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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. The intervention is far too long.
Dr. Harris: The hon. Gentleman's intervention was far too long and far too incoherent. The point of health education is to ensure that sexual activity is safe, not of a specific nature. The hon. Gentleman does not have to do
anything if he does not want to, but he should not criticise others whom we consider to be adults for having consenting sexual relations.
Dr. Harris: I shall not give way again, because the hon. Gentleman wants to make an argument that has already been answered by all the medical organisations that can be cited.
Dr. Lewis: Sixteen and 17-year-olds are children.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already told the hon. Gentleman that he had finished speaking. That is the end of the matter.
Dr. Harris: The council of the British Medical Association, which is relatively conservative, voted unanimously that the reduction in the age of consent from 18 to 16 was a necessary step to improve health education and provide information about how people can protect themselves when engaging in sexual activity. The same applies to heterosexuals. That argument was made forcefully by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) and I wish that the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) would take it on board.
Ms Ward: The hon. Member for New Forest, East seemed to suggest that 16 and 17-year-olds were not capable of making the decision. They are capable of deciding to join the armed forces and go on the front line for their country if necessary. Surely they are able to determine their sexuality.
Dr. Harris: The hon. Lady is right. Sixteen and 17-year-old girls are capable of giving consent to having sexual relations with the hon. Member for New Forest, East. I have never seen an amendment tabled by him to raise the age of consent to 18. Until he tables such an amendment his arguments will be prejudicial because he is selecting one group for criminalisation.
Dr. Harris: The hon. Gentleman has had his say.
Dr. Lewis: I was cut off from having my say.
Dr. Harris: The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman was not cut off from having his say. Interventions should be brief. That is what I was trying to point out to him.
Dr. Harris: In the section 28 debate in the House of Lords, Lord Moran came out with unjustifiable prejudice against homosexuals on the grounds of paedophilia and child abuse. He said that the young had to be defended. I was going to read his remarks, but they were so offensive that I do not want to do so.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): Go on.
Dr. Harris: The hon. Gentleman can look at my copy of Hansard if he wants. The implication was that
paedophilia was a homosexual issue but the overwhelming majority of paedophiles are heterosexual. The Government have to recognise that people make that false assumption. They are reforming the law step by step and the Bill is a small but welcome part of that process. They should also alter the law on the sex offenders register. It is unacceptable that people will be subject to the administrative requirements of registering solely for acts that will be legal on the enactment of the Bill. How can the Government justify making someone register as a sex offender because of an act that will no longer be illegal? Even when it was illegal, it was committed between consenting people whom we regard as adults.
In Committee last time we considered the issue, Conservative Members supported my point of view. The Minister was alone among the Front Benches in refusing to move for the simple reason that to find the 78 people whose human rights were being abused would cost money, because the Government would have to go through the court records. I simply cannot believe that a price, especially a modest one, can be put on decent treatment for people. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government will reconsider an amendment in the other place to close that dreadful loophole.
My final point concerns the absence of a statutory defence for homosexuals. That is important because another clause in the Bill has implications for homosexuals accused of breaches of the age of consent law. Heterosexuals who are accused of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16 may adduce a statutory defence in court. They can claim that they did not know that the person with whom they have been accused of having unlawful sexual intercourse was below the age of 16 and that they had reasonable grounds for that belief.
It is very common for partners to be picked up in nightclubs, for which the age of admission is 18 or 21. They may have been drinking, so they have already deceived bar staff about their age. Sexual contact may then take place, but heterosexuals can claim in their defence that they had reasonable cause for mistaking the age of their partner. That defence is available to ensure that people are not convicted or locked up when they have been deceived and it is also important that people are not open to blackmail.
In Scotland, that defence is also available for homosexuals who are accused under the law on the age of consent, but that is not the case in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. If the act is proven and the age is proven, there is no possible defence, even if someone was deceived as to the age of the other person. There may be arguments about whether it is right to have that statutory defence for men under the age of 24 who have not been charged with a similar offence before--it is not a universal defence--but if it is appropriate for heterosexuals, it must also be appropriate for homosexuals, because the risk of blackmail also exists.
Clause 2 decriminalises the person aged under 16 in cases of unlawful sexual intercourse, and I welcome that because I proposed it in Committee the last time the Bill was considered, with the support of the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow). At the moment, it is the criminalisation of the younger party that prevents young boys who are pimped from deceiving older men about their age, having sexual relationships and then blackmailing them, because the young boys also risk
prosecution. Decriminalising the younger person opens the way again to widespread blackmail of men who are deceived about the age of their partners and do not have the statutory defence that is open to heterosexuals.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) is entirely right on his last point about the decriminalisation of the partner under 16 in a homosexual relationship. He will recall that, when we debated the matter earlier, I pointed out to him that the effect of that provision is to abolish the age of consent, not merely to reduce it. However, I do not wish to rehearse arguments that we have had before.
My reading of the mood of the House is that the trenches have been well dug. We have argued about this a great deal and there is little more to be said. In fact, the longer we drag this out, the more danger there is of seeing other spectacular and awful conversions such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), so I do not intend to detain the House for long.
I wish to revisit my earlier intervention on the Home Secretary, when I said that there was a fundamental contradiction between the two principles that underlie the Bill. The first principle is that a boy of 16--I know that the Bill is drawn wider, but I confine my remarks to this particular aspect--is sufficiently mature and developed to decide to have carnal knowledge of another boy of 16. Yet the Bill also provides that boys of 16 are immature enough to require protection from sharing precisely such a relationship with someone with whom they should properly share a bond of trust. I said that those provisions were mutually exclusive, because the obvious truth of the second proposition proves the falsehood of the first. Surely a boy cannot be sufficiently mature to decide to have a homosexual relationship at 16 if he requires the protection of the law against just such a relationship with someone whom he should trust.
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