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12.18 pm
Sir Michael Neubert (Romford): At the end of this month, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you and I will have served as Members of this House for 22 years. In all that time, I have never once been successful in the ballot for private Members' Bills. To have a reasonable chance of advancing legislation, one needs to come out in the top 20 in that ballot. Not once has my name appeared. So I wish immediately to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) on his good fortune in securing a high place in this year's programme of private Members' Bills, and to wish him success with his Bill. My welcome is whole-hearted, unlike that of at least one other sponsor of the Bill, who gave it only half-hearted and lukewarm support.
The Bill is an excellent example of what a private Member's Bill should be. It meets a current and perceived need, it is specific and practical in its purpose and it has attracted a consensus of support which should ensure its passage to the statute book. I think the Bill will serve the country and the cause of children well.
Although I have not had the opportunity to introduce legislation on this matter, I was able to offer a debate to the House in April 1994 on safeguarding the younger generation. One issue that arose in that debate was the sexual exploitation of children by tourists, which also arose in a similar debate in April 1995, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) contributed. We are making progress and we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South for using his opportunity to advance the cause of children. Children have their champions in the House, as has been evident. I wish to mention at least one other champion--my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton(Mrs. Winterton), who cannot be here today, but who plays a prominent part in the campaign.
Shakespeare lamented man's inhumanity to man, but today we are discussing man's inhumanity to children. There is nothing new about that activity. I remember reading a novel by Lawrence Durrell about child prostitution in Alexandria. What is new is the access that we now have to all parts of the world and to other countries and cultures, which makes such activities easier to pursue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South mentioned my past involvement in the travel industry and it is true that from 1960 onwards I helped to open up the world to travel by organising inclusive air holidays throughout the world. On balance, travel has been a benefit. It has enriched people's lives, given them new insights, and made them more tolerant of others. The difference it has made is quite staggering. Back in 1960, only 5 million people in this country had been abroad at all. Two or three holidays a year are now usual and almost regarded as people's birthright. People think nothing of travelling abroad, and people now travel widely.
One consequence of wider travel is that, once people are abroad, the social sanctions, the constraints, the taboos and the stigmas no longer apply. That is why we see lager-lout behaviour, for example, when people go abroad to support their clubs in international football competitions. That is also true in the sexual sphere as well. I remember that Frankie Howerd once made an amusing point about cruising--once the ship was out of port, the barriers were down. When people go abroad, they take advantage of the fact that they are away from the constraints of their colleagues and relatives, who know them, and they can engage in behaviour and activities that would be quite unacceptable here. In the case of the sexual exploitation of children, that is particularly perverse and distasteful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South has scored on one point in the Bill, which has not been recognised. One especially odious aspect of what we have been discussing this morning is the commercial exploitation by third parties of this activity. It is bad enough for individuals to go abroad and engage in the exploitation of under-age children, but I think that it is one degree worse for others to take commercial advantage of that in this country. They are detached from the acts, but they benefit financially. To the extent that the Bill will tackle those whose business lies in arranging such tours, it is an innovation that should be welcomed--limited though it may be.
On the question of implementation, some of this morning's comments have been jejune--I think that that is the right word--because they have failed to recognise the great difficulties of this sphere of action. The Government have rightly outlined those difficulties and have made haste slowly. For reasons that I will develop, their action is entirely reasonable.
I am glad to say that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Ashby), as a barrister, was able to point out some of the problems. When we are merely one country among many, it is naive to suggest that we can take effective action to stem the flow of tourists abroad and stop the practice of prostitution in other countries. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby said, if a country has 60,000 child prostitutes, does any hon. Member imagine that that level of activity is sustained solely by foreign tourists or by Britons going abroad on holiday? Of course it is not. It is a deeply
endemic problem for the country involved, which will have its own priorities that it must tackle. The idea that such countries will devote a high priority to the extradition of British nationals, to pursue cases against them for one act of child prostitution, is neither rational nor reasonable. We must keep these things in perspective.
The United Nations has sought protection for children, but not from one country as to another. We are not going to have a Gulf war on sexual exploitation, with a coalition of nations going into Thailand to stamp out child prostitution. The UN is calling for the basic human right of protecting children, but principally by countries within their own borders, and not by one country interfering in the affairs of another, however disreputable and despicable the activities of that country's nationals might be when they go on holiday abroad.
