Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Greg Clark Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I welcome colleagues to this important Committee. I have a few preliminary reminders. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink, except for the water provided, is permitted during sittings of the Committee. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their excellent speaking notes to [e-mail].

Clause 1

Intentional harassment, alarm or distress on account of sex

[Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “in England”.

This amendment extends the application of the offence in new section 4B of the Public Order Act 1986 so that it can be committed in Wales as well as in England.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 1, line 19, at end insert—

“(c) A considered that carrying out the conduct referred to in section 4A(1) was reasonable because of the relevant person’s sex (or presumed sex).”

Clause stand part.

Amendment 2, in clause 2, page 2, line 5, at end insert “, subject to subsection (1A)”.

This amendment is consequential on NC2.

Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 2, line 5, at end insert—

“(1A) An amendment made by section (Consequential amendments) has the same extent as the provision amended.”

This amendment is consequential on NC2.

Amendment 4, in clause 2, page 2, line 6, leave out “Section 1 comes” and insert

“Sections 1 and (Consequential amendments) come”.

This amendment is consequential on NC2.

Clause 2 stand part.

New clause 2—Consequential amendments—

“(1) In paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Football Spectators Act 1989 (relevant offences for the purposes of Part 2), in each of paragraphs (c), (k) and (q), after ‘4A’ insert ‘, 4B’.

(2) In Schedule 8B to the Police Act 1997 (offences which are to be disclosed subject to rules), in paragraph 102, after paragraph (e) insert—

‘(ea) section 4B (intentional harassment, alarm or distress on account of sex);’.

(3) In Schedule 9 to the Elections Act 2022 (offences for the purposes of Part 5), in paragraph 35, after paragraph (e) insert—

‘(ea) section 4B (intentional harassment, alarm or distress on account of sex);’.”

This new clause consequentially amends the Football Spectators Act 1989, the Police Act 1997 and the Elections Act 2022 to include a reference in those Acts to the offence in new section 4B of the Public Order Act 1986 (intentional harassment, alarm or distress on account of sex).

New clause 3—Amendment of section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986—

“(1) Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (3)(b), at end insert ‘subject to the exception in subsection (3A)’.

(3) After subsection (3), insert—

‘(3A) Where a court is considering whether an offence has been committed under this section for the purposes of section 4B, it shall not be a defence for the accused to prove that his conduct was reasonable because of the relevant person’s sex (or presumed sex).’”

[Greg Clark]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am grateful to colleagues for agreeing to serve on the Committee. We have great experience represented, including several fellow Select Committee Chairs, but the membership also covers the whole breadth of the House; we have some of its newest Members, and it is a pleasure to have them here.

The Bill is a short and simple one, but it is historic. It creates, for the first time, a specific offence of public sexual harassment, and provides for the possibility of that being punished on conviction at the higher tariff. I will not repeat the arguments made for the Bill on Second Reading, as this is its Committee stage, but it is fair to say that on Second Reading it commanded the unanimous support of the House after a debate that showed Parliament at its best. Indeed, many members of the Committee spoke in that debate, and did so powerfully. They drew in some cases on their own personal experience, and on those of their constituents, recounting the all too frequent reality of life for many women, in particular, of enduring being followed, obstructed, shouted at and having obscene gestures made at them because of their sex. The Bill aims to make it clear that such behaviour is a serious criminal offence, and to make it as obviously unacceptable to harass someone on the grounds of sex as to do so on the grounds of race or disability, for example.

I will concentrate in my opening remarks on the amendments I have tabled. If you will allow me, Sir Gary, I will say something about the other amendments that have been selected for debate, especially those from the hon. Member for Walthamstow, once she has made her opening remarks later in the debate. I am grateful for the support of the Government, and I thank the Minister and her excellent officials in the Home Office for their help in tabling the four amendments that I have tabled and that are before the Committee. They are designed not to alter the purpose of the Bill, but to improve its working in practice.

Amendment 1, by deleting the words “in England” in clause 1, will extend the Bill’s application to Wales. The subject matter of the Bill—the Public Order Act 1986—is devolved to Wales, but the House can legislate to extend it to Wales if the Welsh Government wish and the Senedd passes a legislative consent motion to that effect. I am pleased to say that the Welsh Government wish to apply the Bill to Wales, and they will table a legislative consent motion in the Senedd in time for it to pass before Report.

