Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) on bringing forward this Bill. May I give particular praise to a number of speeches we have heard in the Chamber today? It is unfair to single people out, but I am going to, because I think there have been some brilliant speeches. I will highlight four: those of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire himself, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). They all made fantastic contributions to the debate in their own different ways.

I will say at the start that, despite what I would say is my rather unfair reputation, I have no intention of taking the clock down to 2.30 pm today. I am as keen to hear from the Minister as everyone else. But it is important that those of us who do not particularly support the Bill have an opportunity to express why. We have heard today that everyone agrees and shares the same sentiment—I will make this clear right from the word go—of the principles involved here as far as I see them; if we are asking whether the fact that someone is gay should ever have been a crime in any shape or form, the answer is quite clearly no, of course not. Should we think any less of anyone who was ever convicted of any of these crimes? No, of course we should not. I hope and believe that everyone in this House can take that as read.

The issue is whether we get involved in having a widespread and blanket pardon for these particular offences. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said of the approach taken by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), this is not quite as easy as it looks.

The hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) has unfortunately just left the Chamber, but I want to put on the record my praise for her intervention. I thought in that brief intervention she made one of the most powerful contributions in this debate. She made two very good points that should weigh heavily on the House. Her first powerful point was about whether a gay person should ever have to come out. Of course they should not. People’s sexual orientation is absolutely irrelevant. The moment when this country gets to the stage when sexual orientation is an irrelevance cannot come soon enough in my opinion. Like the hon. Lady, I look forward to the day when no one ever has to come out as gay.

The hon. Lady’s second point, specifically in relation to the Bill, was very powerful and is something that the Government might wish to consider; I would not say that it has changed my mind about the Bill, but it has certainly weighed heavily with me. As she said, this Bill having its Second Reading, going into Committee, then coming back for Report and Third Reading would inevitably mean that these issues gain more scrutiny in the House than if an amendment were simply accepted in the House of Lords and came back to the Commons for a debate of an hour or two, maximum—perhaps not even that—and was in effect nodded through without any further scrutiny. There is some merit in that point. The Government might want to consider it. I had not given it much thought before, but I thought she made that point very well.

I must say that when I first heard about this Bill, my initial reaction was to think that it sounded as if it should be titled, “The Re-writing of History Bill”—a concept with which I am not generally comfortable. Plenty of ugly, evil and wrong things have happened in the past, but they are what they are. It is very easy for us in the House today to criticise people who were here in the past—I did it at the start of my speech when I said that these things should never have been a crime—but there will be things that we pass in this House with the best of intentions about which MPs will doubtless come along in 100 years’ time and say, “It is absolutely disgusting that they passed those laws and offences at that time, and they should have been ashamed of themselves for doing it”.

We should always be slightly wary of imposing our modern-day judgments on the past—it is easy to do, but not always fair to the people who made decisions on the basis of what they thought were in the best interests of the country at the time. We obviously think they were wrong, but they thought they were doing what was right at the time.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that we should be a bit more concerned with people who are still alive and suffering, rather than our own vainglory in the future when we are dead?

[Philip Davies]

I was coming on to that point. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire made a fair point in that respect, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I shall come on to deal with her point in a few moments.

I was saying that we should be wary of getting into the habit—it seems that we are already in it—of always being anxious to apologise for things that other people have done in the past. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty, who is clearly a notable exception, we rarely apologise for the things that we have done. I suspect that the public are usually keener for us to apologise for the mistakes that we have made rather than taking the easy option of apologising for the mistakes that we think people made hundreds of years ago. Tony Blair is a prime example. He was very keen to apologise for slavery that somebody else had done hundreds of years previously, but he would not apologise for the mess he left in Iraq following the Iraq war. I suspect that most people would regard it as more worth while for him to apologise for the decisions that he took, rather than for the decisions that others took many years previously. I do not generally like that particular approach to politics, but I leave it there.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Craig Williams) was slightly chastised for it, I think he was absolutely right to pull up our friends from the Scottish National party for coming here and chastising the Minister for introducing something late in the day, going very slowly and all the rest of it. The Bill applies only to England and Wales, and the Minister is going virtually all the way that the SNP would like him to go—not fully, I appreciate, but he is going an awful long way to meet their requests. It is slightly churlish of SNP Members not to have given the Minister more credit for that.