As a result, there have been regrettable divisions between the campaigning organisations that have been putting pressure on hon. Members and the Government to take action. I have been very impressed by the activities of the Action for Children Campaign, whose director is the Reverend Graham St. John Willey, who raised many signatures for an early-day motion, to which I was persuaded to add mine--not immediately because, as we know, early-day motions now proliferate to such an extent that we have several thousand a Session and no one takes any account of them. That motion attracted much support--from more than half the Members in the House--and unquestionably played its part in bringing the shameful activity of sexual offences against children to the top of our agenda this morning and to that of other counsels in government and elsewhere.
Another organisation, the Coalition on Child Prostitution and Tourism, has many worthy and eminent charities among its membership, which are not being entirely reasonable, but reflect some of the views that have been expressed this morning. That organisation arranged for one of my constituents to send me a printed card--no doubt other hon. Members have also received such cards--that states:
That begs a considerable number of questions. In view of all the difficulties that the Minister rightly outlined at the Dispatch Box, it is not right to take that view of the Government. Cases have failed in the courts and it would be irresponsible of us, as legislators, to suggest that an ineffective law is better than no law. The British public would be the first to complain about the costs of aborted cases, as when the Serious Fraud Office has failed to convict people whom it has charged with major offences. I see that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) is in his seat. He would be the first to criticise the waste of public money. Similarly, police costs are not inconsiderable.
One of the difficulties has been illustrated by the references to the War Crimes Act 1991, an analogy to which we should turn our attention because there are similarities. It deals with what are now seen--though they were not necessarily so regarded at the time--as anti-social, criminal offences committed in another country by people who are now citizens of the United Kingdom.
Those of us who supported the War Crimes Act did so with extreme reluctance. I was hesitant about embarking on a course of action that would rely on 50-year-old evidence from elderly people whose recollection of events would be unsound. None the less, like a majority ofhon. Members, I decided to support the Bill on the principle that if a crime has been committed, no matter what the lapse of time, it must be pursued and prosecuted. However, I have no confidence in that Act as an effective means of judgment and punishment of those responsible for the dreadful deeds of the holocaust. It is on the statute book, but we have not had a single conviction. I doubt whether we shall. I would long hesitate before I supported a Bill such as that urged on us by the Opposition that would be as likely to be ineffective in practice, despite all the theory.
The speech of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) demonstrated the difference between being in government and being in opposition. In opposition, one can beat the air with outrage and urge all sorts of action on the Government. In government, Ministers have a responsibility to assess matters coolly from all points of view and particularly from that of the public interest. They must consider cost, feasibility and the reputation of the law and come to a decision. The Minister, rightly, is moving slowly and his review will, I hope, produce further evidence. Little evidence has been put before us this morning to persuade us to take the more radical action urged by those who are impatient, especially by those outside the House.
I shall close with a point made by the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), which I had also intended to make. To get such matters into perspective, we have look at our own back yard and observe the mote in our own eye. To talk about child prostitution as though it were a phenomenon encountered only abroad on holiday is not to see what is tragically happening in our country. I, too, saw articles about the revelations of the chief constable of West Yorkshire, Keith Hellawell, earlier this week.He said:
Of the effect that that was having on young people who sell themselves for drugs, he said:
Those children are in our care. Even they are not protected against exploitation by those who engage in sexual activity, even though they are under age. That can happen in our country, only a couple of hundred miles away. We are not doing anything effective about that, but we are seeking to achieve protection for thousands of young people worldwide.
We must keep such matters in a proper perspective. Declaratory legislation is not of much value; it is just an empty gesture. We can all state that we deplore certain activities, but in government we must be effective. I agree with my hon. Friend the Minister that we should explore all the possibilities and take our time to produce the evidence.
"Britain is one of the few western nations that still refuses to prosecute its subjects who commit sexual offences against children around the world.
I am disgusted at the Government's opposition to passing a law that will allow prosecution of these people."
"on current trends up to 70 per cent. of teenagers could be involved in drug taking by the year 2005."
"There are prostitutes in Bradford, 11, 12, and 13-year-olds, who are crackheads. We can't lock them up; all we can do is take them back to their care homes, where they have a bath and are back prostituting for crack later."
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