I hope the Committee will agree that it makes legal sense to expand the new offence to include Wales, because the Public Order Act on which the offence is based already applies to Wales. I am grateful to officials in the Welsh Government for their alacrity in supporting the Bill. By contrast, the section 4A offence in the Public Order Act does not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland, so it would not be practical to expand the new offence to those countries, given that the Act on which it is based does not apply there.

New clause 2 picks up on the fact that the existing section 4A offence in the Public Order Act 1986 is referred to in three other Acts of Parliament: the Football Spectators Act 1989, the Police Act 1997 and the Elections Act 2022. Without the new clause, if in future someone were convicted under the new section 4B offence of sex-based harassment, they would no longer be covered by the sanctions that those other Acts contain for convictions under section 4A of the Public Order Act. Those relate to football banning orders, the disclosure of criminal records in Scotland and disqualification from elected office, which follow currently from conviction under section 4A of the Act. Amendments 2, 3 and 4 are consequential on new clause 2, providing, for example, for commencement regulations to be the same for new clause 2 as for clause 1.

I hope that my explanation of the amendments will command the support of the Committee. I look forward to the debate that follows and to hearing the case made by Members, particularly the hon. Member for Walthamstow on her amendment 5 and new clause 3. Having expressed gratitude to Members for being here, I remind them that this is a private Member’s Bill to which limited time is attached. We have an opportunity to right a historic wrong with this legislation, and I hope that we can approach the debate in a pragmatic fashion with the common purpose of achieving the change in the law that was so clearly the House’s wish on Second Reading.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and to continue to work on the Bill. I thank the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells for his diligence on this legislation. Many of us feel very passionately about the issue, and we are grateful for his commitment and the work he has done to bring so many people together around what has historically been quite a difficult issue to make progress on.

I was watching my three-year-old daughter gambolling down the street the other day. “Gambolling” is the right word; she was in a party dress, half dancing and half singing, and she was joyful. She was walking down the same street that I walk down when coming home from work, with my keys in my hand, looking around, nervous about who else might be on the street. It struck me how important it is that we do not give into those who say that this is too complicated an issue to make progress on.

The honest truth about being a woman is that you learn to live in fear. You learn in our society and our culture to be half aware of what is going on around you at all times, because you know that there is danger out there. When I look at my little daughter and think about what is to come, I know why this legislation is so important. I wager that everybody who has young children in their life thinks about these issues. In particular, tackling the public harassment that women face on a daily basis is long overdue, and many of us in this place have worked on it. That is why it is so important that we take the opportunity to get this right, because they come along so rarely. New clause 3 and amendment 5, which I tabled, and new clause 1, tabled by the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North but not selected for debate as it was not in scope, all get at the same point about ensuring we take this opportunity we finally have to recognise in law the fact that misogyny is driving crimes against women and to act on it.

I was thinking about some of the euphemisms we use and the things that are part of the culture we grow up in. We become so used to the fact that women are at risk and face harassment and abuse on a daily basis that we minimise it. I remember when I was younger being very concerned about somebody I was told had “deserts disease”, because I did not understand what it meant, until somebody explained to me that they meant wandering palms. We talk about people being handsy, and we talk about “creepy”, but all these behaviours are criminal.

What this legislation does is so powerful, because it says that the criminal offences that have been so much a part of women’s daily experience of public life should be acted on. For many of us who have campaigned on the issue for years, one of the biggest frustrations has been being told that we could not act on these things, because if we did, so many people would be prosecuted that the system could not cope, so it was up to women to take the abuse and find ways of minimising it and protecting themselves, carrying their keys in their hand and making sure they were alert at all times when they were in public, rather than us stopping it. What this legislation does that is so powerful is to say, “No, actually, it is not women’s job to protect themselves; it is society’s job to stop the people doing this.” The amendments I have tabled speak to that culture and the challenge we face in getting this right.

As the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells said, this is based on public order offences. There are other pieces of harassment legislation, which I am sure many people are familiar with. I had the fortune in a previous lifetime to work on some of them, which is why, on reading the Bill, I was concerned to identify some of the challenges with using the public order offence. I hope the Minister recognises that I want us to get the legislation right. My amendment are probing amendments, but I hope that by the time we get to Report, the questions they raise can be answered by the Government, because this is not a partisan issue; I think that Members across the House recognise the point I am making.

