Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill (Second sitting)

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Chalk]

Q With respect, that is a separate issue about how it sits in the canon of sexual offences law. My question is whether this proposal is fit for purpose. I am asking whether you can provide any evidence of culpable conduct that was not capable of being prosecuted to conviction because of a perceived deficiency in the law. Can you provide any example?

Mrs Miller: I cannot provide that example. What I can do is give you professional, expert opinion, including most recently that of Lord Pannick in the House of Lords, which says quite clearly that setting out the provisions, as currently drafted in the Bill, only to cover situations that are to do with sexual gratification and alarming and distressing victims, draws the piece of legislation too tightly. I have to say that I do not want to question the opinion of Lord Pannick.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Q Can I come back to the first amendment and hear a little bit more of the response to the argument that we would reverse a core principle in British law that somebody is innocent until proven guilty? I understand that is one of the main arguments why the amendment should not be put forward because, basically, it would make it very difficult for an alleged perpetrator to prove his or her innocence.

Mrs Miller: I think that is, if I might say, Sir Roger, something that seems to be a point of disagreement with the Government and a number of people who have provided evidence to me—not only Professor Clare McGlynn, but Lord Pannick and the words of David Ormerod. They all suggest that removing the two provisions that narrow the purposes of the Bill would not at all reverse the burden of proof. In fact, in doing so, it would be brought more in line with three quarters of the sexual offences in the 2003 Act.

Rather than in some way perverting the law, which was my layman’s take on what the Minister said in the Second Reading Committee, the amendment would more likely bring this piece of law into line with other offences under the Sexual Offences Act. There is no requirement in criminal law to specify particular motives for criminal offences—only in exceptional circumstances. The Government have not said why this would be an exceptional circumstance.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

Q Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. The reasons for the current speed and scope of the Bill are that, first, it addresses that gap in the law that has long been recognised; secondly, closing that gap is very uncontroversial; and, thirdly, the proposed reform follows provisions that are already there in Scotland.

In relation to the amendments and broadening the scope of the Bill, such as to look at distribution, as you said earlier, would it not be better for the Government to engage maybe with the Law Commission to produce a report and to make considered recommendations on the existing law and the need for reform in those areas, so that they can take proper time to consider how we tackle those issues? In the meantime, we can plug that gap that we know exists.

Mrs Miller: Thank you for your questions. I will pick up your words to take “proper time” over this. I think the Government should take proper time over the whole of the Bill. In potentially rushing it through, we could end up with a piece of legislation that is not doing what the Government set out for it to do, which is to close a loophole in the law.

Far from it, it could be putting in place a piece of legislation that exacerbates loopholes and gives perpetrators the opportunity to say, “Well, do you know what? I was only doing it for financial gain. I wasn’t doing it to harass the victim or for sexual gratification. I was simply doing it so that I could get 100 quid from an online site. I didn’t even know the name of the victim, so I couldn’t have been harassing them or humiliating them, and I certainly wasn’t getting sexual gratification from the images.” In rushing this through, for the best possible motives, we may end up with a piece of legislation that does not close that gap.

On amending the Bill to cover distribution, I say to Mr Thomson that following the introduction of the Scottish Act, a piece of catch-up work had to be done. As I mentioned, a piece of legislation had to be passed in 2016 to close the gap created by the fact that the original Act did not cover distribution. Perhaps I will point the Committee towards some further evidence here. The Bill is very much founded on what was put in place in Scotland in 2012. A lot has happened since then to the way the online world works and the way other countries deal with exactly the same problems with regard to images.

