Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
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Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
There is much to debate in this group of amendments and I particularly welcome new clauses 8 and 9, but for the sake of brevity I will stick to my new clause 27 and the associated clauses, which seek to resolve the much debated problem of child abduction warning notices applying unequally to children in care and those out of care.
New clause 27 is a probing amendment, so I shall not press it to a vote, but I would like to emphasise my disappointment that the Government have not found a way to resolve the problem. There has been plenty of time to do so and the issue has been debated extensively at all stages. It is a relatively contained problem. The fact that police can only use CAWNs to protect victims up to the age of 16 if they are living at home, and not those up to the age of 18 if they are in care, is a real-world problem created by the fact that these administrative orders are reliant on two separate pieces of legislation. It should be perfectly possible to resolve the situation if we put our minds to it.
A number of solutions have been proposed to the Government during the Bill’s progress, including putting CAWNs on a statutory basis, which would also create a penalty on breach, as suggested by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion); amending the offence of child abduction so that it applies to children up to the age of 18; and my new clause 27, which would create a secondary offence, under the Child Abduction Act 1984, of abducting a child aged 16 to 18. All of those proposals have been rejected by the Government because they say that they are unnecessary, that they would create additional bureaucracy and that they would risk creating unintended consequences for prosecutors in relation to consent.
The first point has no merit. The reforms have been requested directly by serving police officers, social workers and parents who are battling child sexual exploitation on the front line and who have found that the inability to use CAWNs to protect children aged 16 to 18 living at home is a gap in their armoury as they wage an already incredibly challenging battle against abusers.
Ministers have said that the new risk of sexual harm orders will address that gap, but they will not. As the MP who led the campaign to reform the old civil prevention orders and replace them with the current orders under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, I welcome them wholeheartedly, but for police to obtain a ROSHO they must prove the sexual element of risk to a criminal standard of evidence in court. As administrative orders, CAWNs do not require either that evidential threshold or the proving of the sexual element. Police officers and others have told me that that is precisely why CAWNs are so successful in disrupting child sexual exploitation where the sexual abuser may not be the individual who is transporting or controlling the victim and therefore sexual risk may be indirect.
It is unquestionably true that ROSHOs, gang injunctions and trafficking orders have significant roles to play in disrupting grooming, but, as statutory orders that require judicial oversight, none of those can replace the CAWN in the architecture of powers available to police for disrupting CSE. They simply do not have the immediacy or the simplicity I have described.
For that reason, I am not convinced that putting the orders on a statutory footing is the best solution. The Government have said that that would create additional bureaucracy, which is not the best turn of phrase, because it sounds like there would just be a bit more paperwork. That is not the concern that has been raised with me by senior police officers. If CAWNs were put on a statutory footing, they would become a civil order, like the ROSHO, which, rightly, has an evidentiary threshold and judicial oversight. That very process of having to apply through the courts and gather increased evidence risks creating an inappropriate situation not only of fewer CAWNs being sought, but of the CAWN losing its unique place in the policing toolbox as a quick response tool that can be applied as a deterrent and disruption device that is also valuable in establishing association and bad character in prosecution.
Although I understand that the value of introducing a statutory basis would be to bring in a penalty on breach, that aspect is already covered by the statutory civil prevention orders—from ROSHOs to trafficking orders—which all involve penalties on breach. Of course, most of those orders, in their current form, are new and I urge the Government and the College of Policing to develop guidance on how they should operate as a progressive and interrelated set of powers now available to police to deter, disrupt and prevent serious organised crime against children in particular. However, if filling in the gap in CAWNs is necessary but making CAWNs statutory is not the answer, then what is?
As we have heard, CAWNs for children living at home have their legislative basis in section 2(1) of the Child Abduction Act 1984. The Government object to changing the age limit for that offence of abduction from the legal age of consent of 16 to 18 on the grounds that it would risk the victims, even those under the age of 16, being challenged by defence barristers on questions of consent. I accept that we have fought too many battles to improve protections for vulnerable witnesses against aggressive cross-examination in court to want to do anything to weaken a prosecutor’s arm, especially on questions of consent, and that is why I tabled new clause 27, proposing a secondary offence, with a higher threshold, of abduction of 16 to 18-year-olds.
I do not believe that would compromise the integrity of the current child abduction offence for under 16-year-olds, but it would offer a legislative basis to close the current gap in CAWNs and give the police the power to intervene quickly and effectively to protect 16 to 18-year-olds who we know remain at high risk of child sexual exploitation where grooming gangs are operating, whether they happen to be living at home or not.
