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Mr. Tom Cox (Tooting): On that very point, as my hon. Friend and other hon. Members know, I serve on the Council of Europe. Is he aware that nine member states within the Council have legislation to deal with those very issues?

Mr. Anderson: It may be argued in response to my hon. Friend that those countries in the Council of Europe may work on a Roman law basis and not on our common law basis. Their rules of evidence may be different.I suggest to the Minister that he looks at the case of Australia. Australia is within the common law tradition and has rules of evidence very similar to our own, and it recently enacted extra-territorial legislation in this matter.

We need to monitor more carefully what is being done elsewhere. I note the concession that the Government made yesterday in announcing that they would review the

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experience of other countries. I understand that a similar suggestion was made in July last year. The fact that the Government's announcement was made only yesterday surely prompts the question, "Why so late?" I am sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that this debate was to be held today.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Tom Sackville): My righthon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary was addressing a conference on the topic yesterday, so it was, a suitable moment make the announcement.

Mr. Anderson: Yes, there was a conference yesterday, but when the Home Secretary issued a press notice in July, it was said that he would draw up a consultative document. Concern has been expressed by manyhon. Members about the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) has campaigned vigorously on the matter for years. I merely suggest that to have left the announcement until yesterday gave the impression of a certain reluctance.

Mr. Michael: Does it occur to my hon. Friend that if the announcement last July had been followed through, yesterday's announcement could have been the outcome of five months of consideration and investigation rather than the beginning of it?

Mr. Anderson: I welcome the change proposed in the Bill, but there can surely be no answer on the part of the Government to the charge that such a belated concession gives the impression to the House of a reluctance and a lack of commitment at a time of intense public concern on the matter. What other construction can be put on such a belated announcement?

We need to examine carefully ways of intensifying international police co-operation through Europol, Interpol and various bilateral contacts between our police force and others such as the Thai force. I was glad to learn that Interpol and the National Criminal Intelligence Service held a conference on the subject in mid-November, which was the sixth meeting of the standing working party on offences against minors.

We must also consider the possibility of increased intergovernmental co-operation. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) plays a distinguished role in the Council of Europe. Perhaps the geographical extent of its membership makes that body more relevant than the European Union to this problem. What initiatives, if any, are the Government seeking to promote within the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe? What progress is being made towards co-operation in the mutual obtaining of witness statements, which has been part of the problem cited by the Government?

We need to ask what current legal procedures and rules act as barriers to successful prosecutions. However hallowed by tradition those procedures might be, we must ask whether they are still necessary. I concede that the law on corroboration by minors has improved substantially recently, following the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. It is also much less traumatic now for children to give evidence in court. We should also explore the possibility of witnesses appearing on television or by satellite.

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That has already occurred with some success in major fraud trials. If there is a problem with young children in Thailand giving evidence, why not adopt the same procedures, including cross-examination, as appropriate?

I predict that public opinion will not be satisfied by the results of the Bill and that the Government will have to consider further steps. They may have to do so as a result of amendments moved either in Committee or in another place, as I believe some have threatened to do. There will be further international pressure on the Government, as the conference which was held yesterday showed.I understand that a meeting is to be held in Sweden in August of the world congress on commercial exploitation of children. Do the Government propose to be present at that conference? If so, at what level are they to be represented? Will they seek to defend the Bill as an adequate response to national and international concern?

I give one cheer to the Bill. It is a small first step, but the public will properly demand more.

10.24 am

Mr. Michael Alison (Selby): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) who, like me, is a sponsor of the Bill. He speaks with the authority and clarity of a lawyer. I am only sad--or am I glad, I am not certain--that he paddled on the edge of introducing a note of controversy when he questioned the extent to which my hon. Friend the Minister and his senior colleagues expedited the changes that we seek in the Bill. It is reasonable to remind the hon. Gentleman that when large and important changes are in prospect--say, the modernisation of the Labour party--they need to be made with some hesitancy, deliberation and caution. Reflection on the changes has been slow and careful. I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's aspiration to utter two cheers, rather than one, for the Bill. I am certainly moving in the direction of seeking to obtain two cheers for it.

I must turn the spotlight on my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall), whom I congratulate on his success in winning this important place in the ballot. I must talk to him some time about his choice of numbers. His success may have a wider application.I should be interested to hear how he happened to pick that particular number. Perhaps we can talk about that some time--or perhaps he will keep it secret, but he was successful.

Mr. John Marshall: I am surprised that the Second Church Estates Commissioner wants to know which numbers to select for a Saturday evening.

