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7.30 pm
New clause 5 would introduce a new offence of inciting a third party to procure someone under the age of 16 for the purposes of sexual activity. That would meet the difficulties experienced by the police in a recent case, in which a person sought to procure a young girl for quite appalling sexual abuse by means of the internet. Fortunately, the police managed to arrest the person, but they could bring only relatively minor charges with distinctly insignificant sentences. Consequently, I believe that the maximum sentences for such crimes should be increased.
Any hon. Member who hesitates about the importance of that needs to know about a previous case involving a person called Undermark. When he was arrested, he was attempting--persistently and seriously--to procure for his perverted sexual gratification a child so young as to be in nappies. I expect that all hon. Members will find that staggeringly hard to believe.
The new offence set out in new clause 5 is important, as it would enable the police--for the first time--to be proactive so that paedophiles could be stopped before they damaged a child. The law at present is more reactive, and there is a much higher risk that a child will be hurt before anything happens.
Proposed paragraphs (a) and (b) of new clause 5(1) would extend the application of the legislation to anywhere in the world. That has been mentioned before. It gives one a good feeling to think that, with sufficient evidence, police will be able to arrest a person as he waits for his first drink on a Thai airliner at Heathrow. However, the provision would go further. In a recent case, a person was trying to procure a very young girl over the internet. He was accessing the internet in California, but a police sting there led to the notification of the police in this country. As a result, the man was arrested before he was able to procure the girl.
New clause 6 would protect children of both sexes up to 16--the age of sexual consent. The present law applies only to children aged 14 and under. That fails to recognise that many children below the age of sexual consent but older than 14 can be victimised by paedophiles, with the justice system being unable to act.
I understand that the police have been able to use section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956--which relates to gross indecency or attempted gross indecency with another man--to protect boys between 14 and 16. However, that does not apply when it comes to protecting girls.
Once again, new clause 6 is proactive. It would allow police to arrest offenders before they have physically abused a child or children. That approach is used already in respect of other areas of criminal activity--for example, it is a crime to go out equipped to steal.
The difference is that new clause 6 is proactive, and I hope that the Minister will accept it, as it would help to prevent the damage to the child that can result from a reactive approach.I turn to the sickening matter of parents or guardians who betray their great trust and responsibility by sexually exploiting the children in their care. I doubt that any hon. Member who had met such people would not agree that a maximum sentence of 10 years was appropriate.
New clause 7 would update the law by enabling the police to arrest paedophiles who use computers to engage with children by means of the internet in what is called cybersex. The matter was brought to my attention when I visited Charing Cross police station. I sat for about an hour with a Metropolitan police officer, scanning chatrooms and the information going to and fro. An enormous number of people were using the rooms. The word for what they were trying to do is "groom": they wanted to groom children in the sense that they wanted to lure them into their net. Their hope was to secure a meeting with a child, and their subsequent intentions were obvious. The experience in that room was staggering. I left wondering whether the thinking of a third of the population--male and female--was quite alien to what I consider normal.
I hope that the Minister will take the new clauses seriously, as they are intended to be a positive, proactive and modernising step forward in assisting police in the many paedophile units around the country to catch paedophiles and so prevent them from harming and damaging children.
Jackie Ballard: I am sure that all hon. Members abhor the sexual abuse of children and their exploitation for sexual purposes. The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford) hinted that some people were soft on the matter, but I do not think that he will find any such softness in this House. However, 16 is not accepted all over the world as the age of consent for sexual purposes. It is the age below which the House has decided that people are children, and should be treated as such in connection with sexual offences. It must be remembered also that the age of 16 has not always been accepted for those purposes even in this country.
I believe that it would be more appropriate to have a more general review of sentences appropriate for sex offences than to take a few random offences and to fix what the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) admitted were fairly arbitrary maximum sentences for them. In general, Liberal Democrat Members oppose mandatory sentences, but I am not sure of the Conservative attitude. Conservative Members support mandatory sentences for sex offence cases but oppose them in others--for example, in connection with some well-known manslaughter cases.
