Child Abuse Offences (Sentencing)

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (in the Chair)]

Before I call Catherine McKinnell to move the motion, I remind Members that the House’s sub judice rule precludes reference in debate to cases before the courts. In criminal cases, that means from the time when charges are brought until the verdict and, if applicable, the sentence. The resolution also applies to active appeal proceedings. I call Catherine McKinnell.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 166711 relating to sentencing for child abuse offences.

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, although the subject that we are discussing is possibly one of the most difficult that I have ever held a debate on or spoken about in Parliament. Entitled “April’s Law” and signed by over 126,500 people, the e-petition reads:

“We the undersigned call on the prime minister to make all sex offenders remain on the register for life no matter the crime, for service providers and search engines to be better policed regarding child abuse images and harder sentences on those caught with indecent images of children.”

Before I consider that, I want to reflect for a moment on the tragic and appalling events that led to Jazmin Jones, April’s sister, setting up the online petition. I imagine that all of us here remember watching the story of April Jones’s death unravel on the news. Only five years old at the time, she was abducted in October 2012 outside her mid-Wales home and later murdered by Mark Bridger in a crime that deeply affected people up and down the country. As a parent of three young children, I cannot even begin to comprehend the heartbreak of losing a child in such terrible and violent circumstances. What made the crime even more horrifying was that Mark Bridger had been looking at indecent images of children on the day he committed the murder, and he had at least 100—but it is thought that there were nearer 500—indecent images saved on his laptop. That is where the April’s law petition comes in.

I particularly want to recognise the efforts of Jazmin Jones, along with the rest of her family. They all deserve to be commended for their efforts in seeking to ensure that what happened to April does not happen to anybody else. The petition that April’s family established calls for all sex offenders to remain on the sex offenders register for life, for service providers and search engines to be better policed regarding child abuse images, and for harsher sentences for those caught with indecent images of children. All of us here understand the absolute depravity of indecent images of children and those who produce or look at them, as well as the severity of the crimes that we are talking about and their lifelong impact on those affected. I will start by addressing the issue of sex offenders remaining on the list for life.

As many right hon. and hon. Members are aware, part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 provides various measures that enable the police in England and Wales to monitor and manage sex offenders living in the local area. Certain sex offenders, including those convicted of rape, assault by penetration, serious sexual assault, sexual assault of a child under 13 and other child sex offences, are automatically required to notify the police of personal information such as their name and address and to update the police whenever that information changes. Those notification requirements are commonly referred to as signing or being on the sex offenders register. As well as applying automatically to a number of sex offences committed in the UK, the notification requirements can also be imposed on sex offenders who have been convicted overseas. They are imposed for a fixed or an indefinite period, depending on the severity of the sentence received.

Controversially, sex offenders who are subject to an indefinite notification period can apply to the police for a determination that they no longer pose a risk and should therefore no longer be subject to notification requirements. However, the earliest point at which they can do so is 15 years after the date of their first notification —or eight years in the cases of those aged under 18 when they were convicted.

I completely understand the fear about the fact that dangerous men, and indeed women, who could pose a risk to our children and society at large are able to come off the sex offenders register. I particularly understand the concern that those convicted of the gravest offences may be able to overturn a previous decision that they should be on the register for life, following the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling that indefinite sex offender registration without the right for review was incompatible with article 8 of the European convention on human rights. However, as I am sure the Minister will explain, the latter group of offenders must go through an extensive process before they are removed, with anyone deemed to remain a threat remaining subject to ongoing notification requirements.

Having implemented the Supreme Court ruling that a review mechanism of indefinite notification requirements must be in place, the Government have strengthened reporting measures by making it mandatory for all registered sex offenders to notify the police of all foreign travel; their whereabouts on a weekly basis when registered as having no fixed abode; when they are living in a household with a child under the age of 18; and their bank account and credit card details, as well as information about their passports or other identity documents. Yet I also understand the need for the public to be reassured that those who have possessed indecent images of children, or who have been involved in sexual offences against children, will remain on the sex offenders register for life.