Mr. Alison: It is purely for disinterested advice to my constituents, as my hon. Friend will appreciate.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend on his discrimination in selecting this vital and timely topic and making the protection of the world's most vulnerable children his priority. Unlike the hon. Member for Swansea, East, I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and his colleagues on the important role that they have played in the Bill. The Bill derives in part from the initiative which Raymond Hylton, Lord Hylton, took in another place last year to secure the passage of his Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill, which was designed to extend the jurisdiction of United Kingdom courts to sexual offences against children committed overseas.

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Regrettably, the Government could not see their way to supporting Lord Hylton's initiative--I shall say a few words about that later--but they have made the effort, in the light of discussions on Lord Hylton's Bill, to do something on this sensitive and critical matter. I warmly commend them for that.

You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, almost certainly agree that nearly every aspect of the sexual abuse and molestation of children is shocking, and often unimaginably shocking. It is sometimes too painful even to bear contemplation. I think of the picture of the child chained to a bed and burnt to death in a massage parlour that was incinerated, by accident or by design, in an Asian country. That is what the police found. There is an almost unimaginably horrific dimension to the abuse of children, but that is what we are dealing with. Our motivation for sitting on comfortable green Benches on a Friday, with spring approaching, in an advanced western country, is the thought of that child chained to a bed and burnt to death.

If there is one feature of the phenomenon that is more shocking than others, it is the deliberate and calculated practice of relatively well-to-do adults--mostly men, it must be said--from wealthy first-world countries such as Germany, Britain and the United States, arranging to travel abroad to some of the poorer countries of Africa and Asia for the purposes of sexual exploitation of those poor and deprived children. Boys and girls, often orphaned, wander around the streets in capital cities. If their families are still alive, they may be separated from their poor rural family roots. The children are usually illiterate, sometimes drugged for purposes of compliance, sometimes completely enslaved like the child chained to the bed whom I mentioned earlier, sometimes suicidal at such an early age and always abused and damaged--sometimes irrevocably.

One of the most obscene features of sex tourism is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South said, the use of self-photography. With movie and video cameras, adults film themselves molesting, abusing and assaulting children and then sell the product in paedophile and generally pornographic circles to finance the cost of their trips. That is an unacceptable perversion.

I want to remind colleagues of a striking fact about the saleability of pornographic material. A circular sent out by some Australians landed on my desk. It points out that, in Australia, the sale of X-rated video cassettes is one of the largest trades and is flourishing. The circular states:

"The sex industry's mailing list is the second biggest mailing list in the country, ahead of American Express and Readers Digest."

There is a gigantic market for the material. We must not overlook that, because using video cameras to exploit children is immediately profitable to tourists of the sort that the Bill is designed to stop.

The sexual abuse of children requires organisation and communication. One cannot just go to Thailand, or the Philippines or Sri Lanka and pick up the product, so to speak, as one might pick up a bus or hail a taxi in the streets of London. There is a documented correlation between organised tourism from the richer first-world countries and the growth of child abuse and child prostitution in the less developed world.

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I make no apology for quoting from a very useful publication called "An abuse of innocence", which has probably been circulated to many colleagues, produced by the charity Christian Aid. It gives some idea of the scale of child prostitution:

"It is difficult to assess how many children work as prostitutes in the developing world. It is believed some 200,000 Nepali girls have been sold into sexual slavery in Indian brothels. It is a serious problem in Brazil. Probably 60,000 children work as prostitutes in the Philippine sex industry, and perhaps as many as 200,000 in Thailand. These countries are ones in which child prostitution is established.

In others, it is new but growing fast. In Colombia, for example, the number of child prostitutes in the capital has increased fivefold in the past seven years; one third of all prostitutes are now under14 years old and one in twenty is under 10. In some countries, many child prostitutes are boys. This is true in Sri Lanka, where up to 10,000 children aged between six and fourteen are enslaved in brothels and another 5,000 aged between 10 and 18 years old work more independently. The problem is recognised to exist in countries across the southern hemisphere--including Kenya, Goa in India, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Cambodia."

Against the background of the astonishing dimension and spread of that fearful phenomenon, one must also remember the huge increase in tourism. The Christian Aid document states:

"International travel has vastly increased since the end of the Second World War. Tourism is expected to be the world's largest business by the year 2000."

That is worth repeating. Tourism, the subject that concerns us today, is expected to be the world's largest business by the millennium. The document continues:

"Though most journeys take place between the OECD states, developing countries have also experienced huge increases in traffic. Between 1950 and 1993 journeys to the Americas increased14 times, to Africa 34 times, and to East Asia and the Pacific360 times."

