Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Diana Johnson

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm when he responds that that is the legal advice he has received. On that basis, it is really important that the issue is addressed.

Finally, if the provisions set out in new clause 7 are introduced, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which is now part of the National Crime Agency, will have more work to do. It already struggles with the images it has to look at, so if it will have to deal with the written word as well. I think that there is a case to be made for the Minister addressing how resources for that will be made available.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their opening remarks. I will speak to new clause 5 and the Government amendments relating to prevention orders. I think that by now colleagues will be familiar with my reasons for tabling the new clause. The vast majority of children in this country grow up free from fear, but a vulnerable minority never know a safe or happy childhood. I will never forget sitting in the Old Bailey and listening to truly harrowing evidence of how a violent organised crime gang systematically groomed girls on Oxford’s streets to sell them for sex from as young as 11, plying them with hard drugs to make them more compliant to being repeatedly raped by strangers and conditioning them to believe that that was what real relationships were like. Too many colleagues in this House have had the same experience as me, as cases have emerged across the country. Every police force and local authority needs to take positive and proactive preventive action to root out this vile crime.

Patterns of grooming behaviour are now much better understood. We should be aiming to disrupt the process before it progresses to systematic sexual abuse, because the consequences of failing to intervene are both well documented and appallingly destructive. However, over the past few years case after case has emerged in which child protection agencies in possession of detailed intelligence have seemed unable to intervene.

In our inquiry into child sexual exploitation, the Home Affairs Committee came to a number of conclusions on why it was happening. The wider conclusions are for another day, but even leading forces, such as Lancashire police, who are proactive not only in innovative investigative techniques, but in disrupting grooming behaviour using methods such as abduction notices, licensing enforcement and dispersal orders, found that a key tool—civil prevention orders—just was not working. They have been on the statute book since 2003, as we have heard, and should be at the forefront of the fight against grooming, but instead they were found to be fundamentally flawed by a 2012 review commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers and written independently by Hugh Davies QC and a team of experts.

Since 2003 our understanding of patterns of sex offending and disruption techniques has progressed significantly. The purpose of new clause 5 is to reflect that progress and resolve the flaws in the existing orders. I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the case for reform and tabled amendments today. Put simply, the reformed orders will protect more vulnerable children from sexual exploitation. That could not be more urgent, because the Children’s Commissioner estimated only this year that 16,500 children are at risk of sexual exploitation, but the prevention orders are still failing to protect them.

Before explaining how the proposed reforms will address that, let me explain why the current orders are not working. Three orders were legislated for in the Sexual Offences Act 2003: the sexual offences prevention order, the foreign travel order and the risk of sexual harm order. A SOPO can be sought on conviction, or on proof of relevant offending behaviour subsequent to that conviction, to protect a UK adult or child. An FTO can be sought on proof of offending behaviour subsequent to previous sexual conviction and can be sought to protect non-UK children. Despite some misleading coverage of this campaign, the ROSHO is already a pre-conviction order, and it can be sought on proof of two contact offences to prevent serious sexual harm to children under the age of 16. Neither new clause 5 nor the Government’s amendments would create a revolutionary pre-conviction order today. That has been an accepted necessity since 2003.

No one in this House would disagree with the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty, which is a fundamental principle of the rule of law, but in no way would that be compromised by these amendments. The case against a defendant would have to be proved to the criminal standard, and a defendant’s procedural rights under the proposals would be identical to those in place under the current provisions. The fact is that a criminal prosecution is not the only mechanism that is necessary to achieve an acceptable level of protection against the sexual abuse of children.

Criminal prosecution is not always possible. In some situations a prosecution is found not to be in the interests of a child victim, and therefore not in the public interest. In other situations there might be compelling evidence or some technical reason why the evidence is not found to be admissible. In other cases, as we have seen recently, a vulnerable witness might simply find the court process too traumatic and so the case collapses. Anyone who follows the progress of policing and the criminal justice system will recognise that uncomfortable reality. That is why this year there were more than 23,000 reported sexual crimes against children but only 4,051 of them were prosecuted.