The Solicitor-General
I hear what the hon. Lady says and take her remarks in the spirit that I know she intends. We are moving on these issues, and much has been achieved in the past few years in acknowledging that we are dealing with children and can no longer have a sort of double standard when it comes to their protection. In Committee we debated so-called “ostensible consent”, which at one time was in sentencing guidelines. That has gone from the law—indeed, a case I conducted in the Court of Appeal last week made it absolutely clear that for young children the concept of consent in sexual activity has no place in the law of England and Wales. Let me reiterate my point: we are making progress and there will be a consultation as soon as possible. I therefore urge the hon. Lady and Opposition Members not to divide the House on the new clause.
On new clause 2, I listened carefully to the impassioned speech of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It was the sort of speech that we need to hear in this House because it reiterated not only his determination to uncover child abuse—whether historical or current—but the determination that we should all have to follow evidence wherever it may lead without fear or favour.
As we know, the Official Secrets Act is intended to protect certain classes of particularly sensitive information such as security and intelligence matters, and it provides for a number of offences that prevent current or former Crown servants or Government contractors from disclosing certain information without lawful authority. It does not prevent protected information from being disclosed to an officer of an official investigation or inquiry into historical child abuse. In particular, information may be disclosed where the disclosure is made in accordance with that person’s official duty or is otherwise authorised. Departments and Ministers can permit current and former civil servants and Government contractors to share knowledge and documentation with an inquiry. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made clear in her statement to this House on 4 February, official authorisation would be given for the Goddard inquiry.
On the historical institutional abuse inquiry in Northern Island, the Attorney-General has already made a public undertaking that no evidence given by a person to the inquiry will be used as evidence against them in any criminal proceeding, including any offence under the Official Secrets Act. Indeed, the Attorney-General would be ready to consider any similar request from Justice Goddard if one were made. I assure the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that the Government are committed to assisting Justice Goddard’s inquiry and all other inquiries into child abuse. We are satisfied that the Official Secrets Act is not, will not, and should not be a bar to evidence being provided, but I am grateful to him for raising that important issue.
Let me turn to new clause 11, in the name of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). As he said, this has been covered in Committee. I reiterate that anomalies will inevitably exist when it comes to how we classify children and young people in law. I am afraid there is no one age division to fit all circumstances. Despite the fact that, with his usual cunning, he has come up with a slightly different way of dealing with some of the mischiefs I mentioned in Committee, I am still concerned that, in genuinely attempting to correct one anomaly, we might end up creating another. We still believe that in this area of the law we need to focus on the protection of children and young persons under the age of 16.
In that spirit, I will come on to new clause 27, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). Her tenacity knows no bounds. She has done a lot of work to expose the scourge of child sexual exploitation in both her local area and nationally. I am grateful to her for once again raising this issue. We need to have the correct balance between additional protection, and recognition of the relevant rights and responsibilities of young people in this age group. We have given much thought to this matter. The key question for the Government is whether we think the police have sufficient powers to replace restrictions and prohibitions on people who pose a risk to vulnerable young adults aged 16 and 17. We think that the new sexual risk orders—I will come on to them in a moment—will provide the police with the powers to tackle predators. Breach of such an order will carry a sentence of up to five years’ imprisonment. We think the right balance is being struck with the combination of child abduction warning notices and sexual risk orders. We therefore do not think that we need to change the law on child abduction at this stage. That allows me neatly, I hope, to deal with new clause 19, tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion).
Nicola Blackwood
The Solicitor-General is aware that the combination of child abduction warning notices and risk of sexual harm orders leaves a gap for 16 to 17-year-olds where it is impossible to prove sexual risk and where there is a need for immediate action without going to court.
The Solicitor-General
I remind my hon. Friend that other mechanisms and other types of order exist, and ask her to bear it in mind that the law was reformed by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which is just coming into force. There are other tools available to the police and enforcement authorities. We have to be careful not to seek to be over-reliant on one particular type of order. Reading carefully the recommendations and observations made by Louise Casey in the Rotherham report published only two weeks ago, there are certain concerns about an over-reliance on child abduction warning notices, as opposed to taking more direct action that has the force of statutory breach and criminal sanction on breach.
New clause 19 was tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham. I am grateful to her for providing information she wished me to consider. I confirm that we plan to implement the new sexual risk orders before the end of this Parliament. As we all know, that is a very short space of time indeed. I reassure her that we will publish guidance on their use and we will work with the police to review their effectiveness, including in the context of how child abduction warning notices are used. As a result of our productive meeting, Barnardo’s will be consulted as a part of that process.
The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) made a point about references to the phrase “child prostitution” in a number of other Acts and regulations. The Government’s amendments to schedule 4 pick up the references to child prostitution in primary legislation, and we have a power in clause 79(2) to amend secondary legislation. That should help to clean up and clear up references to child prostitution in a number of regulations.