Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Faulks and Baroness Grender

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in his place, as the Minister who announced the changes in the legislation when some of us were campaigning to get it transformed. It was a very proud moment when he announced it—quite late in the evening, as I recall—and we had watching in the Gallery a whole row of ladies, plus one man, who had broken their anonymity and shared with us the appalling experiences that each of them had been through as a result of revenge porn.

I am very proud that, even with the limited amendments that we managed to get through to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, we are now as a nation a little further ahead than most others in trying to deal with a very difficult issue. But there are so many more who are not caught in the current legislation. While in 2015-16 we know that 206 individuals were prosecuted under the new law, a survey by “Good Morning Britain” revealed that police forces in England and Wales had dealt with a total of 2,130 cases. There is quite a difference between these numbers in terms of what is going forward to prosecution, and we have already heard what some of the difficulties in that area are likely to be.

It is also critical that we as parliamentarians stay ahead of the speed of change in attitudes and behaviour that smartphones and social media bring in their wake. In the US, a McAfee study revealed that 36% of people had sent or intended to send an intimate picture. As legislators, we have to understand that, whatever our attitude to and opinion of that, we need to create laws that foresee the way that society is changing. These amendments therefore necessarily go further and we must credit the Women’s Equality Party for its part in doing some of the drafting, which resulted in us trying to amend this in the other place.

I particularly want to address the issue of anonymity. When we ran this campaign a year ago, some women stepped forward and were prepared to be named when they recounted what they had gone through. But part of the problem was that many victims were too scared to put their names out there. This happened to one lady whom we dealt with—because her name was out there and she was campaigning against this, it ensured that she got far more coverage on some of the websites that she was deliberately trying to avoid. It has now been accepted in current legislation by this Government that victims of forced marriage are given that anonymity; I see this as being a very similar area.

I will conclude here. I think that we are aware that in this area there are issues of suicide, self-harm and damaged reputation. As we talk now there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young men and women who are sharing intimate images that, frankly, will have a devastating impact on their future. It is up to us, through some of these amendments, to be ahead of the law at every stage.

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for mentioning my small part in the acceptance of revenge porn as part of the list of criminal offences that the Government accepted ought to enter the calendar of criminal offences. The Government looked carefully at this and, in many ways, some of the conduct that was embraced within so-called revenge porn was probably covered by existing criminal offences. However, it was accepted that such was the need to identify specifically this sort of behaviour that it was appropriate to include it as part of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

While I entirely accept what lies behind these amendments and the evil that they are directed against, I think that one has to bear in mind that we have had only a very short time for this legislation to bed down. I am glad that there have been prosecutions; it appears that there was a need and the prosecuting authorities have acted accordingly. But I am not sure that I am, at the moment, satisfied that there is a need to go further in terms of definition. For example, Amendment 217 talks about threats to disclose. The Minister will no doubt correct me, but all these areas are probably covered by existing criminal law—for example, blackmail, threatening behaviour, theft or other offences. A threat may be something substantial but it may be something very trivial and we do not want to have relatively trivial matters embraced in what is often a very serious offence.

As to Amendment 218, of course, on the face of it, it seems attractive that there should be some compensation. I am a little concerned, however, about a judge in a criminal case having to assess anxiety and the degree of anxiety in terms of the appropriate quantum of damages. How is he or she going to do that? Will there be evidence from somebody expressing how affected they were, and the degree of the affection—whether, for example, it caused them to go to a doctor? There is a slight danger that we could lose sight of what is really important—a criminal offence, rather than whether there should be compensation.

Quite apart from the questions of appeal raised by my noble friend Lord Hailsham, there is some work to be done on this. On the question of appeal, surely there would be an appeal from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court as of right, and to the court of criminal appeal in appropriate, and possibly restrictive, circumstances. It may be that in due course there would be some informal tariff, perhaps involving the Sentencing Council—but I would not like it to be thought that the criminal prosecution of matters should be used as some proxy for obtaining compensation.