday promoted by the Sieff foundation, where I understand there was considerable embarrassment, as Britain is the only country with no
extra-territorial jurisdiction or legislation on this matter in place. There was also a strong feeling among the delegates that the Government should consider the problem more seriously than they have yet done.
I shall pose three questions--what is the mischief aimed at by the Bill? Will it be effective? What further types of legislative and other measures are likely to prove to be necessary? First, in respect of the mischief, it is clear that all decent people must feel a deep revulsion and abhorrence at the exploitation of defenceless children--mostly in the third world--for sexual gratification by perverts principally from the developed countries of the west. We must press for action to end such exploitation and punish those responsible.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the trade is easier nowadays thanks to the ease and cheapness of international travel, and to the communications that can link together perverts from around the world. In my judgment, our campaign is in some ways equivalent to the crusade in past centuries against the slave trade. There must be a special place in hell reserved for those who are so ready to take away the innocence of young children for sexual gratification.
The aim of the legislation is surely to protect potential victims by facilitating the detection, prosecution and punishment of those who perpetrate such offences. There is currently a wide gap between the law and what the public believe to be necessary. The law will be brought increasingly into disrepute so long as it manifestly fails to respond adequately--or at all--to public perceptions of, and anger at, child molesters, either in this country or abroad.
Secondly, how effective is the Bill likely to be? At one level, it must be an advance on the current position, even if it is to a large extent declaratory and not a giant step towards tackling the problem. We have in law many examples of areas where the Government and public opinion have, by legislation, shown themselves to be against certain practices, even if people know realistically that such legislation can mainly be a signal and cannot tackle the whole problem. It is one thing to introduce race relations legislation, but another to solve the problems. In a different context, when we began to introduce insider dealing legislation in the early 1980s, we knew that it only signalled a certain opposition, and was unlikely to be effective in preventing the practice, for obvious reasons.
In the context of extra-territoriality, one thinks of war crimes legislation. While that is not perhaps the best example, we had a healthy and clear knowledge of the problem, but felt that, because of people's deep moral revulsion, it was proper to go ahead, even if the measure was mainly declaratory.
The fear of publicity and exposure may in itself act as a deterrent to those tempted to indulge in such vile practices. The scale of organised tourism for child sex is uncertain, and there are no reliable statistics. I understand that child care workers believe that single freelance travellers are more prevalent than organised criminal groups in this country. Thus, the scale of organised child sex tourism may be relatively small, and therefore "agreements" and "incitement" caught by this Bill may be of relatively little significance. People rely on information in magazines or obtained through the Internet, but such limited organised child sex tourism as may exist may change its focus as a result of the Bill, further to avoid "agreements" caught by this Bill in the United Kingdom.
In one sense, the Home Secretary has promised much.I noticed the ringing declaration in the Home Office's press release of 8 December, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
If this were a rather more partisan debate, perhaps I would say that--to coin a phrase--he says one thing and does another. He talks tough, but wields a feather.
Some of my best friends are lawyers, but we must recognise that lawyers and Home Office officials are of a special breed and can always find 1,001 ways to say that things will not work in practice. As a result, I forecast that there will be a very wide gulf between the public's expectations of this Bill and the reality of it, though I welcome the minor change. Actual "agreements" in the United Kingdom may be few, but they may be reduced further or avoided as a result of the Bill.
"The full force of the law must be used against the evil people who sexually exploit children for money.
It is an abhorrent activity. We must do all we can to prevent it and protect children everywhere."
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