| Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
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Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I hope that he will forgive me for saying that he is being a little over-sensitive in his historical description and with regard to what he rightly points out is discrimination against homosexual people. He asked what the difference was between doing it in a lavatory and doing it in the park. While it is clearly obvious to everyone when people are having sex in a park, it is not quite so obvious in a semi-private place, such as a public lavatory. We want public lavatories to be semi-private; otherwise, we would not want to do our business in them. It must be made clear that the Public Order Act should still apply to such places and that people should not be having sex in them. Mr. Bryant: The hon. Lady has given the game away by pointing out that a public lavatory is semi-private, whereas someone engaging in sex in a public place is likely to cause more alarm and distress. For example, I have just moved house, but until April I lived in a house at the top of a country lane in the Rhondda. Most nights when I came home, two or three cars would be parked outside my front gate. The area was widely known as lovers' lane. Such activity did not cause me much offence and I did not do anything about it, but it could have caused offence to others if they had lived in that house and such behaviour was troublesome to them. Those in the second Chamber made the same point about sex in public toilets when they referred to the element of distress that is caused not by the nature of the sex, but by the fact that it takes place. Again, people parked outside my house, or those making love in St. James's park by the bandstand or—as I understand happened before my time at the House—in the showers at the House of Commons a few years ago would be subject to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. I believe that we should use that Act for cases of sex in public toilets, rather than have a specific clause in the Bill.
3.30 pmMr. Grieve: The hon. Gentleman knows the distinction between the Public Order Act and the clause: the Act requires an element of proof about the Column Number: 296 disturbance to public order and the clause represents a blanket prohibition. What is wrong with a blanket prohibition on sex in public lavatories if the Committee considers that they are not places where people should engage in sexual activity? That is the issue and that is what troubled those in the other place. Once we have put this legislation into the shape that the Government propose, nobody on the Committee should have difficulty with the principle underlying the clause.Mr. Bryant: I regularly go home on the No. 38 bus and I do not particularly like seeing people having sex at the top of that bus late at night. However, I do not think that we should pass a clause saying that there should be no sex at the top of the No. 38 bus. Miss Kirkbride: That would be covered by the Public Order Act. Mr. Bryant: It would, so there is no need to have a specific clause in the Bill outlawing sex in public toilets. Stephen Hesford: Regardless of gender, if the clause were passed and citizens took the law at face value and did not engage in sexual activity in a public lavatory, there would be no discrimination against anybody. Mr. Bryant: My hon. Friend has caught me unawares with his argument. I am not sure what he means or intends by it, so I confess that I am somewhat lost. Miss Kirkbride: He is right. Mr. Bryant: The hon. Lady says that my hon. Friend is right. Stephen Hesford: If people abided by the law and did not have sex in a public lavatory, the clause would not discriminate against anybody. Mr. Bryant: Indeed, but there is no need for the Bill to include an unnecessary clause when the offence in question is already covered elsewhere. The only element of the clause that is distinctive, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) pointed out, is the fact that the offence in question would be happening in a public lavatory. My question is merely whether having sex in a public lavatory is worse per se than having sex immediately outside a public lavatory, in a public shower, in swimming baths or anywhere else. Mr. Grieve: The hon. Gentleman has missed the point. What troubled those in the other place was that it would be possible to have sexual activity in a public lavatory, in a cubicle and therefore not visibly, that could escape the scope of the Public Order Act in certain circumstances. It was their anxiety about that and the fact that they considered it extremely undesirable that public lavatories should be used for sexual activity, whether behind the cubicle door or anywhere else, that led them to propose the clause. On that I agree with those in the other place. I got the impression that most Committee members, including perhaps the hon. Gentleman, also accepted that that was correct as a principle. Mr. Bryant: There are large numbers of places where I do not wish people to have sex. For instance, people might have sex behind trees in St. James's park, Column Number: 297 but I do not believe that that means that we should have an explicit clause outlawing sex behind trees in public parks.Miss Kirkbride: Will the hon. Gentleman give way? Mr. Bryant: I will happily give way, but I think that I ought to make some progress. Miss Kirkbride: Further to the point made my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, if the provision were not in the Bill there could be circumstances in which lawyers could argue using existing provisions that sex in a public lavatory with the door closed would be sex in a private place and therefore okay. That does not equate with the hon. Gentleman's argument about being behind a tree or up a lamp post. Mr. Bryant: It does, actually, because people who had sex behind trees have used precisely those provisions to try to prove that they were having sex in privacy. The only category in the law to which that does not apply is public lavatories, which is why the clause is wrong. One further point is that by including a clause explicitly on this issue, we invite and encourage the police to waste a great deal of their time, which could be spent in other ways. I shall deal specifically with the