Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

People always say this, but I actually mean it: it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I express my thanks and those of the Labour party to the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells for the opportunity to have this longed-for conversation and to start to build the legislative framework.

The right hon. Member was drawn out of the legislative lottery, which is an odd quirk of this place. At the time, I noted—I mean no offence to him—that there were more people in the top 10 called Greg than women on the list. Hearts sank somewhat for some of us in the room, as they did for charities such as Plan and Girlguiding that have been working on the issue and trying to find a sponsor, so it was a relief that the right hon. Member immediately and clearly wanted to do it. I thank him for allowing us to have this conversation and move the legislation forward.

As we have heard in today’s very reasonable debate, including in the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, the Labour party stands ready and willing to work with the Government before the Bill’s final stages so that we can all agree without dividing the House. Nobody wishes to divide the House on the issue; we wish to sing with the same voice. I make that offer to the Minister.

I am not blessed with daughters, unlike others who have spoken. I am blessed with sons—I have two teenage sons. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow made an important case about what people ought to know and how they ought to be reasonable. My sons know that you don’t shout at women in the street and that you don’t find your way into their heart by touching them up in a crowded place. My sons know that, not out of any spectacular parenting on my part but because they are reasonable human beings.

When our children were young teenagers—they are basically adults now, which I do not like to admit because it makes me feel old—my husband and I were in a park in south London. A woman was jogging past us. There were two men sat on a bench: it was 4 o’clock and they were drinking cans of lager, having a perfectly nice time. The woman jogged past and they started shouting at her about her arse and her physique. She was none the wiser: she had headphones in, though not out of design on her part, I should have thought.

I did not even notice that this bad thing was happening, because I am so used to it—I am so used to this sort of thing happening. My husband turned on his heels and absolutely blazed the two men, not even for what they were doing to the woman, but for doing it in front of his sons: “Don’t teach my children that this is the way to behave. Don’t ever do that.” Obviously they gave him some lip back, but the next time they go to shout at a woman, they will look around in that moment and they will stop. It is not reasonable, and they ought to know that it is not reasonable, but it made me feel incredibly sad that because that behaviour is standard, I did not even notice it.

On the reasonableness of men, I should mention that after the Sarah Everard case, women came forward and described all the stuff they have to do to keep themselves safe. They described the keys in the hands, the headphones in, the heads down on the train—“Don’t talk to me, don’t touch me.” We all know that; we have all done it. It is important to say that the huge weight of that burden falls on young women. A school uniform is a red rag to a bull, which is terrible.

When we were all saying that we did all this stuff—thinking about how we were going to dress and how we were going to get home, tagging our friends, calling each other—my husband said to me, “If you had the time back, and you had the level of detail that you have lived your life at since you were about 10, you could make a feature-length stop-frame animation film as good as ‘Wallace and Gromit’. That is the level of detail and time that has been taken off you as an individual.” That was labour that he did not have to do, as a man.

In the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow is putting forward, all I think we are asking for is not to make the victim do the labour. We have done enough labour and put in the work to provide security for women. As individuals, we have done the state’s work for generations. In every rape case and every sexual violence case, there is still the problem that the person doing the labour, both in the investigation and on trial, is the victim. We have an opportunity to take that labour away.

We all want to see this legislation on the statute book. Anyone who says it will mean loads of people ending up in prison has never been at a trial relating to violence against women and girls. Hope springs eternal that anyone will go to prison for anything! We have a real opportunity here, but as the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North says, we have to make sure that this legislation is the beginning and that we make it as good as possible. What we should not do is put the labour on the shoulders of the victims.

I think I have been positively manny in my response. People come back at me saying that harassment is “banter” and that boys will be boys, but I hate that idea because I think much more of men than that. I think men are capable, brilliant human beings who can make choices. When they make choices to do bad things, it is nothing to do with boys being boys. They are not base or inhuman. They can control themselves. They are cracking—I raised two of them! They are not without control over their own faculties. It is not “boys will be boys”; it is “abusers will be abusers”. That is the top and bottom of it. I thank all hon. Members, and we obviously support the Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)]

It is a pleasure to appear before you, Sir Gary. I confirm that the Government support the legislation, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells for his work on the issue.

