Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-12-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Guy Mansfield (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support the amendment. I am conscious that the Bill is on Report. This is a probing amendment, but it raises an important and pressing point. I hope I shall be short. I make four points If this offence is taken on its own, I think we would all agree that two years is plainly an insufficient maximum. Let us assume for these purposes that an offender comes before the court, is not a murderer and has not been a party to the death of any victim, but has had access to the bodies and has done what Mr Fuller did. It appears that he committed many offences of sexual penetration of corpses to which he had access by virtue of his employment. It may not be common, but we simply do not know what someone may do in the future. It is an appalling prospect, but we simply cannot exclude the possibility that a non-murderous necrophiliac might offend in a similar way. I suggest that we must do all we can both to deter and to punish in that event. If there is no murder but a large number of offences, is 10 years really too long a maximum sentence for someone such as Mr Fuller I talk about punishment because it is impossible to contemplate the horror of a relative who learns that their deceased loved one was defiled in this way. We as society owe it to such a relative, who is truly a victim, to show that we respect the dead and will mark such behaviour in a way that demonstrates that respect When I was approached by the noble Baroness to help her on this matter, I asked the Library to do some research. It very helpfully uncovered materials relating to the debate that took place in 2003. There was the Home Office’s consultation paper of July 2000, and section 8.6 addressed this issue. It disclosed that at that time, somewhat to the authors’ surprise, there was no offence that made necrophilia illegal. The consultation disclosed that there was "no firm evidence of the nature or the extent of the problem", but agreed that "human remains should be shown respect" and noted that "relatives and friends would be deeply distressed" In section 9.2, that consultation addressed sentences for a range of offences. From my reading of the Government’s response in November 2002—I do not criticise anyone for this—it appears that the authors at that point may have proceeded on the assumption that the offence would follow and be additional to a charge of murder or manslaughter. In other words, it was not looked at on the basis of a stand-alone sexual deviant If we are looking for a comparator, brief research has disclosed what happens in Canada, where the offence carries a maximum sentence of five years. I question whether even that is sufficient in the worst case, but I leave it to others to consider To conclude, this is a most unpleasant criminal offence. It must be reconsidered as a matter of priority. The current sentence for the stand-alone offence is simply too low. I urge the Government to address this with dispatch and not to delay once the immediate clamour over the Fuller case has died down. It is not difficult. It simply needs a suitably steep maximum sentence to mark its gravity.