Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Lords Chamber

Finally, Amendment 56 to Clause 71 will ensure that the changes to the law on child cruelty are not retrospective. I hope that noble Lords will agree that these are sensible changes that, when taken with existing provisions in Clause 65, will ensure that Section 1 of the 1933 Act continues to be fit for purpose, which I know was the concern of Members of your Lordships’ House. I will respond at the end of the debate to Amendments 41 and 41A, also in this group, having heard the contributions of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and others. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 41 in my name in this group. I welcome Clause 65 and the Government’s amendments to it, but I have tabled this further amendment, the purpose of which is twofold. First, it would delete the limitation in Section 1(1) of the 1933 Act that only people with responsibility for a child or a young person can be prosecuted for child abuse. This means that anyone could be prosecuted for such offences—for example, clergy, pastors, friends, relatives, neighbours or lodgers—not just parents or people acting in loco parentis. It is unclear to me why Section 1 was ever limited in this way. I ask the Government to explain why, particularly since we have seen in the recent Rotherham scandal how many children are abused by people who are not responsible for them. Secondly, it would clarify the meaning of “ill-treats” in order to make it clear that any allegation, by word or deed, that a child is possessed by an evil spirit or has harmful supernatural powers is unlawful because it amounts to serious emotional abuse of the child.

This amendment was debated twice on the then Children and Families Bill at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, and was followed by correspondence with my noble friend Lady Northover. Further to that correspondence, it is clear that the Government now accept two important facts that were not recognised before these debates. First, they now recognise that possession accusations are child abuse, regardless of what is done to the child as a result. Secondly, they accept that neither criminal nor civil law on child abuse can be used to take action on such abuse if it is perpetrated by someone who is not a parent or acting in loco parentis. Thus neither Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 nor the Children Act 1989 can be used in such cases.

However, the Government did not accept the need for the change that I was proposing, pointing to various other criminal statutes that could be used where someone had caused a child injury by making a possession accusation: the Public Order Act 1986, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and the Serious Crime Act 2007—my noble friend mentioned all of these in the correspondence. Those other statutes are not appropriate for three reasons. First, the point of my amendment is to protect children from knowing that they are believed to be possessed by evil spirits or to have supernatural powers, whereas using those statutes would entail the child having to give evidence that they were harmed by the allegations—thus precisely obviating the protection that my amendment is seeking.

Secondly, the primary aim of the amendment is not to prosecute but to prevent this kind of abuse. This can be done only if the law explicitly states that a possession accusation constitutes an offence against children—which, I reiterate, would not make a belief in evil spirit possession an offence, just the communication of that belief to the child or those known to the child. It is not my intention to get in the way of people’s seriously held religious beliefs. I hope I made that clear the last time I raised this point.

Thirdly, none of the cited laws has ever been used to charge anyone for alleging that a child has supernaturally evil powers, which is not surprising. It is extremely unlikely that any prosecutor would agree to a wholly speculative prosecution that balanced having to prove a child’s psychological trauma against the expression of strongly held religious beliefs, in the absence of direction from central government on this issue. I invite the Minister to seek the opinion of the Director of Public Prosecutions on this point if the Government are going to rely on these various statutes.

The numbers of children killed or seriously physically injured in this country by this form of faith-based abuse are not great—probably still under 100, although of course even one is too many. However, we do not know how many children are psychologically scarred for life by being told that they are possessed by evil spirits, that they are responsible for causing supernatural harm to their loved ones and that they are an object of hatred, fear and revulsion. Members of the National Working Group on Child Abuse Linked to Faith or Belief estimate that that number could run to many hundreds.

Are we failing to take action on this horrible torment of children because we are reluctant to challenge, in this instance, the religious practices of minorities? If the Government believe, as they say they do and I know they do, that possession accusations are child abuse, they should prohibit the practice specifically as they have every other form of significant harm to children. I ask my noble friend again to consider the wisdom of such an amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving me the opportunity to discuss with him his Amendments 39 and 40. I am extremely grateful to him. I am happy with Amendment 39; it takes us a long way along the road that I have been battling for under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, and I think it goes far enough. I thought that Amendment 40 was unnecessary. I have now been convinced by the Minister that it is not unnecessary, so I am also happy with that.