I am somewhat surprised that the Government do not want to look at precedents other than Scotland to get a better solution. For instance, why would the Government not want to look at what is happening in New South Wales, where a law was introduced that covers all intimate images that are taken and potentially distributed? Why would they not look at the Irish commission’s proposal, which again establishes a core offence and, rather than focusing only on upskirting, includes all intimate images that are distributed non-consensually? My question is: why Scotland? Why not try to do a proper job and look at what other countries have done far more recently?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ross Thomson]

Q What you have said about consent and what needs to be done in primary and secondary schools was interesting. When I was on the Education and Skills Committee in the Scottish Parliament, we did an investigation. Believe it or not, young women going to university still did not understand the concept of consent. A number of organisations were going in, during freshers week and the rest of it, to educate people on that point. Do you think more needs to be done on that aspect, going into further and higher education? In terms of the people you have been working with, the victims who have experienced this kind of horrific practice, what has the impact been on them?

Lisa Hallgarten: I must admit, I cannot answer the second point because I do not have any direct evidence of the impact on individuals. On your first point, around consent, it is extremely worrying that people could get to the end of their school life without having fully understood sexual consent and what their rights to bodily autonomy are. However, it is not surprising when so many young people do not get an opportunity to learn about those things in school.

One of the things I would say is that we are very disappointed that the Government are taking so long to make a decision about whether personal, social and health education will be made statutory in school, and we are very disappointed at the one-year delay in mandatory relationships and sex education. These are the subject frameworks within which consent can be fully explored from the earliest years of school right up until the end of school. We feel like these subjects have always been marginalised. RSE and PSHE have always been the Cinderella subjects in school, and we feel they should be front and centre in terms of people’s personal development and prevention of crime.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Q I am glad you mention the educational aspects of the law we are passing. I am a secondary school teacher, I taught PSHE, and I could see how this would be a powerful way of engaging with young people about what is okay and what is not. We are looking at whether we are happy with the Bill or whether there is scope for amending it even more, so I want to get a feel for whether you think these two motivations—doing it for humiliation and causing distress or for sexual gratification—will this do the job, or whether you think making it even wider would help the discussion? Do you think we have enough in the Bill as it stands to have a useful conversation with young people about what is okay and what is not?

Lisa Hallgarten: In terms of having conversations with young people, the kind of nuance you are talking about is probably not going to have any traction either way. Knowing that something is illegal gives a strong message that it is wrong, but much more important than understanding that it is considered to be wrong is understanding why it is considered to be wrong. Talking about the distress it causes and the impact it has on its victims is probably as important as just saying something is wrong. We know that when you tell young people something is wrong, that does not necessarily seep through, as opposed to exploring with them what somebody might feel to be a victim of this. As for whether the law will be more or less effective depending on the wording of the clauses, I would think that that is probably not that relevant for young people.

My concern with the law would be whether it is clear that it can be implemented in a way that has some form of nuance. Some very good work was done by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety around sharing sexual images and an understanding that when young people share sexual images they have made, it has to be in the public interest for a prosecution to go ahead. My concern would be to have any Bill on this that unnecessarily criminalises a young person who does not fully understand why what they have done is wrong.

[Mary Robinson]

Q It is probably a little bit late in the day, but would you be able to say briefly what Brook is and what work you do? I have grasped it, but it may be worth putting it on record. When you talk about the effect on children, we heard Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt saying earlier that sexual offences have gone up 8% or 9% in the past year, so there is an increase in this type of crime. What sort of impact would that have on the young people you work with?

Lisa Hallgarten: Brook is a young people’s sexual health charity. We currently have clinical services in 10 areas of England, and we deliver sex and relationships education in about 10% of schools in England. We also develop resources for teachers, so we cover areas all around young people’s sexual health and relationships. In terms of the increase in offences, we know from the Women and Equalities Committee report, “Sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools”, that there are incidents in schools at a very early age. Quite often they are not dealt with seriously, and schools feel slightly at a loss as to how to respond to incidents.

We would like to see clear guidance for schools on how to deal with what they may see as insignificant incidents at primary school and upwards. They may see these incidents as innocent, not necessarily because the incident is more serious than that, but because dealing with it in a serious structured way starts to give a message to children that it is not acceptable. There is a sense that if you do not deal with it early and do not give those messages strongly early, then those incidents are likely to become more serious.