Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of Generation Rent. I will speak briefly to Motion M. Campaigners have argued consistently for a specific offence to more easily prosecute predators who seek to exploit women and men, including renters, by asking for sexual favours in return for a roof over their heads. It is disappointing that the Government did not accept the Lords amendment. It is not right that a victim has to be defined as a prostitute for justice to be served. The fact that there has only ever been one prosecution is proof that the current law is woefully inadequate.

However, movement has been made on this issue: there is recognition that it needs addressing and, of course, we welcome the public consultation as a step forward. In welcoming that, I ask the Minister—I am sure that other noble Lords will want to know the answer too—when the timetable and the terms of reference for the consultation will be published.

Regarding action against online platforms and hosts, for too long the tech firms have not been held accountable for hosting harmful and abusive content. Instead, they have been able to facilitate the exploitation of renters through sex-for-rent ads, completely without consequence. The Minister confirmed that this will be dealt with in the online safety Bill. Can she confirm that paragraphs 16(a) and 16(b) of Schedule 7 will mean that sex-for-rent ads will be classed as priority illegal content and will therefore be dealt with under the schedule? Can she confirm the sanctions that will be used to deter tech platforms from hosting sex-for-rent ads and the consequences if they continue to do so?

I appreciate that, as a Minister in a different department, the noble Baroness may not know the full detail of the DCMS Bill to answer my specific questions about sex for rent and Schedule 7, but if she could commit that she or someone else will write to me to explain exactly how the online safety Bill will deal with online sex-for-rent ads under the “Priority offences” schedule on illegal content, I would be very grateful. Will these online safety provisions be part of the public consultation or will the consultation deal solely with the criminal justice aspects of sex for rent?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I open by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for the way in which she introduced the two government Motions.

First, on Lords Amendment 70 in my name and the Government’s Amendment 70A, it is fair to say that the Government’s response goes wider than my original amendment. That is a good thing. It is indeed true that the Government are considering the issue in the round. Sexual motivation is not the only reason why people are spiked through their drinks or through needles; there may be any number of motivations for people doing it, so it is reasonable to look at this matter in the round and that is what the Government are proposing to do through their amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for his support on this matter.

Moving on to sex for rent, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Kennedy, who has played a leading role in this House in promoting Amendments 141 and 142. She showed her knowledge in this area in the questions that she put to the Minister about how this matter will be taken forward regarding the online safety Bill. She put some pertinent questions and I hope that I can be copied in on the answers regarding the timetable and whether particular aspects of the DCMS Bill will address the sex-for-rent issue.

The further concession, if I can use that word, which the Minister has made is that there will be a public consultation, which will launch by the Summer Recess. Of course that is welcome but, as she fairly pointed out, there are a number of elements to this. It is not an issue for one department or one that is easy to solve. Indeed, it is not easy to quantify, although there is no shortage of horrific examples that one can see online on any number of websites where people seek sex-for-rent arrangements.

I thank the Minister for the way she introduced the Government’s Motions. We will support them if they are put to a vote.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

Report stage
Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, men who seduced girls between the ages of 13 and 16 before 1 May 2004 are effectively immune from prosecution because of a procedural time limit. The law therefore stops historic child abusers from being held accountable for their actions; the law denies justice to women in England and Wales who were groomed for sex as teenage girls before 1 May 2004 as they cannot bring charges against the people who took advantage of them. Let me take a minute to explain why.

Abusers are immune from prosecution because sexual offences committed before 1 May 2004 must be prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act 1956. Under that Act, the applicable offence is unlawful sexual intercourse, as outlined in Section 6. In the 1956 Act, and there is a time limit of one year from the alleged commission of the offence under Section 6. Proceedings must therefore be instituted within a year from then. This time limit is clear and unambiguous and can be found in paragraph 10 of Schedule 2 to the Act.

Amendment 104FC would remove the time limit and therefore remove the legal barrier which protects abusers of underage girls from prosecution. Some may read this speech and question why I am using the phraseology “girl” and not “child”. This is because, remarkably, the time limit applies only to girls; if the victim were a boy, it would be different, as historical cases of sexual intercourse between men and boys under 16 can still be prosecuted. How can the law deny justice and discriminate in this way, and this House not seek to put it right?

The time limit has to be removed, especially as no such time limit applies to offences of this nature committed after 1 May 2004. If a man had sexual intercourse with a girl aged between 13 and 16 after 1 May 2004, he can be prosecuted for the new offence of sexual activity with a child. That was created by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, where no equivalent time limit is applied. This time limit is therefore a procedural anomaly that clearly stands in the way of justice.

This problem had been going on for some time, since before May 2004, but prosecutors were for a long time able to evade the time limit. Instead of charging for underage sexual intercourse, which could not be done if the offence was discovered or prosecuted too late, they would charge for indecent assault in relation to the same underage sexual intercourse. But in 2004, when this House also acted in its judicial capacity, it considered an appeal by a Mr J, who argued that his charge of indecent assault was a device to circumvent the time limit and was an abuse of the court—and the House accepted his argument. Since that time, therefore, men who procured sexual intercourse from vulnerable and impressionable girls before 1 May 2004 have been immune from prosecution.

Some may say that this may be an unnecessary change and ask how many people it would actually affect—but, as the CPS does not keep a record of how many cases are discounted at an early stage because of issues like time limits, there is no data for us to know whether this is affecting one woman, 1,000 women or more. What we do know is that, sadly, historic sexual abuse comes to light all too frequently. We know that girls can be threatened into silence for long periods of time. It is well known that very many girls, victimised in these ways, only recognise themselves as victims, or only have the confidence to go to the police much later than one year afterwards, or something else comes to light that encourages them to bravely break their silence. There must be hundreds of thousands of cases where men seduced a girl aged between 13 and 16 before 1 May 2004, but those victims for various reasons never told the police during the year.

I do not believe that we should need much evidence of the extent of the problem to justify the removal of this arbitrary time limit and allow justice to be done. Some may argue that you cannot retrospectively make law in this way, but applying that argument to this amendment I believe is incorrect. It is true that you cannot retrospectively create new offences and punish people for them—but here, the relevant offence always existed. This amendment would just change the rules relating to trial for those offences. It has always been understood that rules of evidence and procedure can be amended and have immediate effect in subsequent trials, regardless of when the acts complained of actually happened. Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as I understand it, applies to the definition of offences and defences; it does not apply to matters of procedure, including time limits.

Finally, some may argue that this amendment risks exposing those who were prosecuted and successfully used the time limit to avoid prosecution to further conviction. That is not my intention with this amendment, which is why subsection (2) of my proposed new clause states:

“Nothing in this section permits the trial of a person who has already been convicted of an offence relating to the sexual intercourse in question.”


I am aware that that this is a complex matter, and I thank Dr Jonathan Rogers, assistant professor in criminal justice at Cambridge University, who has been arguing for a change in the law to address this issue for many years. I thank him for all his advice and support on this issue. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, for meeting Dr Rogers and me last week to discuss this matter. We are conscious that our meeting lasted twice as long as expected, so I thank him for the time that he gave and for the further discussions that were facilitated between Dr Rogers and the Civil Service team. However, my view remains that this issue needs resolving; there are still women who are denied justice for what happened to them in their early teenage years and men who can be fairly tried. This time limit is wrong —the amendment would remove it and, in doing so, close a loophole which protects sex offenders. I beg to move.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend, who is quite right in everything she has said. Sexual abuse and rape can quite often take decades to come to light. The anomaly, which she has outlined very clearly, is within the power of the Government to put right, and I urge the Minister to do so.