Home Affairs

John Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

That was quite an extraordinary speech. It did not focus on the Queen’s Speech. It did not focus on the Bills that were listed. Incidentally, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) should recognise that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre does not arrest—it passes information to individual police forces to deal with.

I was impressed with the list, and the Home Secretary, for the sake of the rest of us who want to speak, went through it quickly. She did not touch on everything; there is more there than she mentioned. I am here to say a personal thank you to the Ministers—

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

You are grovelling.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

No, I do not grovel; the hon. Gentleman knows that.

[John Robertson]

That is what it sounds like.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I will meet him on the rugby field and we will see.

I am coming to the point. After 12 or 14 years of working to try to bring legislative changes, with considerable success on, among other things, dealing with paedophiles, there is a tiny element—that last element, which has taken me 14 years—included in the Serious Crime Bill. It is little. The Home Secretary did not mention it. My specific interest is in part 5, clause 63. It has not been noticed by many. It is a change to help prosecute child sex abusers. The clause is headed simply, “Possession of paedophile manual”, and as I read the measure, the definition is broader than the sort of straight manual that one would see on car repair. That said, in the past much of this kind of material has been similar to a repair manual.

Two of my ten-minute rule Bills have effectively been on the same subject—I was supported by Paul Goggins, whose name has been mentioned several times. Such material has also been the subject of my continual pressure on Ministers of the previous Labour Government—including one who is present—and of this Government. The problem was first highlighted by the Home Office taskforce of which I was a member in 2001-02, which preceded the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Along with a few senior Met officers—particularly retired DCI Dave Marshall, who is highly respected in this area—I have persistently raised the issue ever since. Recently, CEOP has swung heavily behind the need for legal changes.

The existence of real manuals and their effect came to the fore when BBC 2 broadcast a three-part programme called “The Hunt for Britain’s Paedophiles” in 2002. It involved Bob Long of the BBC following the Metropolitan police paedophile unit for two years. The first of the three parts involved hunting down a group of individuals who, if my memory is correct, were members of a paedophile ring that had been abusing children in London since 1957—not quite 50 years. One of the more active members was a Julian Levene, who produced a manual on the grooming and abuse of children for the use of the members of the ring, and any others who were interested.

Many paedophiles write, either in hard copy or on a computer, guidance or descriptions of their abuse activities, whether real or imaginary. They are, in effect, manuals, and can clearly be seen as guidance. The Bill looks broad enough to catch such material. For many, the written word is more effective than child pornographic photographs, pseudo-photographs and so on.

I would like to give a simple example from CEOP. A man from Kent recently wrote describing his wish to kidnap an early-teenage girl, strip her, sexually abuse her and then, in an appalling way that I will not detail, slowly kill her. It is horrific, especially as his writings inspired him to carry it out. He is now in prison, hopefully for ever, but the teenager is lost. With this legislation, perhaps the early discovery of the writings could have helped, especially given that the police will have the power to act.

Having pondered, with legal help, over quite how to phrase legislation to cover this problem, I congratulate the Secretary of State and her Ministers on the ingenious approach that they have taken. It is broad, it is clever, it will do the job, and lessons have been learned from the Terrorism Act 2006. I also congratulate Ministers on following the approach of much of the child protection legislation. The change will be able to be used actively, proactively and retrospectively. I thank the Ministers again.