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Sir Paul Beresford: I thank the Minister for his kind comments, which cause me to think that he intends to talk out the Bill by filling the last 33 minutes with sweetness and light. However, I understand that he accepts the difficulties, and for that I thank him. Let me help him a little to fill those remaining minutes by asking him to obtain some help from the many officials who have been dragooned into coming along on an alternative means of achieving the same objective. I mentioned the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, drawing particular attention to the explanatory notes on clauses 57 to 60, which describe how the opportunity for regulation changes according to what is applied. If there are relatively few specific cases, it may be possible for that Bill, along with the regulations that will be introduced by secondary legislation, to be amended, allowing the objectives contained in my Bill to be quietly achieved but in a more closely targeted way. I wait for the scripts to come rushing across the Chamber.
Paul Goggins: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for underlining the fact that I am well advised in this area by officials from the Home Office, who share his and my commitment to improving legislation and effective law enforcement in this area, and I know that he freely pays tribute to them.
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman too much satisfaction on his intervention, although his speech today caused me to redouble my commitment to home
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in on those few people who may be particularly difficult to police. If they are part of the 3 per cent., we know that the law enforcement agencies will be doing everything possible to make sure that they comply with the law, and that if they do not, that they face the penalties. If he is raising issues about a small number of people in the 97 per cent. who do comply with registration requirements, I will listen carefully to the law enforcement agencies and their concerns about that. I certainly commit myself and the Government to for ever being vigilant about those few people who might seek to manipulate and flout the requirements of the law in the way that he suggests, although I cannot give him any comfort in relation to legislation going through the House.
In the spirit of further warm words, let me tell the House that the hon. Gentleman has been a member of the taskforce on child protection on the internet. It has been my privilege to chair that taskforce during the almost two years that I have carried my current responsibilities. In addition to being an active member of that taskforce, he was personally involved in helping to frame the grooming offence that we were able to initiate through the Sexual Offences Act 2003. That was a major step forward, which is now enshrined in legislation. From 1 May last year, it has been a new offence for which people can be taken to court, convicted and face imprisonment for up to 10 years. It is perhaps rare in the House that Government are seen to be too meek and mild in this area. Our initial proposal for punishment for the grooming offence was up to seven years' imprisonment, but after urgings from all sides of the House in Committee and on the Floor, we increased that penalty to a maximum of 10 years and we felt on the whole that that reflected the seriousness of the new offence.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is a grim issue, but we cannot ignore it. It is an issue that we have to stare in the face and deal with, and I believe that, because of the work of the taskforce on child protection on the internet, we have become a world leader in being able to deal with it. Indeed, on 26 January 2005 the Virtual Global Taskforce was launched. This is a new form of global co-operation between law enforcement in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and Australia, where law enforcement is beginning to work together on a global stage to ensure that those who seek abusive images of children, and to make direct contact with individual children through the internet, will be policed, found and brought to justice.
Through the work of a number of agencies, perhaps notably the Internet Watch Foundation, which has been established and funded by the industry as a mark of its sense of social responsibility and commitment to self-regulation in this area, we have been able since 1997 to reduce the percentage of websites based in this country that host abusive images of children from some 17 per cent. of sites to less than 1 per cent. That is a remarkable achievement in a relatively short time, and shows that, by working together with the industry, with law enforcement, with academics and with children's charities, we can really make a difference in this very difficult area.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that not only did we give this matter consideration—at his prompting, of course—during the passage of the Sexual Offences Act
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2003, but the issue of police powers in relation to the entry and search of registered sex offenders' homes was considered by the original review of the Sex Offenders Act 1997 in 2001, and that review concluded that such a power was not necessary. The Government continue to agree with that conclusion. These are not one-off, ad hoc assessments. The original review of the 1997 Act formed that conclusion. We reaffirmed that conclusion during the passage of the 2003 Act. We have continued to look, but our assessment remains the same—that the powers proposed by the hon. Gentleman in his Bill are not necessary, and we can be vigilant in our policing of this area without them.
I am simply not yet convinced that effective enforcement of the sex offenders register requires additional police powers over and above those already available. The hon. Gentleman paid tribute to the staff, particularly the front-line police officers, who have to deal with this area, especially those who staff the paedophile unit and those who have to investigate and police the use of the internet and the use of child pornography. That is a heinous area for any human being to have to work in, so I am sure that the whole House will want to record its deep gratitude to the staff who investigate such cases. The public do not have a full picture of such work or an understanding of it—perhaps that is a good thing, in many ways—but the police do a fine job in that area and I pay tribute to them.
The Association of Chief Police Officers continues to agree with our assessment that such a Bill is unnecessary. The hon. Gentleman suggested that there might be tension in the ranks between those who lead and those who do the hard slog on our streets and in our local communities. I have no doubt that the police will debate such tension among their own ranks. I am content with ACPO's strong and consistent advice that such legislation is unnecessary.
Let us be clear about what the Bill would achieve. It would introduce a police power that would apply to offenders who were subject to the notification requirements—registered sex offenders—and had received a conviction for a sexual offence against a child under 16. As I said earlier, I acknowledge that he is focusing on that specific group of offenders. Those offenders would have notified their address in compliance with the notification requirements and would be living in the community. The Bill thus does not address people who have not complied with the notification requirements.