Moreover, the Scottish Administration have not introduced this law, even though they have had plenty of opportunity to do so. It would be interesting to carry out a freedom of information request to see how many letters the Scottish Government have received from SNP MPs about introducing this particular law in the Scottish Parliament. SNP Members should be wary of criticising this Government, who have clearly gone a lot further than the SNP Administration have in Scotland. A bit of humility on that particular point would not have gone amiss.

On the substance, I said that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire made a good point—it was a rhetorical flourish, but still a good point—when he said that we should be more concerned about the living than the dead. There is something in that. The problem is that once we start going down this route, it becomes difficult to stop the juggernaut in its process. It can become difficult if people try to draw distinctions. For example, once we have pardoned Dr Alan Turing—I have not heard anyone say that that should not have happened—it becomes an intellectual nonsense to deprive other people of the same pardon who were convicted of exactly the same offences but did not have such an exciting life and achieve as much in their jobs as he did. Dr Alan Turing’s sexuality is irrelevant to his achievements. It should not have been because of his achievements that he was pardoned; he was pardoned for something which, as far as I can see, was irrelevant to them, and if he is pardoned for that, it becomes very difficult not to pardon other people.

I think the point that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire was rightly making is that once the Government have accepted that people who are deceased should be pardoned, it then becomes very difficult intellectually to ask why the same should not apply to people who are still alive. That is a fair point, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to it.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about the juggernaut and the various stages that might ensue. However, as my hon. Friend made clear in his speech, this is essentially a victimless crime. What possible harm can it do—rather than good, of course—to pardon people who, in essence, committed no crime at all?

[Philip Davies]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s sentiment, and I made that clear at the outset. My point is that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire has selected a certain group of offences. My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) made a very fair point, which people ought to consider. In the past, many other offences have been committed which I would term victimless crimes.

[Stewart Hosie]

Such as?

[Philip Davies]

The metric martyrs are a prime example. Steve Thoburn sadly died with a criminal conviction for selling produce in imperial measures. That, I would argue, was a victimless crime. The customers were perfectly happy to buy the produce and Steve Thoburn was happy to sell it. There was no victim, but he died with a criminal conviction. He still has a criminal conviction. He has not been posthumously pardoned.

[John Nicolson]

I am sorry, but I am struggling to make the connection with the metric martyrs, whom I do not recall being chemically castrated, arrested or tortured. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will remind me of that detail, which I have forgotten.

[Philip Davies]

I was not aware that the hon. Gentleman’s Bill applied only to people who had been chemically castrated and tortured. Is he now saying that that is the case? The point that he is making is a complete nonsense, and he must know that. I was responding to an intervention from the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who asked whether there were any examples of victimless crimes committed by people who had a criminal record and had not been pardoned, and I gave him a perfectly good example. Moreover, he was nodding in agreement when I gave him that example. [Interruption.] The Scottish National party has become so dominant in Scotland that SNP Members are not used to hearing alternative opinions. I am sorry that they are so intolerant of anyone who holds a different opinion from theirs. It does not reflect well on them.

My point is this. I think that the Bill would have been easier to justify if it had included all past offences and all past convictions for crimes which are no longer crimes, and which were victimless. That would have been a perfectly logical thing to do. I think it is very difficult to pick out only certain crimes to justify the Bill, rather than including all convictions for offences of that kind.

[Lyn Brown]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. At the beginning of his speech, he informed us that we might not be listening to one of his lengthy contributions, and said that he would sit down shortly in order to enable the Front Benchers to present their arguments. May I ask how long he thinks he might be? I ask simply because I want to put on record, very forcefully, the support of the Opposition Front Bench for the Bill, and I am worried that I shall not be able to get to my feet in order to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

We have an hour and five minutes left. About three hours have been taken up by people speaking in favour of the Bill. I have fielded four or five interventions during my brief comments so far. If people do not intervene on my speech, I will be able to get through it a bit quicker. It would be a sad state of affairs and a sad day for our democracy if the only speeches that were allowed to be heard in a debate were those in favour of the Bill. I am not sure if that is what the hon. Lady is arguing for. She has put on record her support for the Bill, and if she wants to say any more, she is very welcome to do so.

