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5.56 pm

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): That was a moving speech from the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd). I strongly welcome the Bill. I support the measures in part II which allow the prosecution in the United Kingdom of British citizens who go abroad to abuse small children in foreign countries.

I was present for the first Adjournment debate in the small hours of the night four years ago, when we discussed the matter, and I was privileged to serve on the private Member's Bill last year and to support pleas from my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) and others for a more far-reaching measure to be introduced. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister of State, who took so much trouble to listen to our arguments then, has introduced such a measure in part II of the Bill.

None the less, as time is short and many hon. Members want to speak, I shall focus on part I. Earlier speakers have dealt with individual details of the Bill. Instead, I shall focus on the only strong argument that has been put forward against the Bill--the argument advanced in an article by Matthew Parris, which has been alluded to several times. It is important that the article is answered strongly, for two reasons: first, because of Norman Tebbit's famous dictum that the worst legislation that goes through Parliament is usually the legislation that everyone in the House agrees with and which is therefore not properly scrutinised--not the case with this Bill, but

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there is some truth in the observation--and secondly, because if the argument is not properly answered in this place, we may have difficulties in another place, and as we are so close to an election, the Bill is particularly vulnerable.

Mr. Parris claimed that "the central principle" of the Bill is

"that a great swathe of offenders who have served their sentences and returned--disgraced at the workplace, disgraced with landlords, disgraced among their families and their friends, and almost certainly unemployed--to try to begin their lives again, should now be bound to the 20th-century equivalent of the leper's bell. This"--

he says--

"is primitive nonsense. Will nobody say so?"

His views may well by echoed by the legal establishment--for example, let us look at the way in which it has resisted many of Mr. Pigot's recommendations. Curiously, Mr. Parris outlines the skeleton of the opposing argument in a subsequent paragraph. He says:

"Apologists for the Home Secretary will object that although sex offenders are victims, they create victims of their own."

Most people would not accept that sex offenders are victims, although they certainly create victims. He continues:

"Are these not our first concern? There is a clear answer to this. If we judge a person so dangerous that his neighbours must be warned about him, he should not be allowed back into the community."

Many people would say, "Amen to that." The danger to which Mr. Parris refers can be measured in two ways: the nature of the danger and its numerical extent.

First, many hon. Members have pointed to the horrendous primary damage caused by the sexual abuse of children, but two secondary forms of damage have scarcely been mentioned. The first is the fact that the increased number of AIDS cases in this country heightens the risk of children catching serious sexually transmitted diseases that may affect their health for the rest of their lives. In AIDS cases, they are likely to result in death.

The second form of secondary abuse to which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) referred--I pay tribute to her tireless pursuit of this cause--is the abuse that continues in the criminal justice system after the primary offence. In seven or eight speeches and ten-minute Bills in this place, I have referred to cases of untrained or unvigilant judges allowing lawyers to abuse grossly their powers in court. I have described the way in which children are sometimes treated in court. A whole range of organisations point to the secondary abuse of children in court that may continue for a year or a year and a half after the original offence.

Children are deliberately tormented again and again by being forced to wait hours--sometimes days--before they take the witness stand. Children as young as 11 or 12 are sneered at and often face allegations that they encouraged their attackers. That kind of treatment, which goes far beyond the bounds of normal cross-examination, can make the original abuse much worse. That is why, even when there is an overwhelming case against a sex offender, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and social services feel compelled--even before the parents intervene--to abandon proceedings.

That brings me to the second danger: the numerical incidence of sex offences. According to the overwhelming body of academic evidence, only rarely does a convicted

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paedophile cease offending. The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) called for more treatment for sex offenders. The problem is that I have seen no academic work--I have examined a number of studies--that shows that a course of treatment for paedophiles has had anything more than the most modest success rate. The danger of re-offending is numerically very high.

Mr. Thurnham: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the work of the Faithful Foundation. It has produced evidence--which others have accepted--of a substantial reduction in sex offences of 60 per cent. or more.

Mr. Brazier: I shall look at that study. The evidence points to a large number of repeat offences, and the danger is both grave and frequent.

My answer to Mr. Parris's article and to those outside Parliament who will continue to claim that the measures in the Bill are too draconian--when many hon. Members believe that they should go much further--is that, when dealing with threats to children, the tiny proportion of offenders who are caught and convicted deserve to be placed on an offenders register. I believe that that register should be made publicly available because parents have a right to know when a convicted paedophile moves into their area. The rights of children--the most vulnerable group in our society--must come before those of convicted criminals.