All registered sex offenders must notify the police of their home address and inform them of any change to that. Such notification must now take place within three days under the more stringent regime introduced under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The hon. Member for Daventry alluded to the fact that there is sometimes a misunderstanding about the registration requirements for sex offenders. They are not in themselves an extension of an offender's punishment. An offender who commits a sexual offence against a child or adult is punished for that in the courts. If people commit serious sexual crimes, they rightly spend a long time in prison. However, the registration does not form part of that punishment. It is an administrative procedure to help our law enforcement agencies to manage the risk that
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those individuals might pose. It is important to make that distinction, because unhelpful confusion can sometimes arise.
Sir Paul Beresford: I do not agree with the Minister. Individuals have to confirm their address at a police station, where they can be fingerprinted and photographed. However, the police often wish to check whether they are actually at that address, which is where the difficulty arises.
Paul Goggins: I shall address that matter later. People who are subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements, many of whom are registered sex offenders, are visited regularly by the police and the probation service because that is an aspect of the way in which the risk that they pose is managed. People who are on the sex offenders register are not ignored by our law enforcement agencies and others—quite the reverse is the case. The hon. Gentleman presses us to give the police the power, as part of their normal procedures, to enter the home of every single person who is subject to the registration requirements, but that would be a step too far. If there are grounds to believe that a person has committed further offences or that a person who should have registered has not done so, the police have sufficient powers to act. Making powers available to the police regarding those who are complying with the requirements and committing no further offences is a step too far.
In addition to the requirement for offenders to register or change their address within three days, they must notify the police of any address at which they spend seven days or more in any 12-month period, if the police had not already been notified of that address. The seven-day period does not have to be consecutive; for example, if an offender spent every Saturday night at their parents' home they would have to notify that address. They might do that only once a week, but if it was 52 times a year it would exceed seven nights away, so they would have to notify the address to the police. There is a requirement to register not only their home address but any address at which they spend a significant period.
Under the Bill, a police officer could enter any such notified address—not only the home address but other addresses that might have been notified because the individual was spending more than seven nights there. The police officer could enter any of the notified addresses to ascertain whether the sex offender was there and could search the premises for information to assist the police, probation and prison services in managing the offender. The proposed section 129B makes it an offence with a maximum punishment of five years' imprisonment for the sex offender to obstruct the police officer in the exercise of those powers.
There are two difficulties with that proposal. First, it would not be an offence under the Bill for another person to obstruct the police officer in the exercise of those powers. Obviously, if the Bill were to go into Committee, we could begin to get our heads around that type of detail. We shall have to see whether we get that far. Such details are important, however, because we need to get our legislation right.
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Secondly, it is likely that the offence of obstructing a police officer in section 89(2) of the Police Act 1996 would apply in such circumstances. For example, if a police officer needed to enter premises because he or she had grounds to believe that a registered sex offender was committing further offences or that somebody who should have registered had not done so, the officer would, quite properly, have the right to enter the property to investigate. If they were blocked in so doing, that would be an offence punishable under section 89(2). However, it would carry only up to one month's imprisonment or a level 3 fine, so there is a disconnection in the severity of punishment for the offence proposed by the hon. Gentleman and the existing offence of obstructing the police in the course of their duties. Those are two practical difficulties with the Bill as it stands, although I know that he would be generous enough to reflect further on them if we reached the point where we could discuss them in more detail.
The Bill would give the police powers to enter and search any premises in England or Wales, with no need for even the slightest suspicion that the notification requirements had been breached, that any offence, sexual or otherwise, had actually been committed or that there was any risk to the public. The provisions would apply for any address that had been notified by a child sex offender. That gives rise to the issue of disproportionality.
I was extremely interested to hear the hon. Member for Daventry announce to the House the creation of a new group in the Conservative party committed to the importance of human rights. He mentioned article 8. There was a challenge under article 8 to the effect that the sex offender registration requirements were disproportionate. However, when the case was brought and the test was made, the court agreed that the registration requirements were in fact proportionate to the type of risks that people pose. The Bill would, if successful, be subject to further challenge. It is arguable that it would add a disproportionate burden, in that people who might indeed have committed a serious offence but who were complying with the requirement to register, not committing further offences and trying to put their offence behind them and be law-abiding citizens, would still be subject to invasion of their home and private space, warranted only by the fact that they had been required to sign the register and give their details to the police. I am not saying that the hon. Gentleman's proposals would definitely lead to disproportionality, but we would run the risk of a claim to that effect.
Taking all those issues into consideration, the question that the House needs to ask, and indeed to answer, is not whether the hon. Gentleman is well intentioned—there is no question but that he is; he continues to pursue these issues with great knowledge and vigour—but whether his new powers would be justified and proportionate in every case. It is arguable that they would be disproportionate and might expose us to further challenge that undermined the registration system, which is working very effectively at the moment. As the hon. Gentleman said himself, we have around 97 per cent. compliance with the registration requirements. If we compare that with some of the states in the United States of America, the difference is compelling. In some states, registration is as low as
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30 per cent.—more than two thirds of their registrable sex offenders do not comply with the registration requirements. It is very important to get the balance right, and with 97 per cent. compliance I would argue that we have.
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