Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the Bill. I have seen something happen to a man’s kilt that was almost exactly as described by the noble and learned Baroness and equally embarrassing.

With great respect to those who tabled the amendment, I am not quite sure that they have found a solution to the problem they have identified for a reason I shall try to explain. New Section 67A has a number of subsections and, as I read it, subsection (1) describes the action of the person and subsection (3) describes the purpose for which the action is being taken or resorted to. The trouble with “invading the privacy of B” is that those words describe the action. The words in new subsection (1)(a),

“operates equipment beneath the clothing of another person”,

is an example of invading the privacy of that person by operating something beneath their clothing.

Therefore, I wonder whether the amendment is entirely right. The purposes are set out in new subsection (3) and my problem is that the wording of the amendment describes acts rather than purposes. We are in Committee and it might be worth reflecting on the aim—which I quite understand is being properly addressed by the words suggested.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, fully support the underlying objective of this legislation, and apologise for not having played a part in any of the earlier processes.

Reading these amendments today has given me pause for thought along the same lines as my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead. My noble friend Lord Pannick describes this as a manhole or loophole in the legislation that can be got round. However, the whole point, surely, of new subsection (2)(c) is to limit the application of this provision. You look for a purpose and then you define the purpose in new subsection (3). However, if you include within that any invasion of the privacy of B, frankly, you might as well strike out the whole requirement for a purpose. Whether, as my noble and learned friend Lord Hope said, this is to be regarded as a purpose at all, if you do what is set out in new paragraphs (a) and (b), inevitably you are invading the privacy of B. Therefore that makes it otiose to have any reference to a purpose at all; it is unlimited.

As for an unlimited provision, I am agnostic—or hesitant—as to whether that is a good idea, but it is no good persuading yourself that you are consistently with a purpose and then accommodating the amendment.

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

My Lords, I too apologise for not having been here at Second Reading, but I have had the opportunity of reading the short debate.

In Section 67 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, there is a mens rea, as it were, simply for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification. Unfortunately, one has to pose the question of why anyone is doing this at all—I think it used to be assumed that it must be for some form of rather strange sexual gratification—and this addition of “humiliating, alarming or distressing” is added to cover the possibility that there might be some other motive. Those words are familiar and often interpreted in one context or another in the criminal law, whereas I am unaware—I will be corrected if I am wrong—that the concept of invading privacy finds much resonance in the criminal law, although of course it is reflected in other aspects of our law, not least in Article 8 of the European convention.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, rightly said that we do not want anyone who should be capable of relying on a defence to have one in circumstances where it would be unattractive if they did, and he cited a particular instance of someone having a laugh. He then gave the game away by saying it would be unfortunate if they could say this despite the distress that might be caused to the individual who had been the victim of this. Whose laugh are we talking about? Presumably we are talking about misjudged humour on the part of the perpetrator, not the amusement of the victim of this invasion. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, that if there is to be a purposes clause, it is sufficiently wide. I think a magistrate directing himself or herself with the addition of a clerk would have no difficulty in considering this; nor would a recorder have any difficulty in directing a jury to consider this, so that if somebody said in their defence, “I was only doing it for a laugh”, they simply would not be believed.