On what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said, I suspect that the offences that the police and social workers did not deal with in Rotherham, for example, were so serious that the first part of Amendment 41 would not be necessary. However, I see the point that the noble Baroness is making and it is, with respect, a good one. Her point is that most, but not all, cases come under other legislation, and that is a point well worth taking away.

I agree with the noble Baroness’s point about evil spirits and witchcraft. We in this country underestimate what goes on in relation to witchcraft. It is an extremely serious and worrying, though limited, problem in relation to children, and it ought not to be ignored. There are those who, sometimes under the guise of an obviously totally debased form of religion, are trying to exorcise children through really appalling child cruelty. The noble Baroness is raising that area and, again, with respect, the Government ought to look at that rather more carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I am moving again the amendment relating to child abduction warning notices which I raised in Committee. I do not want to go through everything that was said on that occasion. I was supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who also supports my bringing this amendment before the House again. The problem is that the police do not have adequate powers to deal with grooming of young girls at the point at which the girl is in the process of being groomed but has not yet been taken off and sexually abused, raped or whatever. It is at a relatively early stage, but if it is not stopped it will carry on, as we know from a number of cities around the country.

The quite simple point, as was very neatly expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in Committee, is that the current notice that the police have leads to no action being taken unless the threshold of an abduction threat has been met. This applies to the stage before the actual abduction threat. I am not happy about what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said. I understand his concern that the police might have a power greater than they have in other powers but something needs to be done, which is why I have raised the matter again. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

This proposal came out of a parliamentary inquiry co-ordinated by Barnardo’s and chaired by Sarah Champion MP. Two of my noble friends, my noble friend Lady Benjamin and my noble kinsman Lord Thomas of Gresford, and I were both on that inquiry. We heard first-hand what others have been able only to read: the evidence for making this change to the law. It was very interesting and moving to hear the evidence of the victims. It was also moving to hear the evidence of the police who are committed to protecting children but feel that they do not have sufficient tools to do so.

Our focus should be on prevention or at the very least on the earliest possible intervention. The police are asking for this power to be made statutory so that they can enforce it at an earlier stage of the grooming process. It was made very clear that many of these young girls are quite willingly in the company of older people who eventually abuse them. One young person who gave evidence to us said that she genuinely thought that these people were her friends and the only people who cared about her in the world. That indicates that these young people are not there because they have been physically abducted; they are there willingly. Very often, in a prosecution, they are not willing to give evidence that they have been abducted.

Passing this amendment, or something very similar, would strengthen young people’s confidence in the police. Currently, the approach has a further damaging effect because it erodes the confidence of victims and their families in the ability of the police to protect them when they see that an abuser has broken the terms of a child abduction notice but no action is taken. That is why we need to make it statutory.

[Lord Rosser]

I certainly do not intend to repeat the arguments that have already been made in Committee and on Report in favour of this amendment. As the Minister will well know, in his response in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, accepted that proposals to strengthen the impact of child abduction warning notices had the support of the police, legal experts, representatives of local agencies, young people who had been affected by sexual exploitation, children’s charities and others. The then Minister undertook to consider carefully the benefits of putting these notices on a statutory footing and how such a statutory scheme might operate. He indicated that the Government were committed to examining the case for placing child abduction warning notices on a statutory footing but said that, while the Government may not have completed their review by Report stage, he would update the House on progress. I may have missed a letter but I am not aware of the Government having completed their review.

Among the issues that the then Minister felt needed to be considered were whether it was appropriate for the police to impose an order or injunction, breach of which is a criminal offence; the test for the grant of an order; the prohibitions or restrictions that might be attached to an order; the penalty for breach of an order; and the reference in the amendment requiring a child to have been found two or more times in the company of the person to be made the subject of an order. On these issues, which were raised by the then Minister in Committee, as far as I am aware, we await the Government’s conclusions. I am assured that all those groups and bodies interested in this specific issue are happy to work with the Government to resolve these points.