Public order offences are based on the concept of intent—did someone intend to harass somebody? They therefore give the person who is accused of it a defence that says, “Well, I thought my behaviour was reasonable.” The concept of reasonable behaviour is contained in other pieces of harassment legislation, but in that legislation it is also defined by whether someone ought to know it was reasonable. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 refers to conduct that

“occurs in circumstances where it would appear to a reasonable person that it would amount to harassment of that person.”

In contrast, public order offences simply allow the perpetrator to define whether they thought their behaviour was reasonable. Every woman in this room will recognise the challenge that that presents, because I wager that all of them have probably experienced unwanted touching and unwanted behaviour. I pay tribute to the Clerks, who have been fantastic in working with me on how we address that challenge.

Let us put it in the simplest phrases: “Cheer up, love! I was just trying to chat you up.” “Can’t you take a joke, love?” “It’s a compliment.” “Don’t get your knickers in a twist!” We have all heard those phrases when we said to somebody, “Stop.” We have all had the experience of somebody feeling they are entitled to touch us and harass us because they think their behaviour is reasonable. These amendments speak to a simple point. Most men in this country know how to approach a woman if they find her attractive. They do not feel the need to touch her breasts or her bottom or to harass her and abuse her, but some do. If we do not close this legal loophole, a commonplace experience for women—being challenged when they speak up for themselves and say, “No, don’t touch me in this way. Don’t speak to me in this way. Don’t harass me. Don’t abuse me”—will become a legal defence, because in contrast with other pieces of harassment legislation, there is no provision that says someone ought to know their behaviour is unreasonable in the definition of intent in the Public Order Act.

My amendments will do something very simple. They will introduce the concept of “ought to know” that is contained in other pieces of harassment legislation. I hope the Minister recognises that that will help to create consistency in how we define harassment in law. More importantly, none of us wants to see those women who are brave enough to come forward under this legislation and say, “This person did this to me” be put on trial about whether they can take a joke. Nine times out of 10, that person will be a man. I recognise that the Bill does not specify gender, and that is important, but we know from the 11 police forces that are defining misogyny as a hate crime and recording the gender of victims that the victims are overwhelmingly—80% to 90%—women.

We do not want victims to be put on trial about whether their response—their statement that such behaviour was not acceptable—is reasonable, because that would bring into play the very simple concept of whether anybody else would think it is reasonable. That concept exists in other harassment legislation—not just the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, but the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. The Crown Prosecution Service guidance says:

“In determining whether the defendant ought to know that the course of conduct amounts to harassment, the question to be considered is whether a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.”

It is important to clarify, in relation to the Bill, that in public order offences a judge can give what is called an oblique direction to a jury, so they can say: “This concept of reasonableness is not necessarily right.” That is there as a precedent, but reasonableness is not defined in every single case.

There is a risk that if we do not clarify that we want those same protections and the same questions in this Bill, that will create a legal loophole. My amendments are about that. I am sure the Minister will argue that they are not quite at the level they need to be. I completely understand that; this is a first attempt to flag the issue. If the Minister can suggest other ways to set out in law the fact that we need consistency and that we want to close the loophole, I would be very open to that, but the Bill will not do all the things we want unless we are clear that it does not matter that a person thinks it is reasonable to grab a woman by her breasts to express their sexual interest in her—most other people would not. This Bill is about those commonplace forms of public harassment—24,000 women every single day experience harassment—and it needs to be tightened up.

I hope Committee members understand where I am coming from with these amendments, and I hope they will find common cause across the House. I look forward to what the Minister has to say and to hearing how we might take the issue forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Dines]

I understand that point.

Section 4A makes it an offence if someone

“uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or…displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting”

if both the intention and the effect of the behaviour, or the display, are to cause another person harassment, alarm or distress. It provides that the offence

“may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and the person who is harassed, alarmed or distressed is also inside that or another dwelling.”

There are two specified defences to this: first, that the defendant was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other building; and secondly—this has been the focus of some of the debate—that the defendant’s conduct was reasonable.

The section 4B offence introduced by clause 1 of the Bill will inherit and build on the provisions of section 4A. Subsections (1) and (2) of proposed new section 4B provide that the new offence will be engaged when a person commits an offence under section 4A and does so because of the sex of the person towards whom they are directing their conduct or because of the sex that the defendant presumed the other person to be.

Subsection (3) of the new offence makes two clarifying provisions. The first is that it does not matter whether there are additional motivations behind the defendant’s behaviour as well as the victim’s sex, as long as the victim’s sex was one of the motivations. The second is that the defendant’s motivation need not have been one of achieving sexual gratification; of course it could have been, but there are many other reasons why a person might decide to harass someone on account of their sex.