I remind hon. Members about the effect of the Bill, as it stands. The Bill provides that if someone carries out behaviour that would fall under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, intentionally causing someone “harassment, alarm or distress”, and does so because of the victim’s sex, they could receive a longer sentence of up to two years.

My right hon. Friend has already set out the effect of his amendments, but I will confirm the Government’s position. New clause 2 and amendments 2 to 4 are purely consequential. They will ensure that the scope of the other statutes is unaffected by the Bill.

New clause 2 will add the new offence of sex-based harassment in public to schedule 1 to the Football Spectators Act 1989. Schedule 1 is a list of the offences that will generally cause a person to be issued with a football banning order

“unless the court considers that there are particular circumstances…which would make it unjust”.

An FBO prevents a subject from attending UK football matches and may place conditions on them on match days, for example by forbidding them from going to a particular city centre or being within a certain distance of a stadium. It can require them to report to a police station in connection with matches overseas.

Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, the offence on which the Bill builds, is listed in schedule 1 to the Football Spectators Act 1989. As that is the currently available offence for prosecuting someone who deliberately harasses another person on account of their sex, such a person should be issued with an FBO, but in future such a person would instead be convicted under section 4B. If we do not add the new offence to schedule 1, such a person could slip through the net and escape an FBO. The amendment will prevent that consequence and help to ensure that those who engage in sex-based harassment cannot sully the beautiful game.

New clause 2 will also add section 4B to the provisions listed in schedule 8B to the Police Act 1997. The legislation is devolved in Scotland, but with the agreement of the Scottish Government we seek to make the amendment here; it is right that when a consequential change arises from a UK Bill, we should make the necessary amendment ourselves wherever possible, in the interests of not unduly troubling our colleagues in Holyrood with the effects of our legislative changes. Schedule 8B lists the offences for which a person’s conviction, even if spent, will be disclosed on a criminal record certificate, unless certain conditions apply that relate largely to a period of time having elapsed since the conviction. Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 is listed in the schedule. Adding a new public sexual harassment offence will ensure the maintenance of the Act’s existing coverage, thus ensuring continued safeguarding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I apologise if I was not listening correctly, but the Minister mentioned intent. I am not sure that, in simply reiterating the question from the hon. Member for Walthamstow, the Minister gave us an answer. Is she going to give us an answer about intent?

[Miss Dines]

To be able to get forward to the next step of the offence, the prosecution must always prove intent, so we would not get to the statutory defences until we have dealt with intent, and intent depends on the circumstances. I think we all know that it is all quite obvious, although I and the Government are willing to look at a better form of wording. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend feels passionately about this issue, and it is something that will be considered very carefully.

[Stella Creasy]

I thank the Minister for her time looking at this, because I have spent many hours doing so. I pay tribute to the Clerks, who were incredibly patient as we worked through the almost circular logic of when intent comes into this offence, partly because it is not a new offence; it is a kind of offence-plus, which is where some of the challenges about the decision on intent could be.

With the Government’s support on Report, we could learn lessons from other protections from harassment and other harassment legislation about the reasonableness test and where it comes in. I know that that would get support from the Opposition and the Minister’s colleagues, and it could clarify the point at which a defendant could claim reasonableness. That may be the way to do it, in the same way that this offence-plus also brings in the concept of discounting whether sexual gratification was part of the process. There will clearly be a point at which somebody decides whether it is a 4A or 4B offence, and that seems to be the point at which we could be clearer about the intent and whether somebody reasonable would know about it. We could put that in the Bill to give directions to judges and magistrates about how to interpret “reasonableness”, which is what I think we are all looking to get to. I hope that that is a helpful intervention to clarify where I think there is space to marry the two different types of legislation together.

