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Mr. John Marshall: Clause 1(3) says:
- "The second condition is that that act or any other event constitutes an offence under the law in force in that country or territory",
so it could not, under the Bill, be an offence to persuade a person to go to Turkey in the conditions that myhon. Friend described.
I was coming to the issue of sentencing, which becomes difficult. Will judges be persuaded to sentence according to the law in this country or the law in the country where the offence will be committed? If under-age sex attracts a six-month or one-year penalty in the country where it happens, will the judge sentence according to the penalty in that country or the penalty in this? I understand that the Bill prescribes that the sentence abroad will be the penalty in this country, but that creates an injustice because the foreign country may enforce its laws very vigorously.
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton):
Surely--it is clearly expressed in the Bill--the sentence would apply to the offence contained in the Bill, to the offence of conspiracy, not to the sexual act that took place in another country.
Mr. Ashby:
Conspiracy is an agreement to commit an illegal act or an illegal agreement to commit an act, but the judge must consider the substantive act when sentencing on conspiracy. If he judges a case about a conspiracy to commit an illegal sexual act, he will consider the sexual act to decide what sentence will apply for that act.
Judges will have to consider sentences in the country where the offence is committed, which may be a country that vigorously enforces the substantive law, and whose view is different. I think not so much of third-world countries such as Thailand and the Philippines as of European countries where there is a marked difference in attitudes towards sexual offences and the penalties that are prescribed for certain offences--places such as the Spanish peninsula and Italy, which are quite vigorous. That is a difficulty.
The Bill should be limited in scope, because we do not have a great duty in this country to prosecute and protect citizens of other countries. We must rely on those countries to protect their citizens.
The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) mentioned Wendy, a child prostitute. If a French group of paedophiles arranged to visit this country to meet Wendy and Wendy's friends in Yorkshire, what attitude would this country take to a prosecution of those people? I imagine that the newspapers would be angry that the case was being prosecuted in France, and would call on our police to prosecute the French visitors for the substantive offence of under-age sex with Wendy and other people, rather than the other way round. A nationalist uproar would be created because the case was being decided in France, not in this country. I imagine that certain newspapers, mostly tabloids, would take that view.
Although one finds the whole area of under-age sex abhorrent and distasteful, I wonder whether we should present ourselves as people who will police the world in respect of under-age sex with children. I wonder whether
we should instead rely more on those countries to protect and police themselves. In any case, there is wide scope for an international agreement on that.
I think of child pornography. I think of computer pornography, which is now international, and which is spread on the Internet. We have created the offence of computer pornography, but much of that comes from abroad, down the telephone line. We could have a great deal more agreement about that.
We could have a great deal more agreement about what constitutes under-age sex and what is the age of consent. I envisage couples--even young couples--travelling from one European country to another, going from legality to illegality to legality to illegality. One must consider that in the international sense.
We are discussing an offence of a conspiracy in this country, and the people who prosecute must be careful to confine themselves to conspiracy in this country. I dislike the idea of sending squads of police officers throughout the world to countries such as Thailand and the Philippines where under-age sex is prevalent, to gather evidence to prosecute people in this country. That is not how I envisage the role of our police force.
That would be an expensive process. I am sure that the police would be delighted to visit those countries and would enjoy being sent to investigate, but it is not a good idea to send our police abroad to pursue such investigations. It is far better that we persuade those countries to bring prosecutions of our nationals in their country for the substantive offence rather than for conspiracy. We should help those countries to prosecute, and perhaps teach them if necessary.
The Bill will be far more useful in connection with charges of incitement to commit offences, and acts of conspiracy in this country that make it clear what the purpose is. The publications that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South described would give rise to those offences. I recognise the difficulties with video tape, but a video tape might be part of the evidence of conspiracy. If a video tape showed several people committing offences against known children, it would be admissible evidence.
It is far more important, however, that we turn our attention to similar publications and the incitement that they engender--advertising that one sees and that one understands is prevalent--and seek convictions for that offence, instead of sending our police officers abroad to collect evidence of substantive offences abroad. That is a dangerous area.
