Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-09-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): I will continue for the moment. If I have time, I will happily take further interventions The reason the Government do not favour widening the scope of the purposes is that a blanket liability risks criminalising those whom we do not want to criminalise. The amendments could bring in serious unintended consequences and risk bringing too many people within the scope of criminal law. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke recognised, the amendments risk criminalising young children who are over the age of liability, which is 10, but who do not realise the impact of their actions and mean no harm when they carry out the act There is one further critical issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) mentioned. If all the purposes were removed by amendments 1 to 4, there would be no need for the prosecution to bring forward evidence of the perpetrator’s motivation of sexual gratification. That could mean that those who posed a threat to the public were not put on the sexual offenders register, because the issue had not been determined in court My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke highlighted the small number of prosecutions that have been brought, and highlighted the fact that we anticipate only a few more in the impact assessment. The reason for that, as paragraph 29 of the explanatory memorandum makes clear, is that there are already laws that catch this activity. What the impact assessment identifies are the new offences that we think will be caught by filling this narrow gap The hon. Member for Rotherham rightly stated that we need to change the culture, not lock up more offenders, and education is an important part of that. We recognise, however, the value of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and others made, and therefore I am happy to confirm that the Government will review the operation of these offences after two years of their coming into force. This will include working with the police and the CPS and reviewing cases so far brought I will briefly deal with sharing. Amendment 5 would create a further offence of disclosing and sharing an upskirt image. We in the Department share the intention and desire to ensure that the sharing of images is robustly dealt with. The best way to do that, however, is not by way of an amendment to the Bill. Legislating in one area alone is not the right way forward. The Government are already looking at this wider issue. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has already asked the Law Commission to look into online abuse The first stage of that review, which is an analysis of the existing law, will be completed in October, and I am pleased to confirm that following the completion of this first phase, the Ministry of Justice, working with DCMS, will ask the Law Commission to take forward a more detailed review of the law around the taking and sharing of non-consensual intimate images. This will build on the Law Commission’s review of online abuse and allow the Government to consider how to address this issue more widely, rather than just for upskirting images. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said, it is not appropriate to legislate in a piecemeal way My right hon. Friend also mentioned the Scottish changes in 2016. My understanding of them is that they were not specific to upskirting but created a separate offence in relation to the distribution of intimate images in the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016. This is the broader approach that we in government want to continue. In his amendments, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch suggests that offenders under the age of 18 not be put on the sex offenders register at all. We are concerned that there will be offenders under the age of 18 who need to be on the register, and only if we put them on the register will we protect victims who need protection now and in the future. He also suggests that we need to toughen up and put everyone on it who is over 18. That will diminish the effect of the register and not allow police resources to be concentrated. For those reasons, and in the light of the fact that we are offering a review of legislation after two years and a review of offences more widely, I hope that hon. Members will not press their amendments.