Policing and Crime Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

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

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 219D, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rosser, would be an important step in enabling police and crime commissioners to tackle online abuse of children. Only once local police forces begin systematically collecting these data can we know the prevalence of the issue. Only once the prevalence of the abuse is known can commissioners begin to tackle it and to provide adequate resources and appropriate services. Digital technology has fuelled an explosion in these crimes over the last two decades, including children being forced to commit sexual acts online and children being groomed online for the purpose of abuse and exploitation in the real world. The impact of these horrendous crimes can be devastating, and children can be repeatedly revictimised as images of their sexual abuse are viewed online by offenders all over the world.

At a national level, progress on tackling these crimes has been made, such as the Child Abuse Image Database. The centralised expertise of the National Crime Agency also plays a key role in keeping children safe in the most severe cases, but we remain concerned about the ability of police forces to respond adequately to online offences committed against children at a local level. The recent HMIC child protection report found that there is a huge local variation in the response to these offences, including delays of up to 12 months in forensically examining devices. Such delays can have serious implications for the safeguarding of children, including children not being promptly identified and safeguarded and reoffending taking place while a device is still being analysed.

An NSPCC freedom of information request found that police use of cyberflags to monitor online sexual crimes against children is worryingly patchy. A small number of forces said they were not using this or did not know about mandatory cyberflags. It is imperative that this failure to cyberflag offences is addressed. Requiring local forces to collect these data, in addition to the data collection outlined in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, could help address this variation and help to build a local picture of prevalence.

In June, Operation Lattise, Police Scotland’s first national operation to crack down on online child sexual abuse, brought the scale of the problem into sharp focus and demonstrated what can be achieved when there is a focused response. Running for six weeks, the operation resulted in 77 people being arrested and charged as a result of 134 investigations. This led to more than 30 million indecent images of children being recovered.

As police and crime commissioners develop their local plans, the Government must ensure that the police focus their attention on this area, and this amendment would help to do that. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, no one would suggest that the issues to which the noble Lord has referred are not hugely important, but I shall make a point which may not be wholly popular. There is a limit to what legislation can do when—to me and I think to my noble friend Lord Paddick, with whom I have consulted very briefly—it is a matter of culture and practice.

I believe that police and crime commissioners have made a start on sharing information. I suspect there is a long way to go and that most of them would say that there is a long way to go, but to provide that everything that is good practice—I am probably arguing against an amendment that I have already proposed on a different issue, and more that I will propose—and that culture and practice can always be enshrined in legislation, which requires the issue to go up to the Home Office and then come down again, is something that I would not go so far as to say I am instinctively against, but I feel instinctively needs to be questioned.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for bringing this forward and drawing attention to what is a very important issue. Exploitation of, and offences against, children, whether online or offline, are appalling and this Government are committed to tackling such criminality very robustly. The internet has opened up a wealth of opportunities for young people, but it has also exposed them to new dangers.

The Government are committed to improving the safety of children online and have a strong track record of working with the internet industry and the charitable sector to achieve it. However, we also recognise that our understanding of the scale and nature of the problem is far from complete, and in many ways we almost feel that we are running to stand still.

Our starting principle is that what is illegal offline is illegal online and criminal offences typically apply in both environments. However, recognising that the picture is less clear in relation to offending online, the annual data requirement on forces includes a requirement to flag offences where the reporting officer believes, on the balance of probability, that the offence was committed, in full or in part, through a computer, computer network or computer-enabled device. This online flag has been mandatory since April 2015, and all 43 forces in England and Wales have provided data since then.

The NCA’s annual strategic assessment of child sexual exploitation and abuse, published in August, found that the visibility of the threat was improving, but that there remained significant intelligence gaps in relation to the overall scale and prevalence of the threat. The NCA works continually to improve our understanding of the threat. I reassure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that our response to the threat is rightly robust and includes law enforcement agencies taking action against online offenders, developing new capabilities to find and safeguard victims and working with the internet industry to remove illegal images.

For example, all UK police forces and the NCA are now connected to the Child Abuse Image Database—otherwise known as CAID—which reduces the time taken to undertake investigations and identify the victims. A new victim identification suite has been established by the NCA with access to CAID. In 2015-16, UK authorities identified over 450 victims from abuse images, more than double the number of any previous year and, in a recent case, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection command of the NCA was able to use CAID to review one of its largest ever seizures within six weeks. Based on the case size, before CAID this would have taken a minimum of six months to review.

In 2015-16, the NCA received £10 million of additional investment for further specialist teams to tackle online sexual exploitation. This enabled a near doubling of its investigative capacity to tackle child sexual exploitation. An NCA and GCHQ joint operational cell has also been established to target the most technologically sophisticated offenders. In 2015, 2,861 individuals were prosecuted for offences involving indecent images of children—a 27% increase on the previous year.