Our approach to mandatory sentences is consistent. We believe that it should not be for politicians to determine sentences, but for the judge to take into account all the circumstances in relation to the sentencing guidelines that have been laid down. New clause 3 would bring in mandatory sentences for repeat sex offenders, but also contains what appears to be a get-out provision, allowing courts to take specific circumstances into account. I hope
that, in his response, the hon. Member for Aylesbury will explain how a mandatory sentence can remain mandatory when such a get-out clause can be invoked.
Mr. Garnier: The hon. Lady said that her party was not in favour of mandatory sentences. Does that mean that Liberal Democrats oppose the mandatory disqualification of breathalysed drivers found to be over the drink-driving limit? Do they also oppose the mandatory life sentence for murder?
Jackie Ballard: I shall not be tempted to discuss offences outside the remit of the new clauses, but the straightforward answer is that, in general, we are not in favour of mandatory sentencing.
New clause 5 deals with the procurement of children internationally, in respect of which the current law does seem to need amending. However, the hon. Member for Aylesbury admitted that a general review of sexual offences was under way at present. That would appear to be a more appropriate forum for dealing with the matter.
New clause 7 also brings up a matter that needs to be addressed. Given the Government's modernisation programme, I should have thought that they would be looking at the problem of pornography on the internet, and at the fact that the net can be used to procure unknowing children.
I hope that the Minister will welcome the fact that new clauses 5 and 7 raise serious issues. I shall be interested to hear his response.
Mr. Malins: I shall be very brief. I have listened to the debate very carefully, and one conclusion is inescapable: the world of today involves internet pornography on an international scale. Parental control was much easier in the old days of the top-shelf magazine than it is in today's world of the internet.
I am the father of two teenage children. I am terrified of the unlimited access that the internet gives them to the sort of material that all hon. Members abhor. I am unable to do anything about it, however, because I do not know how it works. This is a very dangerous long-term development--it is an international problem.
I hope that the Minister will recognise my real concerns about the future--the need for some control and for some serious thinking. This is one of the biggest and most dangerous issues to affect families and teenagers today. I support what my hon. Friends have said, but my focus throughout the past 10 or 15 minutes has been on an area about which, sadly, I, along with many others, know little.
Mr. Boateng: This has been an important and significant debate, not least because, as we speak, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill is being considered in the other place. The internet has led to an international dimension in these matters; it has the potential for evil--that is not too strong a word--as well as for great good. Getting the balance right is essential when it comes to civil liberty and privacy on the one hand, and the significant public interest in bearing down on child pornography and the criminal abuse of children on the other. We are talking about child abuse of the most appalling kind. Right hon. and hon. Members on both
sides of the House such as the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford), who is in the Chamber, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) and others who take an interest in children's welfare are appalled at the potential for harm to which children are exposed.The Government have put the protection of children not only at the heart of criminal justice policy but, significantly, at the heart of health and social policy, and in the overlap between the two. Tragically, the abuse of children in children's homes and other institutions, and in circumstances in which child protection measures have failed to deliver to children safe places in which to grow are all too obvious. We must be ever-vigilant in ensuring that the various agencies of health, social services, police, prosecution and prison and probation services all work in a way that is designed better to protect children. The debate tonight has been an important one, on which we need to build.
From the outset, the Government have, as I have said, sought to put child protection at the heart of criminal law, social and health policy, and put in place a strategy that has a number of building blocks. One of them is in the Bill. There are others, such as the work that the Department of Health is doing to take forward, in health and social services, the recommendations of Sir William Utting. The Department of Health is in the lead, but we are working across Government better to protect children through that work and the legislative and other measures that flow from it.
Another significant area that I will refer to in the course of my response is the review of the law on sex offences. It has at its heart the aim of increasing the protection of children and young people from abuse and exploitation.
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