The most important single service that the House can perform for the victims of sexual offences is to pass the legislation before the election. Therefore, I would not move any troublesome amendments if I were selected to serve on the Committee to consider the Bill. Let us pass the legislation quickly and put the provisions on the statute book.

6.4 pm

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish): I shall try to be brief. I am concerned that, although hon. Members appear to be enthusiastic about the legislation, they are not granting it the means of success. Page ii of the explanatory and financial memorandum states:

"There will not be any significant financial burden on public expenditure arising from the Bill. Any additional costs will be met from within existing resources."

We are kidding the nation if we try to claim that we will resolve the situation by changing the law without providing extra resources.

As to part II of the Bill, I believe that we should do everything we can to halt sexual tourism. However, I do not believe that we will achieve that simply by changing the law. The only way to stop sexual tourism is by changing the law and ensuring that we secure a series of high profile prosecutions. We must make it absolutely clear that a civilised society will not tolerate such behaviour. That will cost money, so we should not pass legislation unless we are prepared to make the necessary finances available. I add the caveat that we must be aware that the provision may encourage entrapment and blackmail in some cases. I believe that the change is worth while, but that we must find the money to pay for it.

I have many more reservations about part I of the Bill. How useful would a register be? The evidence from the United States suggests that such a register does not work. The Government tell my constituents that they will have

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to pay for the register, which will result in fewer resources for the police. There will be fewer policemen on the beat--despite the calls for an increased police presence on our streets at every meeting that I attend in my constituency. Fewer resources will be allocated to pursuing breaches of probation--a low-priority activity for the police--to witness protection and so on. The Minister has said that there will be no extra resources. Therefore, the police must reduce their efforts in other areas and relinquish some of their resources in order to make the register work.

Mr. Maclean: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way--although it makes it more difficult for me to say that he is talking nonsense in his latter point. The expensive resources are there: the updates to the police national computer system and to the police national database, which links every police force in the country with digital communications equipment to each other and to the PNC, are the essential resource. The only extra work for the police will involve transmitting the new information to the PNC when a person turns up at a police station and provides his name and address. We have already allocated the resources required.

Mr. Bennett: I am not convinced that the resources are available, but I want to develop the argument. It will take police time to process new information, and people will turn up at police stations only if the police take action against those who do not bother to show. That involves enforcement. A voluntary register will not work: the register will work only if it is enforced, and that will involve extra resources.

What is the purpose of the register? If it is merely to show that Big Brother is watching, there is some point to it. However, there is an implication that it will go further and identify suitable and unsuitable residential areas. What will happen if someone who has been convicted of offences against young children registers, giving an address that is adjacent to a children's playground or day nursery? Do the Government expect the police to do nothing about that? If they do nothing and there is an incident involving that person, there will be a public outcry.

The police will have limited powers and some of the convicted will still be subject to various forms of supervision. It would be possible for the police to say, "That is not a suitable place. What should we do?" If registration merely means providing a name and a place and nothing more, there will be many unhappy people in our communities.

When registration takes place, confidentiality ensues. There is a danger that information will get out, as it were, and that people in local communities will take action. Where will registration take place? My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) took up the issue. I am concerned about people who do not have a regular home. The phrase in the Bill, which is pretty vague, is "regularly visits".

I am conscious of problems in my constituency. Men who are registered and live in bed-sits in my constituency sometimes spend little time at those addresses and most of their time in someone else's household. They often

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mislead the person in the other household about their past record. They are often a serious threat to the young children in that other household. Registration will relate to the bed-sit where occasionally such people will be found rather than the address where they are living fairly permanently. The Government must take that on board.

It seems that we are changing the nature of cautions. Originally, someone was given a caution if he committed an offence that was out of character and one that he was unlikely to recommit. If that is the nature of a caution, paedophiles should not be entered on a register. If the nature of a caution is being changed to include people who are likely to recommit an offence, they should not be cautioned. Surely they should be prosecuted. That is unless a deal has been made, stitched up by the police and the individual, on the basis that he would not like the nasty publicity of going to court and, perhaps, pleading guilty. That is an unsatisfactory use of a caution and something that we should examine.

My main message to the House is that it is extremely dangerous to enact legislation unless we are prepared to find money to make it work.

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