Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I am very well aware of the pressure in respect of today’s business, and I know that many right hon. and hon. Members have signed amendments that they want to debate later. I will of course attempt to keep my remarks as succinct as possible, but we are dealing with a very wide-ranging group of amendments on child protection issues, ranging from FGM to mandatory reporting to a new offence of child exploitation, so I do not think I will be able to match the Minister’s brevity in setting out the Government amendments. I will do my best, but it is important to recognise that this is an important grouping that needs to be fully debated. I shall deal first with Government new clause 8 and Labour amendment (a), new clause 3 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), and new clause 22, dealing with a new offence of child exploitation and tabled by the Labour Front Bench. I certainly welcome what the Government are trying to do with new clause 8, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her work on this issue which has led to it going high up the agenda. Her report on child sexual exploitation highlighted the particular issue that children and young adults were being ignored or seen as the problem or even the instigator, when the truth was that they were being abused. One of the recommendations of the report was that our legislation needed to reflect the vulnerabilities of children and the fact that children cannot consent to being abused. A proposed step towards achieving this was to remove the terms "child prostitute" or "child pornography" from legislation to demonstrate that any children taking part in these sexual acts were not instigators and consenting participants, but were being abused. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend is in her place, and she has already paid tribute to the Minister for tabling the new clause. It is very helpful, but I want to highlight some issues relating to it, which is why I have tabled amendment (a) In particular, I have concerns about the definition of child sexual exploitation, which is defined by new clause 8 as a situation where a child "offers or provides sexual services" to an adult. Let us be clear: this is about abused children. It is about a child being abused. They are not providing sexual services to adults; they are being abused and exploited, and our legislation should reflect the real nature of that relationship. Indeed, the purpose of the new clause is to ensure that the legislation reflects the fact that those subject to exploitation are victims, not instigators. I do not think moving from the term "child prostitute" to children as providers of sexual services is correct, and amendment (a) would correct that by moving to a definition of child sexual exploitation where a child engages in sexual activity with an adult. We would move away from the concept of the child as the provider or instigator of sexual activity. The term "sexual activity" is used extensively in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, so adopting amendment (a) would mean we have consistent and well-established terminology which will make legislation easier to apply. I hope the Minister will reflect on that and consider this amendment I would also like to raise with the Minister the wider consequences of new clause 8 in improving our understanding of child sexual exploitation and our response to it We will now have an offence of child sexual exploitation that will cover situations of child exploitation involving payment or photography, but those are just some of the examples of exploitation. I also have real concerns about the ancillary offences under sections 48 to 50 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. We will now have offences of arranging or facilitating sexual exploitation of a child, of controlling a child in relation to sexual exploitation and of causing or inciting sexual exploitation of a child, but none of those offences covers all child sexual exploitation. They provide only for child sexual exploitation involving payment or photography I want to put to the Minister the example of a scenario in which control is exerted through threats, intimidation or coercion, or in which a child is plied with drugs or alcohol. We should recognise that those are all forms of child sexual exploitation. However, the Government’s approach is to have an offence of child sexual exploitation involving payment or photography. Other forms of exploitation not covered by that specific offence would therefore need to be prosecuted under section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act for the general offence of arranging or facilitating commission of a child sex offence. That is a complicated offence to establish, however, because it relies on proving the commission of another sexual offence under the terms of the Act. In 2012, the latest year for which I have managed to find figures, there were just 32 convictions for that particular offence, and there have been only 130 convictions in five years. There is therefore a problem with the legislation: it is not working as effectively as we would all like it to That is why the Opposition have tabled new clause 22, which would create a specific offence of child exploitation for the first time. There has been a lot of comment about such an offence being put on the statute book. I have heard people saying that it could criminalise a parent for getting their teenage son or daughter to do the washing up, for example, because that could count as child exploitation. However, the country’s leading expert in this area, Peter Carter QC, says that to use that kind of argument is to "miss the significance of the word ‘exploitation’" The exploitation of children is, in and of itself, a serious matter that should be recognised in legislation. New clause 22 covers all forms of exploitation, from children being forced into begging or into working on cannabis farms to young girls being controlled by men and forced to submit to their sexual advances and abuse. It recognises that exploitation involves a wide spectrum, and the sentencing guidelines would reflect the fact that some forms of exploitation are more serious than others. Crucially, it would recognise that the exploitation of children is an offence in and of itself The new clause is about asserting the right of the child to a life free from exploitation. It is about saying that we will not accept the exploitation of children, just as we will not accept their abuse or their neglect. It would address some of the many problems that are preventing prosecutions under the Sexual Offences Act by moving from a situation in which we look at the commission of individual offences to one in which we look at people who control, manipulate and coerce children for their own ends. It would allow the police to step in where they could see an adult using controlling and coercive behaviour towards a vulnerable child, forcing them into situations involving sexual abuse, drugs, crime or forced labour Many prosecutions focus on particular criminal incidents, such as rape or sexual assault, but for victims of sexual exploitation, such incidents might be difficult to separate from the multiple assaults that they have endured. Such prosecutions might not give a true representation of the abuse that had been suffered. One young person has said: "I was pressurised to go to court. There needs to be a sexual exploitation law. My charge was for rape, this was the wrong charge. So many times it happened." Cases often do not get prosecuted because the young person is considered an unreliable witness. That could be because she was returning to perpetrators and found it difficult to break the contact with them. So practitioners say that the effects of exploitation as a result of duration of relationships, coercion and controlling behaviour are like the Stockholm syndrome, with which we are all familiar, but that is not being recognised in the current drafting of offences, because they all focus on separate counts of rape or sexual assault Separate exploitation offences with a focus on children will also enable the prosecution of cases where current legislation does not offer equal protection to all children under the age of 18. For example, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 establishes the age of consent as 16, and children aged 16 and 17 are afforded the additional protection of the Act only if the person who commits the sexual offence is a person in a position of trust in relation to them. Yet those in that age group are likely to be victims of sexual exploitation. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England report on sexual exploitation by groups and gangs estimated that out of 16,500 children and young people who are experiencing or are at risk of child sexual exploitation 28% were aged 16 and 16% were aged 17.