Coroners and Justice Bill


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Jenny Willott: I do not agree. The hon. Gentleman refers to the harm being small, but the question is whether there is any evidence of that. Having photographs is a completely different matter because there clearly is a victim. It should therefore be illegal. If there is no evidence that non-photographic images lead to further harm, why should we make them illegal? The question is whether harm is caused as a result of owning such images; if they have an effect on people’s behaviour, we should make it illegal. However, the evidence is not strong enough to justify that. I should be grateful if the Minister were to clarify the matter.
I am a little concerned that we are legislating without any evidence, because the risk to children could increase. If the evidence showed that having images that were not photographic acted as a release, and therefore reduced the risk of harm to children, legislating could increase the risk of harm. That is why I am concerned that we are legislating without sufficient evidence.
Mr. George Howarth: If the image in question is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character but does not have a child as a victim, is it not arguable that, by extension, all children are victims of that image?
Jenny Willott: That argument stands up only if one believes that all pornography should be illegal because it is degrading to women. I do not believe that all pornography should be illegal. The fact is that I do not want to see these images—they probably are truly disgusting and repugnant. However, the question is whether they do harm. The fact that the image is something that I do not want to see does not mean that I believe it should be made illegal. For me, that is where the balance lies.
Mr. George Howarth: I shall make this my last intervention; the hon. Lady has been generous in giving way. The difference between pornography that degrades women and pornography that involves children in some way is that we take the view, in law and in principle, that children cannot defend themselves. Society therefore has the wider obligation of defending them in every conceivable way. There is a difference.
Jenny Willott: Absolutely. That is why photographic pornography should be completely illegal. The question is whether it does harm to a real child. I have not heard evidence that is strong enough to suggest that it does that.
Mrs. Moon: Having spent a considerable amount of my professional life working with abused children, particularly those that have been sexually abused, common experience is that sexual abuse does not start with the abuse itself. Gratification starts at a low level and gradually builds. It is rare that the first action of a perpetrator of sexual abuse is to assault a child. It is because they no longer get gratification at lower levels of intensity that the need escalates. For me, this legislation is saying that we are placing the barrier of what is permissive and what society views as acceptable at the lowest possible level, so that an individual is aware right from the start that their actions are unacceptable in society and in law. In that way, we are also seeking to protect children.
Jenny Willott: I am prepared to accept the point that the hon. Lady is making, which is that the matter does not start with sexual abuse and that it escalates. I absolutely accept that that is the case. However, that is not the same as saying that the behaviour of every single person who looks at an offensive and pornographic image escalates. That goes back to the point that I made a minute ago, which is whether or not having access to images such as that acts as a release to people and therefore makes them less of a risk to children. That issue is at the heart of the decisions that we need to make on the clause.
I should be grateful if the Minister would clarify a couple of points in her response. First, the Protection of Children Act 1978 makes it an offence both to publish and possess indecent images. Will she clarify why it has been decided in this legislation just to make it an offence to possess, rather than to publish? Why possess, rather than do both?
Also, there appears to be a lack of clarity—this was raised earlier—about the issue of looking at images online. That was something that I mentioned in a couple of the evidence sessions. There are two different processes. There is the issue of someone downloading images so that they have them on their computer and the fact that under this legislation, someone would be in possession of them and therefore it would be an offence. However, if someone watches a streamed image, it is held somewhere else so they never download it on to their computer. The evidence given to us by the DPP was that he thought that probably would be illegal, but I am unclear about how the legislation as currently drafted would make it illegal, because someone does not download the image. They do not possess the image; they watch it somewhere else on a remote system. I shall be grateful for clarification on that.
Overall, personally and as a party, we have real concerns about the breadth of the proposals in the Bill. A number of amendments in the next string relate to those specific points, but I shall be grateful if the Minister will clarify some of those issues.
Maria Eagle: The Government take very seriously all matters relating to the sexual abuse of children. Any material that might appear to derive from or encourage such activity is something that all Members of this House should disapprove. All hon. Members know that the UK has an absolute prohibition on the production, distribution and possession of indecent photographs of children. We have recently extended the law to cover tracings and derivatives of such photographs. However, the possession of images that have no connection with photographs is not covered by the current criminal law, which is the gap that we are seeking to close with this provision.
The police have reported finding increasing numbers of such images alongside indecent photographs of children. More of those images are also being found on the internet and are often blatantly advertised as legal child pornography. I remind hon. Members that child pornography is illegal in this country and if there are loopholes, we need to close them. Police and child welfare groups have expressed concerns that such images could be used for the purposes to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend referred, and lead to escalation and real harm.
8.15 pm
I will not rehearse the way in which the offence works, because my right hon. Friend did that well in his remarks. This is just to say that we are talking about the highest, most explicit, unpleasant end of things and about images that are already illegal in respect of publication under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. That answers the point made about why this provision only deals with possession: it does so because publication is already illegal under the 1959 Act. However, possession of these images at present is not illegal because of the way that they are created. We need the possession offence because we are talking about the internet. Specifying publication in the past would have dealt with this. Possession offences are a way of trying to control these images when the internet is the main means of distribution; otherwise we shall not have any control over them.