I would therefore appreciate it, as would those following the debate, if the Minister clarified the circumstances that allow someone to be taken off the register and whether any monitoring of activity is undertaken for those who are no longer subject to notification requirements. Is she aware of the number of people who have left the sex offenders register who have gone on to commit further sex crimes? Indeed, just how many sex offenders have had their indefinite notification requirements overturned on review following the Supreme Court ruling? What certainty can she provide to April’s family— indeed, to all the families up and down the country whose lives have been torn apart by sex offenders—that the Government are doing everything in their power to stop those criminals from posing a danger to society?

E-petition 166711 also calls for search engines and internet service providers to be better policed on child abuse images. We have seen some progress in recent years with Google, for example, reporting an eightfold reduction in child sexual abuse image searches since it changed its algorithms to ensure that indecent images and videos do not appear in results. However, we can clearly do more to pressure organisations to avoid becoming complacent.

An organisation that works tirelessly on this issue is the Internet Watch Foundation, set up in the UK in 1996. It is world-leading in its work to eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online and to ensure that we continue to make progress. Europol has stated:

“IWF is one of the most active and effective European hotlines fighting against child sexual exploitation. The work developed by IWF in the process of notice and takedown, in close cooperation with Law Enforcement, is an example to follow.”

IWF’s work has meant that only 0.2% of child sexual abuse content is hosted in the UK, that 100,000 reports of sexual abuse images or videos have been processed and that an international reporting hotline has been set up. One of the most impressive IWF advances has been an “image hash list”, which allows companies automatically to find indecent images or even to prevent them from being uploaded. In a world now dominated by social media, it is somewhat reassuring that Twitter is also using the technology. Twitter has commented that the hash list system

“has added significant capacity to our ability to detect, remove and report”

child sexual abuse images.

I strongly believe that we should commend the Internet Watch Foundation for working tirelessly to make our internet safer. However, more can undoubtedly be done, as was highlighted only recently when the BBC reported that it had alerted Facebook to 100 images on its website that appeared to break the social media site’s guidelines, including: pages explicitly for men with a sexual interest in children; images of under-16s in highly sexualised poses with obscene comments posted beside them; Facebook groups with names such as “Hot XXX Schoolgirls” containing stolen images of real children; and an image that appeared to be a still from a video of child abuse, with a request below it to share child pornography.

Facebook’s initial response was to report the BBC journalists involved to the police and, most disturbingly, to remove only 18 of the 100 images because the other 82 apparently did not breach its “community standards”. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said:

“Facebook’s failure to remove illegal content from its website is appalling and violates the agreements they have in place to protect children. It also raises the question of what content they consider to be inappropriate and dangerous to children”.

I agree, and I believe that the case raises a number of troubling questions. How easily can adults access and share images of child sexual abuse via social media and other sites? How easily can our children be groomed on that site, given that children as young as 13 years old can create a Facebook account? Finally, how easily can our children stumble across indecent images of other children being sexually abused—and perhaps even think that that is somehow normal or acceptable behaviour? Facebook executives must take the issue more seriously, and UK law enforcement needs to clamp down when companies do not remove content. What engagement have the Government had with large companies to ensure that indecent images of children are proactively policed and taken down by the companies themselves, especially given that those on Facebook had to be reported to Facebook by the BBC?

As I outlined earlier, the UK hosts 0.2% of sexual abuse content. That is, of course, 0.2% too much, but it also means that more than 99% is hosted internationally. In 2014, the UK held the first WeProtect summit, which brought together representatives from more than 50 countries, 26 leading technology companies and 10 non-governmental organisations. At the summit, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, pledged to donate £50 million over five years to the UNICEF global protection fund, saying:

“This is money that will help put those lives back together again and I’m proud that Britain is pledging it and once again leading the way.”