[Miss Dines]

The hon. Lady makes very interesting points, and I know she is particularly interested in intent. It is right that we need to prove intent as part of the offence. I would question how much of a barrier this is in relation to the sorts of behaviour that the Bill is intended to address. I remind right hon. and hon. Members that the explanatory notes suggest five examples of behaviour that the Bill would cover, and I know the hon. Lady will be very aware of them. They are:

“(a) following a person (for example, deliberately walking closely behind someone as they walk home at night);

(b) making an obscene or aggressive comment towards a person;

(c) making an obscene or offensive gesture towards a person;

(d) obstructing a person making a journey; and

(e) driving or riding a vehicle slowly near to a person making a journey.”

I ask right hon. and hon. Members whether it can be plausibly claimed that a person carrying out that sort of behaviour does not actually intend to cause harassment, alarm or distress. It is not benign behaviour; it is almost as if that behaviour speaks for itself.

[Jess Phillips]

I agree, and I am sure everybody in this room would say that. I have sat in courtrooms and heard cases of people having been burned with an iron, and it has been argued that it was reasonable that that happened, so excuse us for trying to make sure that the Bill is belt and braces! We have all sat through people saying it is reasonable that a woman was strangled to death while she was having sex. It seems fanciful to the reasonable, of course, but it happens every day.

[Miss Dines]

I am grateful for that intervention. Of course, there are lots of different types of offences, and the circumstances that are explained are normally—I will not say “more serious”, because all these offences are serious—higher-level punishment serious offences. The Government have worked very hard in this area with the non-death strangulation measures that have been brought forward, and we seek the Labour party’s support for those sorts of measures. To some extent I agree with the hon. Lady, and to some extent I do not. For every matter that comes before the courts, it depends on the circumstances of the case. But things do evolve, and I accept that point.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Miss Dines]

May I make a little progress? Things do evolve. Perhaps some people in the 1970s would have thought that following somebody closely in a car to pay them a compliment was acceptable. We now know that it is totally unacceptable; things evolve. Quite rightly, we know that such behaviour is certainly not benign. The climate is thankfully very different now and there is much greater awareness, but there is always more to do. If it can be plausibly claimed that somebody who does that was doing it without intent, we would have to get to the reasonableness defence.

[Christine Jardine]

I accept entirely that things have evolved since the 1970s, but they did not evolve on their own. It took a lot of work, like that which we are trying to do today on reasonableness. If we allow the opportunity to pass, people will look back and say, “How did they let that slip through the net? Why did they not address it? Why is it still reasonable for someone to be burned with an iron, or strangled during sex, or accosted in the street? Why is that still acceptable?” Evolution in this area does not happen on its own. It takes a lot of work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Dines]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. My question is whether it could be plausibly claimed that such behaviour is not intended. I do not doubt that some defendants will try to claim that they had no malign intent when they walked closely behind someone at night, for example—defendants will try anything—but it would not be plausible, and I do not believe it would succeed.

There may be some other types of behaviour where intention to harass is harder to prove. I am reluctant to say that they are less serious, because all public sexual harassment behaviour is serious, but we are talking about relative degrees of severity. Perhaps an example is a wolf whistle in a crowded place in broad daylight, at some distance from a victim. Let me stress immediately that such behaviour is very far from okay. It is demeaning and objectifying to the woman, and has no place in our society, but it is perhaps the type of behaviour where non-criminal responses are more appropriate. I remind hon. Members of our Enough campaign, which doubtless they have seen. An intention test can usefully differentiate behaviour where the criminal justice path is the right one from behaviour where societal interventions are more appropriate.

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way. A few years ago, when I left Parliament late at night and I walked up the steps to go to the underground, a young man—I was probably old enough to be his mother—walked up behind me, and slid his arms around my neck and then slowly round my breasts. He was trying to persuade me that I wanted to go to the Red Lion pub with him. I was very clear that that was not acceptable and I was not going to go. He followed me all the way down the street and I had to be quite physical to get him off me.