That is where the huge growth is.

One element of the growth of tourism from the west and the growth of child prostitution needs underlining. The document states:

"Tourists expect to fulfil their fantasies of pleasure. Far from home, detached from normal social constraints, they may fulfil these desires in ways that are exploitative or abusive. Sex tourism is an extreme example of this process."

Everybody who goes on a foreign tour is stimulated by the brochures showing beautiful photographs and enticing scenarios of fabulous waving palms on silver beaches, and expects to fulfil their fantasies of pleasure.

There is no doubt that inhibitions are diminished when one travels overseas, particularly to countries very far away. The very loss of inhibition about paedophile activities, which may be a feature of overseas travel--exploiting children overseas--will have a result at home. Not only might such people bring back a video recording of their activities, but they might be less inhibited, so children in the home country might be exposed to the hazards. There is a direct correlation between what happens overseas, where inhibitions are loosened, and what happens on returning home.

The hon. Member for Swansea, East mentioned a matter that was referred to him by a charitable organisation with which he has had some contact. He said that many of the worst offenders travel as individuals, not on package tours. In the past week, we have all been sent

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a brochure by a reputable trade association connected with overseas travel and tourism. I shall not name the publication because I do not want to cause an innocent publisher any embarrassment or trouble. I skimmed through the list of references to Thailand. About a dozen tour operators included that country in their literature, and I found the following allusions in that perfectly innocent publication:

"Individually tailored itineraries produced",

"Totally flexible, tailor-made, itineraries",

"Specialists in soft adventure in Asia",

"60 per cent. of people travelling alone",

"Ideal for single travellers",

"Tailor-made tours for independent travellers",

"Unique holiday ideas"

in the Far East.

"Soft adventure tour modules",

"Intimate knowledge of destinations".

In themselves, I am sure that those are perfectly innocent phrases--or are they? I do not know.

The argument of the hon. Member for Swansea, East about the single traveller in Asia is reinforced by the sort of phenomenon that is now widely available to all sorts of people. Can the Bill do anything to break the fearful correlation between a thoroughly desirable and benign development--the massive increase in the capacity and scope of citizens all over the world to travel beyond their own countries--and the parasitic abuse of tourism, which is focused on children and battens on to an acceptable international industry? I believe that we can do something about it.

I am grateful to Ann Badger and the Coalition on Child Prostitution and Tourism as, I think, is the hon. Member for Swansea, East. She commissioned and sent us some refreshing legal opinions from, for example, the distinguished counsel Muireann O Briain QC, who states:

"Conspiracy is not necessarily difficult to prove. The crime consists of an agreement between two or more persons to effect an unlawful purpose. The crime is in the agreement; it is irrelevant whether the agreement is ever put into effect.

Incitement precedes a conspiracy; it is the encouragement of others to commit a crime. A person incites another to commit a crime; when that other agrees, there is a conspiracy.

A tour operator might incite someone by his advertising or promotion to commit acts of sexual abuse against children. He could be prosecuted for that crime."

In quoting that I am half looking at my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Ashby), who is an expert in this field. Much of the drafting of the Bill seemed gobbledegook to me, but I assume that myhon. Friend will help us in this matter.

It will be interesting to discover whether the sort of hints and trailers that I quoted from reputable tour operators might mean that they, accidentally or deliberately, have strayed into an area in which they can be prosecuted. It might be necessary for tour operators deliberately to disassociate themselves in their advertising from any link or contact with that fearful and illicit trade--in other words, to use failsafe advertising. That may well be one of the beneficial effects of the Bill.

As the hon. Member for Swansea, East suggested, we want to be able to raise a second cheer and, in my view, we can do so only when we have a power of extra-territorial prosecution. I am glad that the

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Government are not closing their mind entirely to that and that they are investigating it. Because tourism is a growing industry, a large number of countries are reluctant to prosecute tourists in their own country and would rather kick them out. If they do not jump bail, they encourage them to get away. That does not mean, however, that they would not produce evidence to prove that there had been sexual offences against their children if the people they kicked out were prosecuted in their country of origin. It does not follow that, because a country is reluctant to prosecute child sex offenders, it would not be prepared to co-operate with the home jurisdiction, by producing evidence to secure prosecution. One might find that those countries would be more prepared to do so than to use the extradition processes and have unsavoury court cases in their own jurisdiction involving precisely that broad range of clientele--overseas visitors--whom they want to encourage to come to their countries.

We have to go down the road that the hon. Member for Swansea, East suggested in pursuit of the second cheer. In giving my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South my first cheer, I very much look forward to being able to give the second cheer in due course.

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