I hope I have persuaded the noble Lord that we are working to improve our understanding and our response to the threat and that he will withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, to add to what I said before, I think that there is a very important role for the Home Office, working in conjunction with the police and many others, on the consistency of the data, to which this amendment refers but perhaps a bit obliquely. It seems to be an issue that comes up time and time again. Yesterday a report was published by ECPAT and Missing People on young people going missing from care and one of the recommendations was about achieving consistency of data.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It might please the noble Baroness to know that I have become the Minister for data and therefore anything that she can feed into the job that I will be doing will be most appreciated.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

I recommend the report.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, as the Minister said, understanding the overall scale, complexity and prevalence of the threat is crucial. I am pleased to learn what the department and the police are doing. It is important we understand this.

I accept the point about data that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made. I also accept her point on legislation. This is such a complex problem. We do not quite know what we have here, as unfortunately new things are developing all the time, so it is worth trying to explore and make sure that our legislation is correct.

However, I am very happy at this stage to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, young people aged 16 and 17 are still children although they are legally able to consent to sexual activity, get married and undertake a number of other matters and be deemed responsible for their behaviour. Amendment 220, in the name of my noble friend Lord Rosser and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, seeks to put a new clause in the Bill to create a new offence of the abduction of a vulnerable child. Most 16 and 17 year-olds are not well protected, with a tiny minority subject to the protection of the Children Act or in police protection. Children of this age can get themselves into all sorts of problems and can be targeted by adults who seek to exploit their vulnerability. The amendment seeks to create a specific offence.

Amendment 222 would require police forces to collect annually the number of child abduction notices issued, the number breached and the number of sexual risk orders and sexual harm prevention orders issued following such a breach. This information would have to be laid before Parliament in the form of a report. This would provide valuable data to both Parliament and the Government so we can see what is happening and make specific policy and legislative changes with relevant information to hand, if deemed necessary. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I can sum up my comments really as, “as above”. The points I made on the previous amendments are relevant, although the report I have just mentioned called Heading Back to Harm is particularly relevant here. There are so many associated issues that I would prefer the focus to be on practice—I will add it to my point about data—including trust in authority. In some situations, lack of trust in authority is a big component in young people who have been rescued going missing again. I do not underestimate the importance of the issues at the heart of this. Can the Minister give the Committee any information about the success of child abduction warning notices, where they apply, now, before we seek an extension?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, Amendment 220 would create a new offence of abduction of a vulnerable child aged 16 or 17. The offence would be in addition to the existing offence in Section 49 of the Children Act 1989, which already makes it an offence to abduct a child in care, including those aged 16 and 17. The new offence would also be in addition to Section 2 of the Child Abduction Act 1984, which makes it an offence to abduct any child under the age of 16. The new offence would extend only to children aged 16 and 17 who are considered to be vulnerable and therefore in need of additional protection.

The criteria for being considered vulnerable are set out in subsection (2) of the new clause and cover a range of circumstances defined in the Children Act 1989 and Housing Act 1996. These criteria potentially encompass a wide range of individuals and raise concerns that they would have very wide effect. For example, as drafted, the offence would cover all disabled young people of that age. The children it extends to are often in need of services such as housing and education but are not necessarily in need of special protection, as opposed to others of that age.

The Government completely share the objective of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness of ensuring that young people are protected from sexual exploitation and other abuse. That is why, in March last year, we introduced new civil orders to protect the vulnerable and disrupt offending at the earliest opportunity. We believe that providing the right powers to the police is the way forward. Our priority is to prevent offending, so making better use of these orders is a more precisely targeted response than creating a new criminal offence.

As noble Lords will be aware, a similar new clause was tabled in the House of Commons and there have been amendments to previous Bills on this issue. We remain unpersuaded that the proposed new abduction offence is the way forward. Young people aged 16 and 17 are generally deemed capable of living independently of their parents and of exercising their free will, notably on sexual matters. As noble Lords have said, we therefore need to achieve the right balance between additional protection for young people in this age group and recognition of relevant rights and responsibilities. Creating a new offence would raise difficult issues about where we draw the line, and it would not help young people who are older than this age group but are also very vulnerable.

That is why we believe that sexual risk orders provide appropriate powers for the police. I do not have the figures or any information on how the child abduction warning list is working; it might be in my pack. I apologise—I am getting quite tired at this stage of the day. I will write to the noble Baroness. The preventive civil orders are relatively new and we will therefore keep under review whether they fully address the kind of predatory behaviour to which the amendment refers.