I realise that the Home Office pays increasing attention to offences of conspiracy to commit offences abroad. It is a dangerous area. I am not sure that it is a good idea to go too much into that aspect, which is limited and has evidential difficulties.
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme):
I also wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) on introducing the Bill, which is a step in
I shall speak first in the words of a young child, who said:
That is the face of modern sex tourism; those words were spoken by a 15-year-old girl who thought that she had obtained a babysitting job.
As the world grows smaller and as the risks at home become greater, sex perverts, many from developed countries, travel abroad to find poverty-stricken children who will have sex for money. They rely on the poverty of the countries that they visit, the vulnerability of the children whom they want for sex and the ability to return home after their holiday without the fear of a law that will lead to their prosecution.
But the tide is turning against child sex tourists. The countries that tend to be the receiving countries for such men and women are beginning to tackle the problem. Some of the main sending countries have taken steps to implement laws that would allow prosecutions to take place when the perverts return home.
Every year it is estimated that 1 million children worldwide are lured, forced, sold or tricked into prostitution. Children make their way to the cities in a variety of ways, all of which arise from poverty. Some children are turned adrift by their families, who cannot afford to keep them. Some children are sold by their families to people who simply deal in children. Some children are handed over with an assurance that they will be adopted into a better life. Some children are orphaned; many are tricked into believing that they are to be given employment in respectable jobs. Some children are even kidnapped. Some children are sold into slavery in the surrounding industries, and attractive ones are taken to child brothels where they stay until they die of disease or simply exhaustion. The brothels do not exist to satisfy local need, but are there as tourist attractions. Paedophiles from wealthy countries come to spend holidays in the brothels.
The exploitation of children, both boys and girls, is growing in all countries where poverty is rife. Efforts are being made to stop it; in many places, organisations have been set up. Many groups are committed to stamping out that vile crime. As a collective group, they call themselves End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism, or ECPAT. That group has joined with other organisations such as Christian Aid, the Jubilee campaign and the Save the Children Fund to form a coalition against child prostitution and child tourism.
The group knows that the sickening tourist trade needs to be tackled at its source and that the place to campaign is not India, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Bangkok, Sri Lanka, Romania, Brazil or Argentina--to name but a few of the many countries where the abuse takes place--but the affluent countries that are the source of that foul tourist trade.
I do not want to leave hon. Members with the impression that the countries where the abuse takes place are indifferent, as that would be far from the truth. But while poverty exists on such a scale, it is hard to wipe out such corruption. One of my parliamentary colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), told me that his daughter was staying in a hotel in India when she discovered that a German business man was bringing very young girls to his room. She had no doubt that she was witnessing the sexual exploitation of children. She made such a fuss with the hotel manager and created such a row that the German man was thrown out of the hotel. She returned to Britain determined to do something to combat such exploitation. Brave individuals can help; Governments could and should do more.
Many Governments have acted by legislating to allow the prosecution of their citizens on their return to their home countries after their sexual activities abroad. Sweden, Germany, France, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, Finland and the United States of America have legislated to give their domestic courts jurisdiction to prosecute residents and nationals for sexual offences abroad. Britain has not yet done so. The Bill will help to flush out that evil trade, but it does not go far enough--it deals with prosecuting the organisers, not the individual perpetrators.
The law involves the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable; it sets the boundaries. We should never say that it will be too difficult to enforce the law, so we will allow the unacceptable to merge with the acceptable. That is what the Government are doing in saying that, in this country, we will not prosecute sex perverts for abuses that they have committed against children abroad. I do not want to wait for the Government to spend months on an inquiry.
"I was put in a room. I asked myself why they did that. After a while a man entered the room. He asked me if I do not like men.I said no and if he didn't get out of the room I would shout for help. But he said that even if I shout no one will help me because he has already paid for me. He succeeded in raping me . . . feeling helpless I could do nothing but cry."
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