Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

Used properly, these orders will protect victims, they will disrupt grooming, and they will prevent sex tourism. These reforms are the right thing to do, and for these reasons I will not press my amendment to a Division, but instead I ask all Members who think the police should be able to step in to protect girls like Alice to support the Government amendments to protect people from child sexual exploitation.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I begin by apologising to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) for not being present for the start of her speech?

I want to contribute briefly to the debate in order to congratulate the hon. Lady on the incredibly effective work she has done on the issue of grooming. She has a constituency interest, of course, as Operation Bullfinch was going on in Oxford and she has been monitoring what has been happening to the victims, but she was also instrumental in beginning the important Childhood Lost campaign, and I was present at its launch with the Minister, who gave a very effective speech. She has decided not to press her amendment to a Division, but instead has urged the House to support what the Government are doing. I am glad that the Government are following the recommendations of the Select Committee. I think all in the House who are concerned about the grooming of children and the crimes being committed against young people and children will want to see effective action being taken. What we have seen in some of the criminal cases is just the tip of the iceberg, and the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who has now been promoted to Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, gave very passionate and effective evidence to the Select Committee.

I support what the hon. Lady has said, I commend her on her marvellous efforts in this area, and I certainly hope the Government will continue to take forward the recommendations of the Select Committee—I see that the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who serve on the Committee, are present. We will revisit our recommendations six months after publication of the report, which will be at about Christmas time, when we will see what progress has been made, but I know that in the Minister we have someone who is determined to do something very serious and radical about stopping those who seek to exploit children, and I fully support what the hon. Lady has said.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I echo those congratulations. One thing I have discovered in this House is that it is possible for Back Benchers with a really good cause to push it and persuade a Government—whatever Government. The other thing to be said about this evening’s debate, at least until 7 o’clock, is that there is cross-House agreement —and, I hasten to add to the Opposition Front Bench, even the Liberal party is on board—and that has been the case on this area for some considerable time.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 is the legislation being changed tonight. Although the Act came in under a Labour Government, I am sure the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who was a Minister at about that time, would agree that there was huge cross-party support and thinking behind the scenes. Indeed, I was on the Home Office taskforce that did a lot of the work leading up to the child protection part of that Act.

Tonight, however, I want to focus on my new clause 7, which would amend section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, entitled “Possession of prohibited images of children”. Those prohibited images are pornographic images, and they may take various forms, including photographs, pseudo-photographs, cartoons and computer-generated images. They may be moving or still, too. The link between the possession and the viewing and actual action against children is generally accepted, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) said from the Opposition Front Bench.

The ludicrous situation is that an individual will be liable for prosecution for possession of photographs, pseudo-photographs, computer-generated images and so on, but not for the written word describing child sex abuse in pornographic, and often lurid, detail. All, including the written word in this form, are designed by the individuals concerned for sexual stimulation over the sexual abuse of children. If an individual wrote from his or her imagination a graphic description of child sexual abuse—which could, and often is, more emotive and more graphic than any picture of any form—even if he or she described one of those pictures or cartoons, that individual could not be prosecuted for the possession of this graphic material, even though for many of these individuals the written word is more powerful.

Let me give a simple example that I gave in speaking to my ten-minute rule Bill last Wednesday. CEOP provided me with the details of a man from Kent who wrote describing his wish to kidnap an early-teenage girl, strip her, sexually abuse her in an exceptionally unpleasant way and then, in an even more unpleasant way which I will not detail, slowly kill this girl. It is horrific, especially as his writings then inspired this individual to actually carry it out. He is in prison, hopefully for a very long time if not for ever, but the teenager is gone. One would have thought that the early discovery of the writings could have helped, but if the police had found them they would have had no power to act. This new clause has developed out of discussions with members past and present of the Metropolitan police paedophile unit and with the team leading CEOP in this area, and is supported by it, including Peter Davies.

CEOP last year published a research document on paedophile cases. It is mentioned in the report, almost as a sideline, that some offenders possess graphic notes or writings of child abuse. The Home Secretary has written to me on this matter stating she is asking for a report from CEOP on the need for this change. As the Minister will recall, some months ago both CEOP and the head of the Metropolitan police paedophile unit joined me in making a presentation to him. They brought some of the literature; I did not. The officers supported the need for this change. They explained that they had seen volumes of material in their search for illegal child abuse photographs. As the possession of such written material is not illegal, they obviously disregarded it, seeking only, at high speed and using computer technology, child abuse images.

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[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend was one of the most vocal in the criticisms of the way in which Rochdale council operated. Is he satisfied that the council understands the seriousness of the situation and that, under its new chief executive, it is putting in place the proper processes to make sure that the situation is monitored? It cannot stop it happening again, but is my hon. Friend satisfied that things have changed for the better?

[Simon Danczuk]

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s intervention. I am more satisfied than ever that Rochdale council is playing its part in tackling on-street grooming.

It is important to note that we still await the serious case review on Rochdale. I would think that it is imminent, so it should be available in the next month or two. I think it will raise questions—not much light has been cast on this—about the performance of Greater Manchester police and whether it acted effectively enough in terms of intervening. I suspect that the serious case review will show some failings in that regard. That relates to the proposals under discussion because, had they been in place at the time, not only would the tools have been available to the police, but an emphasis would have been placed on their need to use them.