Can the Minister confirm that Britain is still leading the way and is continuing to contribute to UNICEF’s global protection fund? I ask not least because child sexual abuse images and videos created abroad are viewed by paedophiles in the UK. We owe protection to children, regardless of where they are from, from such appalling crimes. We must not turn a blind eye to vulnerable children around the world.

We must also not turn a blind eye to people accessing indecent images of children that are produced in Britain. The Marie Collins Foundation said:

“All too frequently, we hear the people who view images of child sexual abuse defending themselves by saying: ‘I only looked at pictures, I didn’t actually hurt anyone.’…Every time an abusive image is viewed it means that the victim in the image is re-abused. No victim should have to suffer in this way.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, commented recently that paedophiles accessing such images should not be charged or prosecuted, and therefore not imprisoned, unless they pose a physical threat to children. Such comments massively threaten to downgrade the impact on the victims in those images. The case of Mark Bridger clearly demonstrates that people who look at images of child sexual abuse can be an enormous risk to our children.

What is more worrying is that one of Britain’s most senior police officers cannot identify a feasible solution to the growing numbers of people accessing such images online. Chief Constable Bailey made his comments in the context of an 80% increase in the number of child abuse reports over the last three years, and 400 men arrested by the police and the National Crime Agency every month for viewing indecent images of children. He states that that is just the tip of the iceberg. Estimates also suggest that there are around 500,000 people sharing indecent images of children, but I believe that we cannot remove the threat of prison without devaluing the crime, even though our prison population now stands at more than 85,000.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that it is wrong that the prosecution cannot appeal sentences imposed by the courts for creating or distributing images of child sexual abuse, no matter how lenient they are, because those offences do not fall under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman raises a valid concern. I am keen to hear from the Minister what the Government’s view is. It may be a matter to take up with the Law Officers and the Solicitor General, who I know takes up unduly lenient sentences on behalf of the Government. We must consider how to increase understanding of the severity of the crime and the ability to appeal unduly lenient sentences if appropriate.

We must remember that every indecent image of a child means a child suffering sexual abuse. We cannot allow police funding restraints to leave our children at risk. I call on our Government to ensure that our police forces and judicial system are adequately funded to deal with the influx of cases from Operation Hydrant. That is not to say that we do not need to focus on rehabilitation as well, but it is hard to ascertain how we can offer the rehabilitative services that Chief Constable Bailey is asking for when our current attempts at rehabilitation are chronically underfunded. There is only one place where paedophiles can receive treatment on the NHS in England: the Portman clinic in north London. Due to funding cuts, the clinic can now treat only paedophiles who have committed offences, which signals a massive lack of commitment to well-funded rehabilitative services.

In the charity sector, StopSO provides counselling to both non-offenders and offenders and believes that it can help paedophiles to manage their feelings towards children so as not to offend. However, to ensure that it can continue to offer services, StopSO charges £40 to £120 an hour, which obviously leaves thousands of people without access. Given that 500,000 people are currently looking at indecent images of children, we need a system that considers rehabilitation as a core part of prison life. At the same time, we also need to look further into the future and fund more services that can assist paedophiles before they offend. If we do not have a system that provides adequate rehabilitative services while the Government try to imprison fewer people, we run the risk of paedophiles falling through the cracks. Surely that would only perpetuate the idea that there will be no consequences for abusers and potential abusers watching child sexual abuse. We cannot allow that to happen.

The April’s law petition calls for increased sentencing for those caught with indecent images of children. The independent Sentencing Council is responsible for issuing guidelines to the courts, and updated guidelines on sexual offences have been in force since 2014. Although Parliament could legislate to increase the maximum terms, I argue that the existing Sentencing Council is the best body to determine the duration of sentences. However, I would welcome the Minister’s views on whether the Government are likely to legislate further in this area, not least in the light of the concerns about the criminal justice system’s inability to cope with the current volume of offenders and the concerns about unduly lenient sentences mentioned by the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson). I would be grateful if the Minister provided some feedback on that issue.

