Criminal Justice Bill (Sixth sitting)

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley for offering a powerful dose of reality about what is happening and the risks. We know that abusers will find every possible gap and try to use them to perpetrate their abuse and these heinous crimes. We must follow them and close those gaps the best we can—or, even better, get ahead.

Clauses 11 and 12 make good the recommendations of the Law Commission in its 2021 “Modernising Communications Offences” report. The Minister described that as important and I echo her comments. The clauses also finish what was started during consideration of the Online Safety Bill. We supported it at that point, and the Bill was well scrutinised, so I will not rehash that debate.

The Government amendments extend the provisions to Northern Ireland. I wonder whether there is a different story about Scotland, because most of the Government amendments expand provisions to Scotland as well as to Northern Ireland. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.

I will finish on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley made about institutions. Throughout my time in Parliament, the issue of conversion therapies has been at the forefront. We wish that we were getting on with banning them today—goodness knows how much longer we will have to wait—but we know that very harmful self-harm practices can be part of those therapies. Will the Minister say, in responding to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, how accountability will fall in cases like that? That is important; if there is a gap for a certain organisation, perhaps we need to return to this. It might be that we will be assisted by the provision in clause 14 that, where a significant senior person in an organisation commits a crime, the organisation can be held accountable. Perhaps that is the way to close the gap—I do not know. I will be interested in the Minister’s view.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

My hon. Friends the Member for Birmingham, Yardley and the shadow Minister have made excellent points. Once we go into this, we start to find that there are areas we need to think out a bit more clearly. We may have to come back to this in due course, potentially in future legislation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley prompted me to think about the headteacher who committed suicide following an Ofsted inspection. The coroner’s court directly attributed that—partly, at the very least—to the institutional impact that that organisation had on her. Does my hon. Friend the shadow Minister agree that these are very important matters that we have to think through? Once we have let this issue out of the bag, so to speak, we have to very carefully consider the implications further down the line in terms of institutional abuse, because that is what it amounts to.

[Alex Norris]

I am really grateful for my hon. Friend’s contribution. I think that is exactly right. We will hear from the Minister in her reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley where the Government settle on that point. Certainly on the face of the Bill, institutions are left out. I do wonder whether clause 14 would give us the opportunity to reconnect institutions. I suspect that is not the motivation behind that clause, but it may work in that way. Those are pertinent questions that I am sure the Minister is about to address.