In that instance, he believed his intent was to charm and seduce me. He thought that that was an acceptable way to approach somebody. The difficulty with this legislation as it is currently constructed is that he could say in court, “My behaviour was reasonable—I thought it was reasonable.” In other forms of harassment legislation, that concept of reasonableness could be tested by whether anybody else would think it reasonable, but that would not come into play here, because of this difference in how we define what harassment is in different pieces of legislation. This is not about whether we could prove intent per se; it is the gap between how we define harassment in other forms of legislation as opposed to under public order offences, because they are about the first time somebody has contact with somebody.

I know the Minister said she and the officials will look at this. I hope they will. I hope we can clarify that it is not about whether something is serious and it is not about whether someone has intent; it is specifically about this concept of who decides whether behaviour is reasonable, so someone can mount a reasonableness defence. I am sure that young man would argue until he was blue in the face that I just could not take a compliment. That was not a compliment. It was harassment. It was intimidating and it was scary, and it is exactly the sort of behaviour the Bill is designed to capture—but he would have that defence unless we close the loophole. That is what we are getting at.

[Miss Dines]

I respectfully suggest that that stark example supports my position—that it would be so obvious what he was doing, and what he intended, that the defence would very easily be wiped away. But we need to keep that defence for the one or two circumstances where it should be reasonably argued.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. I wish to follow up the example of the hon. Member for Walthamstow with a very different example, which I have used previously in the Chamber.

A young woman came to speak to me. Her job was pushing trolleys around a supermarket car park. She used to shelter by the security guards for all of lunchtime. I said, “Why? Surely lunchtime is the best part of the day?” She said, “No, because that’s when the builders come.”

Now, I recognise that we are now castigating an entire category of man, and I apologise for doing so, but they would turn up in their vans and harass her while she was pushing her trolleys. This was at the height of covid. She wore a beanie hat, a mask, a thick puffer jacket, leggings and boots; and a man walked up to her, put his hands either side of her face, and said, “You are too beautiful to be doing a job like this.” Can we discuss what the intent and the reasonableness is there? That is a clear case of harassment on the grounds of sex, but it is not as stark as the case that the hon. Member for Walthamstow shared.

[Miss Dines]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that example. I personally think that it is just as stark, and that it is just as easy to knock down the defence, because the intent is so obviously there. Intent is not a fanciful legal device. It is something that is pretty obviously stated, and a jury, judge or magistrate—whoever it is—would very easily be able to knock the defence away, but I do value the point that my right hon. Friend makes. The Government have accepted that they will look at that again, and I very much enjoy hearing these interventions.

The Government’s view is that even though these amendments would have the desired effect, they would not be necessary to criminalise the type of behaviour that concerns most of us here, but I do take seriously the concerns that lie behind them and I will give them further consideration. In the meantime, I suggest that the hon. Member for Walthamstow, having probed with quite a lot of debate, and made her point very forcefully, should perhaps not press the amendments.

Moving on to substantive matters more generally—I know that I have taken up a great amount of time—I speak in support of clause 1, which creates the new offence at the heart of the Bill by inserting a new criminal offence within the Public Order Act 1986 as a new section 4B. The offence will be dependent on the behaviour that falls within section 4A of the Act—namely, that of intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress—and will provide that if someone committed behaviour under section 4A, and did so because of the victim’s sex, they could receive a longer sentence of up to two years, rather than the six months mentioned in section 4A.

The approach of building on the section 4A offence reflects the Government’s view that public sexual harassment behaviour is already covered by existing criminal offences, most commonly that section 4A offence. Had we instead sought to create a wholly new offence, that would have entailed overlap with existing ones, which would be not only unnecessary but actively harmful, as it would create confusion about the law—exactly the reverse of what we are trying to achieve here.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. The argument is frequently put forward—as a former Home Office Minister, I have used it myself—that there will be duplication, and that that will be too much, but we need to find legislation that can be easily understood by the judiciary and interpreted properly, with proper training for police officers and others so that they can find the evidence needed. Sometimes an additional offence is not that harmful, because it will assist in getting the prosecutions that we all so desperately need. May I urge the Minister to consider that point in her deliberation about all the other points that we have discussed?

[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.