Subsection (4) of the new offence provides that the maximum sentence for a person found guilty of the offence would be, if they were tried in the magistrates court, a term not exceeding the general limit that the court can impose or a fine or both, or if they were tried before the Crown court, a maximum of two years’ imprisonment or a fine or both. That contrasts with the section 4A offence, for which the maximum sentence is six months. Since the maximum sentence for the new offence will be two years, which is above what the magistrates court can impose, the new offence will necessarily be capable of being tried in either the magistrates or the Crown court—triable either way, in the formal language—whereas the section 4A offence can be tried only in a magistrates court, or summary only, in the formal language.

Subsection (5) of the offence states that if a person is tried in the Crown court for the new offence under subsection (1) and is acquitted for that offence, the jury may still find them guilty of the section 4A offence. I commend the clause to the Committee. The new offence that it introduces will play a crucial role in ensuring that everyone—women in particular—can feel safe on our streets.

Clause 2 contains the standard provisions about the commencement, extent and short title of the Bill. Subsection (1) provides that the Act will extend to England and Wales. New subsection (1A) introduced by amendment 3 would place a caveat on that, to the effect that a provision introduced by the consequential amendments in new clause 2 would have the same geographical extent as the provision it amends. The practical meaning of this is that the amendment to the Police Act 1997, which relates to Scotland, would naturally extend to Scotland. The rest of the clause confirms that the provisions of the Act will come into force in line with the commencement regulations made by Ministers, as confirmed in the Act’s short title. I commend the clause to the Committee.

I thank Members for their contributions to the debate. These are long-standing issues, and I am sure we will debate them again. My Department will look very closely at whether this is the time for a sea change in the message in relation to intent and reasonableness.

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the chance to respond to the debate. It has been a relatively short debate, but it has successfully highlighted, first, the strong support there is for making this historic change to the law and, secondly, the desire and intention on both sides of the Committee to ensure that we take this opportunity to get it right. The contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North and the hon. Members for Walthamstow, for Edinburgh West and for Birmingham, Yardley all point in that direction.

I am grateful to the Minister for her clear statement that she and her officials and colleagues in Government will reflect on the points that have been made, with a view to responding to them on Report and Third Reading. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walthamstow for indicating that this is a probing amendment, and it has afforded us the ability to do just that.

Let us step back and reflect on where we are. Everyone agrees that we need to make this change in the law, but the hon. Member for Walthamstow and others have rightly focused on the question of intent. It is clearly a matter of common consent that a man who harasses a woman in public on the grounds of her sex should not be able to escape conviction simply by asserting that he did not intend to cause alarm or distress. That is not acceptable, and it is not the intention of the Bill.

On Second Reading the hon. Lady introduced the interesting and quite powerful concept of foreseeable harassment. We are talking about whether such conduct at the time is foreseeable. The graphic examples that Members have given fall into the category of behaviour that is clearly foreseeable as liable to cause harassment, alarm or distress, so there could not be a risk that that could be cited as a defence on the basis that the perpetrator did not intend to cause that. There are various ways of addressing that.

The hon. Lady helpfully referred to other legislation that the House has passed and, in so doing, no doubt reflected on precisely these issues. It is always beneficial to be able to draw on debates that have concluded satisfactorily, with the further advantage of maintaining consistency in the law. On the suggestion that the hon. Lady made, I am grateful for the Minister’s assurance that we will follow it up.

[Karen Bradley]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on getting the Bill to this stage. It will be a fantastic Act of Parliament once it has passed through its final stages.

My right hon. Friend talks about other offences. It must be worth looking at how juries have interpreted other offences and whether those offences have led to successful prosecutions. If this language would help to get prosecutions—because it has been shown that that has happened in the past and lay members of a jury could understand the offence in a way that they perhaps would not understand it without that wording—it must be worth considering adding the wording to the offences.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend, a former Home Office Minister, makes a characteristically well-informed point about having the right intentions to make this an Act of Parliament that will not just sit on the statute book, but have a material effect on prosecuting perpetrators. As I said on Second Reading, we want to avoid the need for a large number of prosecutions by making it crystal clear to everyone that such behaviour is unacceptable and is a serious criminal offence. We should look at that and reflect on it.