Before I conclude, I will touch briefly on another campaign that I know April’s family support. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) is seeking to pass the Unlawful Killing (Recovery of Remains) Bill, also known as Helen’s law, which would ensure that murderers are ineligible for parole if they do not reveal the location of their victims’ remains. That is particularly relevant as Mark Bridger has never revealed to the police how he disposed of April’s body. Coral Jones has said:

“As her mum I would love to know where she is, the rest of her, and family and friends, we would all love to know. No mum or family would want their child’s remains somewhere else. They would like to put them all to rest.”

Families who are already living through absolute hell are denied even the slightest amount of closure if they are not able to properly bury their loved ones. I urge Members across the House to support my hon. Friend’s Bill to ensure that murderers who refuse to reveal the location of their victims’ remains are not allowed to walk free.

I conclude by commending the family of April Jones for being so proactive in trying to stop what has happened to their daughter and sister from happening to anyone else. Through the efforts of the Jones family and their vast number of supporters, this petition has allowed us this valuable time in Parliament to discuss how we can keep our children safe. For that, I would like to thank them.

I am pleased to have been able to highlight the commendable work of the Internet Watch Foundation and call for the UK to remain outward-looking and ready to support international efforts to combat child sexual abuse, especially regarding indecent images. I also strongly urge the Government to review the funding received by the police and the wider criminal justice system to properly deal with those who produce or access indecent images of children and who are involved with wider child sexual abuse. They must ensure that that funding is adequate to deal with the current influx of cases.

I hope that this debate will highlight to Members across the House the fact that we cannot afford to become complacent about indecent images of children, because April’s case shows just how significant a risk those who access such images can pose to our children and our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Of course I will speak to my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice.

I want to finish my point on perpetrators time-wasting, demanding things of the police and extracting information from forfeited devices. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) gave an example of a teacher who undoubtedly, as they were going on the sex offenders register, would never be a teacher again. They did not need the teaching plans and resources that they wanted to extract from their computer. That was a dreadful waste of police time. I will certainly take that up to see what more we can do to clamp down on it.

The Prime Minister recently said that she is minded to introduce a new Bill in the next Session to look at what more we can do about domestic abuse and domestic violence. This debate is specifically about child sexual violence and abuse, but that Bill will enable us to look at what more we can do legally. The Home Secretary will chair a group of experts to look at what more we can do to support victims in the criminal justice system to ensure their experience is as positive as possible. The evidence that we get will secure the best possible outcomes. As that Bill is developed, there will be opportunities to look at some of the issues that have been raised today.

A question was asked about what is called Helen’s law. We heard about the absolutely horrendous situation of families who want to know where the bodies of their loved ones have been put by the horrendous criminals who perpetrated those acts. I am a mother myself, so I understand that families want to know exactly where their children’s remains are so they can be reunited with them, lay them to rest and have a place to visit them. The Justice Minister made it clear that he is looking at options to encourage offenders to say where the remains are, including making their release conditional on declaring that information. The Ministry of Justice is doing good work to ensure that happens.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Minister is giving a very thorough response to many of the issues that were raised, but one issue that she has not touched upon, which does not always seem a priority but could go a long way to protecting children in the future, is rehabilitation. Does she have a response to the questions I asked about funding for the rehabilitation of offenders or potential offenders?

[Sarah Newton]

I am very happy to talk about that. We are undertaking a comprehensive piece of work in the Home Office with experts, academics, law enforcement officers and some particularly good charities that have a good track record, to ensure that young people understand what consent is, what good relationships are and what the law of the land is. We have seen reports about the amount of sex offending committed by young people against other young people. The very tragic case that we are talking about today involved an older person who perpetrated a terrible crime against a child, but there is a growing category of younger people who commit appalling abuse—even rape—against children younger than themselves. We are doing a lot of work to educate young people that that is simply wrong and about what good relationships look like. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the association for personal, social and health and economic education—the PSHE Association—and the Department for Education have developed extremely good tools to enable teachers, parents and youth workers to engage young people.

