Their activities are deplorable and rightly are not tolerated in this country. However, their activities are no less terrible if they take place overseas. We must therefore be vigilant in ensuring that effective measures are in place to make it difficult for these people to travel abroad to commit immoral and criminal acts. To put it simply, the aim of the Bill is to make it an offence for people to plan with others or to encourage others to travel abroad to have sex with children. Clause 1 of the Bill makes it an offence to conspire in England and Wales to commit certain sexual offences against children abroad.
Conspiracy means agreement on a course of conduct.
This definition of conspiracy would certainly include an arrangement between a tour operator and a client to provide travel facilities where the acknowledged purpose of the trip was the sexual abuse of children. However, it goes wider than that. Many of these people, although they make their own arrangements for travel and accommodation, nonetheless plan their trips with others of their kind before they go. Such activity may well amount to conspiracy and fall within the scope of the Bill. Clause 1 also sets certain conditions which must be satisfied before the conspiracy amounts to an offence under our laws.