Sex Offenders Register

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

It will be a proper consultation and, obviously, noble Lords and others will be free to put forward their views. On the evidence and information that will be taken into account by the police in the review, I can confirm straightaway that the MAPPA process, NOMS and those who have relevant information will be involved. It is right that NOMS has considerable experience of probationary periods, and the police will be under an obligation, which I am sure they will understand, to make the review both fair and thorough.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, it is deeply depressing to revisit this way of dealing with decisions made by the courts. It is familiar to those of us who are lawyers because we had to endure it under the previous Government, when tomorrow’s headlines dictated the way in which they responded to a wholly reasonable decision by the courts. In this case, the court decided that there should be an obligation to ensure that people have the right to appeal. It in no way suggested that paedophiles should be removed willy-nilly from the register.

There are occasions where someone should be able to appeal. For example, a young man in his 20s has sex with an underage girl and is put on the sex register. When he is a man in his 40s—married, with a family and holding down a job—it may seem reasonable to him that his name should be removed from the register on which it was placed for something that he did with an underage girl when he was in his early 20s. That is the kind of offence that the court envisaged when it said that there should not be a blanket situation where there can be no appeal whatever.

The reasonable response of the Government would have been to say clearly that an opportunity to appeal should be available, that it will be rarely used but that they support its existence. That is the position that the Government should have taken. I always get the feeling that there is something in the drinking water at the Home Office that makes sensible people lose their nerve and good sense when it comes to these matters.

As to the comment on the need for a Bill of Rights, how would the situation be any different if, as I have heard government Ministers say, all that is contained in the current European Convention on Human Rights would be in a British Bill of Rights, but with additional matters included? If that were the case and the Article 6 protections of due process, under which this kind of appeal, in given circumstances, is available, were included, how would it be any different? I suspect that this would be available in a British Bill of Rights, as it is now. Surely good sense should have been the response of the day.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The Government regard what they are doing as bringing them into compliance with their obligations under the Human Rights Act. Therefore we do not envisage that the work of the Commission—and of course the terms of reference have yet to be agreed—would be affected by what we are doing here.

The Government have put in place a review process. Sex offences are extremely difficult to make judgments about and we believe that those who are involved in their rehabilitation, NOMS and the police, who will have had the obligation to supervise their conduct in the interim, are better placed to do that than the courts. That is why we have instituted the review of the process that we have put in place. I also rely on London tap water—I find it keeps me entirely sane.