Let me move on to the amendments, about which I should like to make two major points. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough wants to turn the possession offence into a publication offence, for reasons that he has outlined. He mentioned a narrow range of dirty old men, if I may put it that way, who would be keeping the image that they create themselves very much for themselves. It would be hard to catch a person who produced an image or drawing in that way and for that to come to anybody’s attention, if that is what they did in their little back room. It would be difficult to know how that would come to the attention of the authorities. Certainly, if it did come to the authorities’ attention I would expect them to be concerned about it, because we are talking about images that are produced for the purposes of sexual arousal, primarily in those categories that it is already illegal to publish under the 1959 Act. But in recognition of the sensitivity of this matter, we require the consent of the DPP to bring prosecutions. We tried to construct the offence carefully to ensure that it captures the material that has raised the most concern.
If we remove “disgusting” from the second element of the offence—I remind the Committee that the DPP thought that although “disgusting” was not used often in legislation, he did not find it too great a concern—as the hon. and learned Gentleman suggests we do, that would reduce the clarity of the offence and detract from the formula accepted by Parliament last year for the offence of possession of extreme pornography, which has similarities to the offence we are talking about. I think that I have dealt with the point about turning the possession offence into a publication offence.
We ought to remind ourselves that these are the worst kind of images at the top end of unacceptability in our society and at the most dangerous end of potential to harm our children. We are determined to ensure that we protect our children and not to allow loopholes like this to make a mockery of the law. On that basis, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will ask leave to withdraw his amendment.
Mr. Garnier: I will do so and I will not move my new clause formally. But we need to be careful. The context within which are debating this matter is the context of some disgusting images. It becomes difficult in the court of public opinion—to use a phrase which the Government now seem so fond of—to discuss this rationally. No reasonable person doubts that the sorts of things set out in clause 49 are revolting. They arouse our understandable and natural personal distaste and revulsion. I just think we need to be very careful about what we mean by “possession” Having listened to the Minister say what she meant by possession, I think she actually meant “publication.”
I suspect that beyond the practical difficulty of policing the dirty old man who creates drawings for himself and leaves them in his drawer and shows them to nobody, the sorts of things the Minister was talking about—forget the abhorrent nature of the images—are things that appear to her, if I understand her correctly, to have been uploaded on to the computer system, on to the web. To that extent, they have been published, so there is no difference between us. She seems to call that possession; I call it publication.
So I think what we need to do between now and Royal Assent is to understand what people mean by possession.
Maria Eagle: Downloading.
Mr. Garnier: I hear the Minister say “downloading” from a sedentary position. There again, in order for it to be downloaded, it must have been placed on the web by somebody, so there is a publication on to the web address, presumably—[Interruption] It is no good the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth coming to this debate late, and then uttering blasphemies while I am trying to explain a rather difficult issue. If he wishes to intervene to say something, I would be very happy to listen to him.
Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op): The hon. and learned Gentleman makes the point that I just entered the Committee Room. I have not uttered a blasphemy: I expressed some surprise at the approach he is taking. I think it would surprise the general public.
Mr. Garnier: If the right hon. Gentleman had been here throughout the debate, he would have understood precisely what I was saying. The Minister has had the courtesy to listen to what I had to say, and I suspect there is not the difference between us that the right hon. Gentleman—who uttered what I would describe as a blasphemy—suspects.
Between now and Royal Assent we have to be careful to make sure what we mean by “possession.” As I understand from what the Minister said a moment ago, she is talking about publication. It is the transfer of an image from its creator on to the web and from the web to somebody else’s screen. That is publication. It may also happen to be possession, but publication is what we are talking about. If she leaves it as simply possession, as it is currently in the Bill, we shall be in the ludicrous position where the thought police will go around looking into people’s top right-hand drawers.
I can see what will happen. Somebody will be raided for some other suspected offence—handling stolen goods or possession of drugs—and the police will search the premises and find in this imbecile’s top right-hand drawer an image that falls within clause 49(2). He will then fall foul of being charged with that offence, albeit that that disgusting image has never been seen by anybody else apart from the person who has been raided for drugs or possessing stolen goods.
I will leave it there, but I think we need to be careful about this. I refuse to be put off the case I am making simply because the subject we are talking about is one that arouses entirely proper revulsion. But, Mr. Gale, I ask you to ask the Committee if I can shut up and sit down. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 49 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 50 and 51 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 52

Meaning of “image” and “child”
Jenny Willott: I beg to move amendment 489, in clause 52, page 31, line 27, leave out ‘image (produced by any means)’ and insert ‘computer-generated image’.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 490, in clause 52, page 31, line 41, at beginning insert ‘a reasonable person would consider that’.
Amendment 491, in clause 52, page 32, line 1, leave out paragraph (b).
 
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