I am going to conclude my remarks, but it is important that the concerns that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe had while in government, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs described earlier, should be given a hearing. Legislation of this kind, and even the measure that the Government have agreed to in the Lords, will open up the probability of, and certainly the justification for, pardoning people who have been convicted of other crimes that are no longer criminal offences, and which we do not believe should be criminal offences, particularly those that were victimless crimes.

I hope that the Minister will address this point and tell us whether the Government intend to go further down this route, or whether they intend to finish here with these particular offences, in which case I would like to hear the logic behind that. For example, there are people who were found guilty of attempting to commit suicide when it was a criminal offence to do so. Are they not worthy of a pardon? I do not see why we should cherry-pick certain offences when there is a whole range of others that could be added to the list. People should be able to express these views.

I shall conclude my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I did promise you and the House that I would not speak for a great length of time. I think we all agree with the sentiment behind the Bill. Should these offences ever have been crimes? Obviously not. Should we think any less of the people who were convicted of them? No, we should not. But we cannot pass laws in this House that are simply based on worthy sentiment. Nor can we pass laws simply to send out a signal or some kind of message, despite the fact that we have heard this intention expressed in almost every speech so far today. If we want to send a message or a signal, that should be done by making a speech. Passing legislation is a very different thing.

The question should be whether this is the right kind of legislation. Should we go over these cases again? Will the Minister tell us how easy it will be to go through every single case in order to ascertain whether the activity that took place at the time still constitutes an offence today? For example, certain activities carried out in public still constitute an offence today. How will we know, when we look back over the records, whether a particular offence took place in public and would therefore still constitute an offence today? If that detail was not relevant to the prosecution at the time, it might never have been logged.

We should not underestimate the practical difficulties that will be involved, and I hope that the Minister will be able to explain how they will be dealt with. When we pass legislation, it should involve practical things that have to happen rather than worthy sentiments, and I hope that he will reflect on the detail involved. If the Bill goes into Committee and comes back here on Report, I hope that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire will engage genuinely with the people who agree with his sentiments but have issues about the practical application of the legislation. I can see from the detail of his Bill that he has tried to address some of these points. I acknowledge that he has done that, and I hope that he—unlike some of those who have been making sedentary commentaries about my speech—will accept that while we genuinely appreciate the sentiment behind his Bill, we feel that it is important to get the detail right. I hope he accepts that we want to do this for the right reason, and not just to send a message or as a form of gesture politics that will make us all look good and feel good about ourselves. That is not the purpose of legislation in this House. We all share the same sentiment, but I hope he will engage constructively with people who hold a different opinion.

The hon. Member for Livingston is back in her place, so I want to tell her that her earlier intervention was fantastic and that I hope the Minister will address her point. Instead of just accepting a Lords amendment that will receive virtually no scrutiny in this House, we can perhaps consider the Bill in more detail if it goes through to Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I have done a number of these private Members’ Bills on Fridays, and it is very unusual to be doing one where the choice before the House is not the private Member’s Bill or no Bill at all, but the private Member’s Bill or a legislative vehicle—the Police and Crime Bill—that will help us achieve our aims much faster so that we can deliver justice. However, there is also an important point. It is not for nothing that they say, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Intentions are not good enough when it comes to making law; we have to think through the unintended consequences of law, and that is what the Government’s approach tries to do.

[Philip Davies]

Perhaps the Minister would also like to make the point that if 100 MPs out of 650 had turned up to support the Bill, it would have got its Second Reading without any trouble at all. The problem is that it does not have the support of 100 MPs.

[Mr Gyimah]

We did not have 100 MPs go through the Division Lobby earlier. We have also had a substantial debate in which people in favour of the private Member’s Bill have spoken for well over three hours.