amendments. This may seem odd to hon. Members, and I know that I am already testing their patience, but the definition of a public lavatory is still rather nebulous. Would all the lavatories in this building be counted as public lavatories? Would a public lavatory in a hotel be counted as a public lavatory? Would a toilet in a hotel room be counted as a public lavatory? As the Under-Secretary has pointed out, and as everyone accepts, it is wholly wrong that imprisonment for up to two years should be the result of somebody being convicted of the offence in the clause. It seems curious to me to imprison anybody for any length of time for this kind of activity, and I have a question for the Under-Secretary about how it all relates to the sex offenders register. My reading of schedule 3, which refers to clause 81, is that the offence would not lead to registration on the sex offenders register, but I would like that clarified. Mr. Gerrard: I want to return to a point that my hon. Friend made about police time. That aspect of the clause concerns me. I recall a conversation two or three years ago with a senior police officer at the Metropolitan police. He told me that when he first became a police officer, he was required to spend an inordinate amount of his time in the ceilings of various public lavatories and found that a demeaning experience. I see some potential problems with certain police forces. Mr. Bryant: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and can only agree with his point, which suggests why clause 67 is, to put it mildly, unfortunate. As I read it, the Government amendment to change subsection (2) would remove the requirement for there to be two people involved. It might be, for instance, that masturbation would then fall within the clause. Can the Under-Secretary clarify that? We also need to return to the issue that was raised by the hon. Member Column Number: 298 for Mid-Dorset and North Poole about whether kissing counts as sexual activity.I am pleased that the Government have chosen to table amendments. I wish that they had tabled an amendment for the full deletion of the clause, but I understand why they have not. Along with the Under-Secretary and all other Committee members, I do not want the message from this House to be that we want people to have the right to have sex in public lavatories. However, there is no point in including unnecessary and discriminatory clauses. Paul Goggins: My pile of notes has multiplied in the past few minutes. I appreciate my hon. Friend's powerful speech. I shall deal with some of the points that he raised in detail. He has given us a flavour of the atmosphere that must have prevailed in the other House when this issue was debated. I apologise to all Committee members, but in particular to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, for rushing through my explanation of the matter that he raised. The activity must appear to be sexual from the nature and circumstances alone, and therefore not from the person's purpose. In this case, that is irrelevant: there may be behaviour that is somewhat ambiguous—touching oneself or another person in a certain way—but we are trying to catch the most explicit kinds of sexual activity. If there is more serious sexual activity, that more ambiguous behaviour will need to come into play. That is why it occurs elsewhere in the wider definition of ''sexual''. However, in this clause, the definition is as I have outlined. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole asked whether there will be further legislation. We currently have no intention of introducing any. We believe that our provisions are sufficient. On outraging public decency, I remind her that our amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill remains, so that power will be available. Therefore, we have almost a continuum of powers and offences. The hon. Lady asked about chaste kissing in toilets—which is an interesting concept. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda also raised that question. The magistrates dealing with that case—if such a case were to be prosecuted—would have to look at the evidence and decide whether a reasonable person would consider a kiss of that kind to be sexual. I turn to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. The passion in his speech is understandable. He said that the legislation is discriminatory: I disagree. However, he gave the Committee a history lesson that explained why some people might feel strongly about this issue. My sense of history on this question does not go back as far as the 16th century: it goes back to the 1960s. I am a Manchester Member of Parliament, and I have lived in that city all my life. I remember the toilets around the centre of Manchester that everybody—including the police—knew were the places where gay people had to go if they wanted to engage in sexual activity, and I remember that those people were hounded. That is the history of the sense of discrimination that surrounds this question. Column Number: 299 However, I want to point out to my hon. Friend that less than a mile from those toilets in Manchester there is now a gay village. We also have Gay Pride once a year. The whole atmosphere in relation to discrimination against gay people has changed. This clause reflects that change to some degree. I understand the sense of history, but I believe that we are moving on, in particular in relation to this matter. Since the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service must apply—in all laws—human rights legislation. I say to those who fear that police officers might abuse their power if this clause were to be included in the Bill that they cannot do that. The legislation is clear: they cannot operate in that discriminatory way. My hon. Friend raised the question of whether sex in the park next door to the toilets would be illegal, and he subsequently referred to the No. 39 bus—I think that that was the number—which he travels home on. Where such activity would cause harassment, alarm, distress or outrage, it would be covered under existing legislation. As the hon. Member for Beaconsfield pointed out, in relation to sexual activity in a toilet, the difficulty involves what is happening behind the closed cubicle door.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 18 September 2003 |