Turning to Amendment 222, it is very important that we get the right balance in national reporting of data. This Government have already introduced a new mandatory requirement for all forces to collect data on child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation offences as part of the police annual data requirement, and from next April we will be expanding that requirement to include non-crime incidents related to CSE as well. This means that for the first time, we will have all child sexual abuse and exploitation-related crimes and incidents recorded by the police. This will allow for all sexual offences against children to be identified; for example, it was previously not possible to identify obscene publication offences that are specifically related to victims aged under 18.

We are working closely with the police to monitor and review the use of the new sexual risk orders, as well as child abduction warning notices, in order to ensure they are effective in protecting children who are at risk of sexual harm. I think that is precisely the noble Baroness’s point. As child abduction warning notices are part of an administrative process, the police do not regularly record the number issued. This means that, in practice, this amendment would place a significant and disproportionate new burden on the police manually to interrogate their systems.

We agree on the need to do all we can to disrupt predatory behaviour before it causes lasting harm to children and young people. The Government remain unpersuaded that the approach proposed in these amendments is the right way forward. In order better to understand the issues raised and to create an evidence base for the use of existing powers—that is the important thing here—we have set up a working group that will monitor the use of sexual risk orders so that we can fully evaluate whether there are gaps in police powers to disrupt at the earliest opportunity. I expect this group to report to Ministers in the autumn of next year, and we will consider its findings very carefully.

I hope the noble Lord will feel content to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, we on these Benches support our noble friend Lady Brinton. I do not want to detain the Committee so will make just a couple of comments. When discussing matters such as trafficking and slavery, I often hear that these issues are where domestic violence was 20 years ago. It is very concerning to hear about the treatment of women—and men—who have suffered domestic violence in the way that my noble friend has described. That is not progress over the past 20 years.

There is another argument for my noble friend’s various amendments, which I do not think she mentioned; that is, obtaining the best evidence from victims who are also witnesses. These are very sensitive issues and one hears of very good practice by some police forces and some members of the judiciary. It is a question of spreading that good practice. There is an awful lot raised in these amendments, including the very delicate issue of ticketing for the judiciary dealing with certain cases. This is not the moment to go into that but the implications of the amendments need to be taken on board over a very wide area of practice. The Committee should be grateful to my noble friend and the noble Lord for ensuring that they are raised. It is a pity that, coming to the end of Committee, we are not able to do them the justice that we would all like to do them.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and other noble Lords who have spoken, for raising the important issue of victims’ rights.

It is crucial that the needs of victims of crime are given proper consideration at every stage of the criminal justice process. We published a revised Code of Practice for Victims of Crime, which came into force in November 2015. As a result, victims of all criminal offences, not just victims of more serious offences, are entitled to support under the code. The code provides victims with a range of entitlements, including information about their case, interpretation and translation, and for them to be treated in a respectful and professional manner without discrimination of any kind. Furthermore, the code requires police and other service providers to have a complaints procedure. If victims are dissatisfied with the outcome, they are able to refer their complaints to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman via their Member of Parliament.

It is essential that victims receive the best possible support to help them cope with and recover from what they have been through. We have a raft of arrangements in place which ensure that victims have access to a wide range of emotional, practical and specialist support determined by and tailored to their needs; wherever possible, this support is accessible locally. We are committed to ensuring that victims get the support they need and have protected the overall level of funding for victims across the spending review period, with over £95 million being provided in 2016-17 to fund crucial support services, including £7 million for the provision of support for victims of child sexual abuse, in recognition of increasing demand. Of the £95 million, we allocated over £67 million in grant funding to police and crime commissioners, who are using that funding to commission local services. The Justice Secretary has recently agreed to extend grant funding to all the nationally funded organisations for 2017-18 while we consider the current mixed model of commissioning national and local services.

We recognise the importance of training for professionals who work with victims. Organisations are responsible for ensuring the highest-quality training for their staff to ensure that victims receive the best possible service and support. However, we also recognise that more can be done. That is why we are working to place victims and witnesses at the heart of a justice system that works for everyone. We recently announced the national rollout of pre-trial cross-examination in 2017 to improve the support available for vulnerable witnesses. We are also investing close to £1 billion to reform and digitise our courts and tribunals. This will improve the experience for all court and tribunal users, including vulnerable victims and witnesses. Furthermore, we have committed to introduce further measures to strengthen the rights of victims of crime. It is important that we take the time to get this right, and we will announce our plans in due course.

Finally, the proposal for homicide reviews is also unnecessary. If the family of a victim has concerns about a closed homicide case, this can be looked at again under the Crown Prosecution Service’s recent guidance, Reviewing Previously Finalised Cases, to determine whether or not a review should be conducted.

Having had this opportunity to debate these important issues, and in the knowledge that the Government will be bringing forward proposals to strengthen the rights of victims, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.