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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope) indicated assent.
Mr. Clapham: I am pleased to see the Minister nod. I have the impression that he has taken that point on board. It is important to have an effective interface between the register and people working in the community to protect children. The Minister will be aware
that, in most areas, child protection teams work closely with the police to ensure that section 1 offenders are closely monitored. Whenever a section 1 offender appears in a new area, the police either inform social services or vice versa. In that way, the necessary protection is provided in the area covered by that child protection team and police force. We could use that model to ensure that the information on the register is applied effectively.
If social services, who have the register, are informed by the police that a section 1 offender has moved into their area, they already ensure that the register is made available to probation officers and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The voluntary sector can then work together to ensure that it can effectively protect children in a community. That is the way to proceed.
If we were to decide that informing the public would be the best way to proceed, the result could be mob rule. There are plenty of examples of that. We have read this week of examples in Manchester, Stirling and the midlands. We must avoid that route. Last week, an article in The Independent suggested that the Home Secretary may be thinking about divulging the names of paedophiles to the community. That would be the wrong way to proceed. We must use the route that is already established. The interface must be with social services; the link must be with the voluntary services, the NSPCC and probation officers, who work with social services.
It is important that the Minister should say how we shall use the register effectively to inform the community generally, but in a sensitive way so that we do not create the over-reaction that we have already experienced. We must ensure that it is an effective way to protect children in the community.
In Committee, I described the horrific constituency case of a young woman who lost her first husband and formed a relationship that led to marriage with a second man, only to find that the marriage had taken place because the man wanted to get to the children. If we ensure that the register works as I have described, such cases would not occur. When the man moved into the area, social services would have been informed by the police and monitored him to ensure that he did not come into contact with children and was no danger to them. Had the woman wished to proceed with the marriage, social services would have informed her about the man's past. That would have protected those children adequately without informing the public and creating the mob rule that we have read about this week. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's response.
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme):
The Bill must be of use in protecting children, or it is worth nothing. I have sat through many Criminal Justice Bills in which we have returned repeatedly, when dealing with children and child abuse, to adjust and correct previous legislation. It has taken us years to make progress because we did not get it right the first time.
I ask the Minister to consider these two new clauses seriously, especially new clause 3, because it would save our returning to the issue time after time after time. I do not want to do that, so I ask the Minister to consider the matter very seriously and give the new clause his support.
Mr. Kirkhope:
This has been a very useful debate; it follows a debate that we had in Committee and discussions in which I have participated to try to find a solution to these matters.
I shall discuss new clause 2 before I come to the main meat of the matter. In earlier debates on the Bill, I have made it clear that I do not believe that there is a need to create a separate register of sex offender information acquired under the Bill. As I told the Committee, the information that will be collected will be stored on the Phoenix database on the police national computer, and it will be instantly accessible by all forces and by the National Criminal Intelligence Service. It is not intended to create a separate register, although it has been convenient to talk in terms of a register when discussing the Bill's purposes.
I am not sure what placing a duty on the Secretary of State would achieve. The police already store information on offenders, including sex offenders, as the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) knows. The Bill will enable the police to hold up-to-date addresses on convicted sex offenders. We have discussed the uses to which that information might be put, and I have no doubt that the police will develop strategies for ensuring that those officers who need to be aware of it are aware of it.
In my submission, it is unnecessary to place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State, and I hope that in due course the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth will be able to withdraw the new clause.
Mr. Kirkhope:
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my arguments to cover new clause 3, because the arguments relating to the two new clauses are linked. He may want to intervene later.
I have listened very carefully to the hon. Gentleman's explanation of the case for new clause 3, as I have listened with enormous care in Committee and earlier tonight to other hon. Members who have spoken. There is nothing between us in our desire that the police should make the best possible use of the information that will become available to them under the Bill, or in our recognition that such use must be careful and responsible. I agree with the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) that use must be responsible.
I note that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has adjusted his approach since we last considered these matters in Committee--he knows that we have discussed them since then--but I remain unhappy about the approach that he proposes in these two new clauses. We need to clear up many points.
The police already share information with those who need to be aware of it--head teachers, school governors, social services departments and so on. There is no reason to believe that the operational case for such sharing in appropriate circumstances is not fully recognised by the police, and there is no legal barrier to it--for example, under data protection legislation--when such disclosures take place for the purpose that we are discussing; the prevention or detection of crime.
The police have also, very occasionally, and with due caution, disclosed information to individuals. I emphasise that they have done so cautiously, for all the reasons that were fully explained by the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone and me in Committee.
There is the danger of vigilantism, and some tragic cases have reminded us that, when individuals take the law into their own hands, the wholly innocent sometimes get hurt. There is also the danger of polluting evidence, so that the sex offender who offends again escapes justice because of the difficulty of receiving a fair trial. There is the danger that, if we prevent the offender from rehabilitating himself, we heighten the risk of further offences. There is the danger of driving the offender underground by providing such a massive disincentive to registration under the Bill that the police lose sight of the people with whom they need to keep in closest contact.
Those are all sound reasons for caution, which were mentioned in Committee and earlier in tonight's debate. I argue that the police do not need a provision in the Bill to encourage or allow them to share information, or a provision to warn them of the need for caution. I do not believe that we need the first part of new clause 3, which would not advance us beyond the present position unless we were to go substantially further and effectively deal with some of the more detailed--and far more difficult--issues which lie behind the second part of the new clause.
Subsection (2) of new clause 3 is about guidance to the police on the type of situation in which the police my decide to use the powers they already have to share information. As I have said previously, I fully accept that guidance in that area may prove necessary; but I believe that it is premature to consider the precise form that it must take.
Leading police officers have told us--I believe that they are absolutely right--that any developments in warning systems must form part of an overall strategy for managing the risk posed by paedophiles. They have argued that this needs to cover information sharing between agencies--hon. Members have referred to the need to develop such co-ordination--on-going risk assessment and a variety of preventive and investigative measures, tailored to the specific circumstances of each case. I believe that they are absolutely correct.
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