I expect that people have seen Disrespect NoBody, a large campaign that the Home Office funds every year. It uses material developed by children that they can see online on their phones and iPads to get those messages across. We work with young people to develop age-appropriate messages, and campaigns are thoroughly evaluated to ensure that they are having the right effect. Now that sex and relationship education and PSHE are to be compulsory, there will be even further opportunity to send that message to everyone.

We know that a lot of young men view images of young girls online, but that they do not realise that what they are doing is illegal. They seem to think that it is a victimless crime. They do not appreciate that a girl is being abused to make those images, that every time someone watches them she is being re-abused, and how devastating that is. We have worked with experts in the field to make hard-hitting little films that are put out on the internet to communicate to young men—I am afraid that it is young men—who might be tempted to view that material or who might inadvertently come across it. The films are to educate them about the harm and to prevent them from becoming criminals—if they were caught, they would be convicted of a criminal offence and go on the sex offenders register, which would have a devastating effect on their life.

We are working with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. Where we know perpetrators are watching images, we want to send out clear messages that they are illegal, and about the harm they are doing. We want to give them access to helplines where they can get advice on how to wean themselves off their addiction—it is an addiction. We also fund care and support services for the perpetrators, enabling them to say, “I want to stop this behaviour but I need help to do it.”

That is all new and emerging work. It is important to build up the evidence base on its effectiveness, so that we understand what works, what does not, the risk profile of the perpetrators, and who can be diverted or prevented from behaviour escalating into contact abuse. We take that seriously and invest in it, and we want to leave no stone unturned in preventing people from watching those dreadful images and all the abuse that goes with them. I hope that that is a full answer for the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North.

Some hon. Members mentioned the comments of Chief Constable Simon Bailey. As politicians, none of us is a stranger to being misquoted, or having our quotes being taken out of context so that we do not say everything we would want. That is what happened to the chief constable in this case. It was helpful for the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee to write to ask him about some of the comments he made and the media published. My understanding is that he has written back a full response, which will be published on the Select Committee’s website. The chief constable does not need me to speak for him—he is more than capable of speaking for himself—and it is important for Members to read what he has to say. He might be appearing before the Select Committee, when Committee members will have further opportunity to ask him about what he said so that there is absolute clarity.

I can assure the House, however, that the Government’s policy has not changed. As we have discussed today, issues to do with sex offenders are complicated and contentious, but our position is crystal clear and unequivocal: we will reduce the harm to children and other vulnerable people; we will continue to protect the public; and we will keep dangerous people on the sex offenders register for as long as they are a risk. I am proud of the progress we are making to tackle all aspects of violence against women and girls and to protect all victims, but the truly terrible murder of April Jones highlights how much all of us need to do to protect victims. In my time as Minister, I am determined to do absolutely everything I can to protect people in our country and to bring those perpetrators to justice.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I do not have much more to add to the debate, because the Minister has given a thorough reply to all the questions asked. Many of her responses have been reassuring, and some have clarified areas on which we all need to work together in future. The Minister was absolutely right when she said that this is an issue that transcends party politics. We have representatives present from all parts of the House, and we have a common interest to ensure that we all work together to protect children in the best way possible.

I want to add a final, sincere word to thank the Jones family for the way in which they have turned the most unimaginable horror into an opportunity to make our legal and parliamentary processes and procedures more responsive to the clear need to protect our children better from those horrendous crimes. I thank the Jones family for everything they have done. I also thank Members for their contributions to today’s debate. This is not the end of the conversation. I feel that it is very much the beginning of work that needs to go on.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 166711 relating to sentencing for child abuse offences.