It is fair to point out, as the Minister did, that the guidance in the explanatory notes to the Bill makes it clear that listing behaviours that are in scope establishes, in effect, that such behaviours would not be considered a justification that could overcome the question of intent and unintentionality. I will not go through the list that the Minister mentioned. One means would be to refer to other legislation. Another might be to consider the examples currently included in the explanatory notes and whether there might be a way to give them greater prominence so that prosecuting authorities, police forces and courts could take them into account. I hope that she will consider that as well.

[Stella Creasy]

In thinking about how to get this right, perhaps it would also be helpful to clarify that other forms of harassment legislation look for a course of conduct because they generally cover experiences in which we think somebody might have had a number of interactions with their victim. In this case, however, we are talking about the first time that people interact with people. The challenge is whether those ideas about “boys will be boys” and the clumsy attempts at trying to get somebody’s attention become even more part of the discussion about whether it was harassment.

For the magistrates who deal with these cases, it is even more important that we are clear that if somebody says, “I just thought that if I slapped her bottom, she would notice me,” that is not reasonable, because in today’s era slapping somebody’s bottom is not the best way to get their attention or express interest in them. Because we are dealing with that first form of contact, we have to match in this legislation the way in which we have talked about what is reasonable in other legislation. Otherwise, the cultural barriers that we are trying to get through will come into play even more, because they will fill the vacuum that a course of conduct would otherwise fill.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Lady makes an important point that underpins the sense of consensus in this Committee. We need to be clear—so that the courts are clear and there is no ambiguity—that intended harassment will be punished.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

One point that is getting into a little bit of a muddle is that any unwanted touching is already assault. We are talking about a different offence. The harassment provisions under section 26(4) of the Equality Act 2010 set out clearly the reasonableness test and it is applied in that sense—that is, any unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or causing them humiliation or distress. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in effect we are transplanting the civil test into the criminal law?

On the issue of intent, about which we have had a lot of discussion, surely there is not only the issue of mens rea, which is one thing, but, as in other forms of law on things like nuisance and antisocial behaviour, if the person is reckless as to whether their conduct has a certain kind of purpose or effect, that is also enough for intent. Any form of touching would already be assault: we are not into a reasonableness test because it is a different offence anyway. Putting an arm round somebody or squeezing their bottom is a different crime. If someone says something sexual to a person, it is sufficient to say that if the court says they were reckless as to whether that would cause offence, the harassment offence is going to be made out anyway. It is in common with all equivalent offences of this nature.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend brings her extensive legal learning and experience to bear on this issue and makes two important points. First, we should consider, before Report, the interactions with other aspects of the law. That is certainly important and one of the key conclusions of this Committee. Secondly, we should reflect on the fact that, even as drafted, the Bill significantly moves the dial on the ability of prosecuting authorities to secure convictions for behaviour that would constitute the proposed specific offence of public sex-based harassment.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Greg Clark]

I am conscious that you have indulged me, Sir Gary, in giving me a second chance to speak so that I can respond briefly to the debate. I do not want to try your patience excessively, but I will of course give way to my hon. Friend.

[Siobhan Baillie]

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury is right, but there is a huge frustration that the laws we have in place are not resulting in convictions. The examples we have been giving in relation to touching should already be an offence, but it is important that, when we interrogate this legislation with examples, we do not use examples of touching to see where we will get to with it. It is for the Home Office and all of us on the Committee to come up with the examples we can interrogate. Otherwise, we will fall foul of the ministerial team because we will always be referred to the existing legislation, even though that is a frustration for us all.

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that wise and helpful steer for the work that the Committee has clearly agreed to do, with the Minister’s consent. I hope that those Members who have contributed to the debate will work together to address the points that have been made so that, when we come to Report and Third Reading, we might find a way to address them.

I thank you, Sir Gary, for your chairmanship. I put on the record my thanks to the Minister and her officials in the Home Office and to the excellent Clerks team in the House for their guidance through what is clearly an important but also very technical change to the law we are proposing. We are very grateful for that. I end by acknowledging the presence earlier of one Committee member: the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, who is currently chairing a Committee of her own but has indicated her strong support. We are very grateful for her appearance.

On that basis, and with gratitude for the indication from the hon. Member for Walthamstow that she will not press her amendment on the basis that we can consider its implications, I commend to the Committee my new clause and my amendments.

Amendment 1 agreed to.

[The Chair]

Stella, is it correct that you are not pressing amendment 5 to a vote?