Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-16
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, has explained, this group of amendments all relate to what is commonly referred to as revenge porn, as provided for in Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. Amendments 216 and 217 seek to extend significantly the scope of the offence, but the Government consider that the offence is working well. I am pleased to see my noble friend Lord Faulks in his seat; as he said, there have been more than 60 convictions for the offence since it came into force in April last year The offence is deliberately tightly drafted to target those individuals who have disclosed private and sexual images without consent, and with the intention of causing distress to the individual depicted. We are not persuaded that a sufficiently strong case has been made for broadening the scope of the offence, as proposed by the two amendments The general effect of Amendment 216 would be to significantly extend the range of material that could be considered private and sexual for the purpose of the offence. Currently, the offence is drafted to capture material that is sufficiently sexually explicit that its dissemination would be likely to cause real distress to those depicted. The offence also provides that images that are photoshopped—for example, so that a non-sexual image of an individual becomes sexual—should not be covered by the offence. This is because the disclosure of such an image, though still distressing, does not have the potential to cause the same degree of harm as the disclosure of an undoctored photograph showing images of the kind referred to in Section 35(3) of the 2015 Act. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made some interesting observations to that end. To alter the definition of "sexual" as proposed in Amendment 216 would, in our view, unjustifiably extend the scope of the offence Regarding the extension of the offence proposed by Amendment 217, we see no need to capture those who threaten to post such images. The offence, rightly, deals only with the act of actually disclosing private and sexual images, as it is the disclosure of the images that causes the harm which criminalising this behaviour seeks to prevent. As my noble friend Lord Faulks says, threats to disclose could, depending on the circumstances, be captured by existing offences that tackle harassment, malicious communications or, of course, blackmail. It is also difficult to see what would be gained by including an intention to cause fear or alarm to the victim, as distress is sufficiently broad a term for these purposes. Amendment 217 also seeks to make it possible for the offence to be committed recklessly as well as intentionally. The offence is targeted at those who deliberately seek to cause distress to victims through the dissemination of private and sexual material. This malicious intent—the revenge element of revenge porn, so to speak—is a key feature of the offence and we believe it would be wrong to dilute this by applying the offence to conduct that is the result of recklessness rather than a deliberately malicious act. Similarly, the proposal to extend the offence to those who, "knowingly promote, solicit or profit", in relation to revenge porn material would shift the emphasis from those who disclose the relevant images with malicious intent, the mischief which this offence is intended to address.