Change of Name by Registered Sex Offenders

Debate between Paul Beresford and Sarah Champion

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I must congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) for putting the case extremely well yesterday and today. I was also fascinated by what the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) had to say based on her experience—and for people dealing with these individuals, it is some experience.

I will not repeat the exercise of describing the problem, or come up with any sort of solutions, but the United Kingdom has probably led the way on legislation dealing with the protection of children. We started that with a proactive approach—rather than a reactive one—which I think is the right way to do it. If it is possible, we get the offender before the offender has got the child. That is the thinking, in a way, behind what we are talking about today.

I went on a parliamentary police course with the Metropolitan police in the early 2000s, which included a session with the Met police paedophile unit. Most people read about cases on the front pages—or some other page—but they do not really know; they do not really have a feel of what it was like. That session with the unit was an enormous shock to me—an absolutely mind-boggling shock. It is unbelievable what some people will do to children.

I asked the then DCI Bob McLachlan, who was head of the unit—a relatively small one, which was a fraction of what it is now—a stupid question. I asked him if he could give me a wild guess about how many active paedophiles there were in England. This was 20 years ago, before the internet really got hold of it, and he said that there were enough active paedophiles in this country to have one for every street. He also said that 20% of them were female. Half of that 20% were females working with males, but the other 10% were females working without males. That has since changed—not the percentages, necessarily, but the numbers—because of the internet.

The biggest basic ground-level step, along the lines of protecting children proactively, was the 2003 anti-grooming legislation. It was a big step; we were the first country to do it, and it has been mimicked across the world.

I know a senior barrister who has worked on a considerable number of high-profile child-protection cases, both as a prosecutor and defender. She said to me, after a glass of wine, that these individuals are the slipperiest, most devious liars she has ever met. It must be expected that what is colloquially known as the “sex offenders list”—there is no actual list that we can look at, but that is the way that the papers put it—means that these individuals will try to get around the system.

They take jobs because the job is secondary to the primary thing they want to do, which is to abuse children. Many have tried to change addresses, and we had to change the law several times to overcome that difficulty. Many of them have got around, for a while, the attempts by the police or probation officers to inspect, but we changed that loophole.

Today, we are looking at another loophole that we can change. If the Minister, for whatever reason, is not going to take forward the ten-minute rule Bill, he can do what happened before we brought in the legislation on grooming. He can put together a small team to look at the problem and come forward, quickly, with legislation that is acceptable to the Department, and to us, to close that loophole. That is what David Blunkett did.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend was one of the first Members to speak to me about the risks that paedophiles, in particular, present to society. Does he agree that the biggest flaw in the legislation around changing names by deed poll is that it is entirely based on the honour and honesty of the sex offender to give the correct details to the current scheme? That is the loophole that we have to close.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I completely agree. Putting honesty and these individuals together is an almighty clash; they do not match.

David Blunkett set up a small team in the Home Office to look at the child protection legislation in 2003, and he asked me to join that small team, along with a man called DCI Dave Marshall. As we were starting to look at this, there was a terrible case in which an individual in London had rung a telephone number advertised in Texas. He asked, when the phone was answered, if they could provide him with a five-year-old child for sex. The Texan said, “Come on over; sure we can.” The individual said, “I can’t come over. Can you give me the number of somebody in London?” The Texan cop—because it was a sting—said, “Yes,” and gave the number of the Met police paedophile unit, fortunately.

When the individual rang there, the unit said, “Yes, we’ll provide you with a five-year-old child,” and, of course, when he knocked on the door, expecting a five-year-old child, he got a 6-foot-something police officer, who arrested him. But, the big problem was that they did not know for sure what legislation could be used to prosecute the individual, because he had not seen a child, had not touched a child, and so on. That is where we went back and came up with the grooming legislation.

There is now an opportunity for a loophole, and the paedophiles will constantly look for loopholes, but a loophole can be changed. I hope that, if the ten-minute rule Bill is not acceptable, the Minister will set up a small team of competent people, with both sides of the House represented, as well as police, officials and lawyers, to come up with something quickly to shut down the loophole, because it will be abused. I suspect that—as I have found when dealing with this type of legislation—the people who will avidly read the Hansard report of the debate will be paedophiles, and that some who had not thought of changing their names will now think of doing so and of using and abusing the loophole. Our children are too precious; we have to look after them. I want my grandchildren to be safe.