Clause 15 - Arranging or facilitating commission of a child sex offence
Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
9:10 am
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 148, in
clause 15, page 6, line 4, leave out 'arranges or'.
The clause concerns arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence. In subsection (2), a definition is provided for circumstances in which a person does not commit such an offence. There is no offence if
''he arranges or facilitates something that he believes another person will do, but that he does not intend to do or intend another person to do, and . . . any offence within subsection (1)(b) would be an offence against a child for whose protection he acts.''
That let-out clause is designed to enable people to provide support—advice on contraception and the like—to those under 16 who are engaging in sexual activity.
I have no objection to the main purpose of the clause. However, I was a little surprised by the use of the words ''arranges or facilitates''. I fully understand that those words should be used in defining what constitutes the offence. To facilitate an offence is to carry out steps that might be seen to help its commission in a rather indirect way; to arrange an offence implies direct participation as the person who sets it up. However, I do not understand why there should be a let-out clause for someone who ''arranges or facilitates''.
If someone is providing contraceptive advice or trying to protect the physical safety of the child and is, in effect, tolerating the commission of an offence—the sexual contact—because there are other considerations to be taken into account, he is merely facilitating, not arranging. The danger that I perceive is that, by providing in subsection (2) that an offence is not committed if someone arranges
''something that he believes another person will do, but that he does not intend to do or intend another person to do'',
we are drawing the exemption much too wide. Under the guise of providing, say, contraceptive advice, someone could actually be setting up the meeting between the two people concerned, and providing accommodation and a setting in which an offence could take place. I do not think that the Committee should simply let the provision go through without further consideration.
At the risk of repeating myself, I have no difficulty with providing an exemption for those acting for the purposes mentioned in subsection (3), but none of those provisions could or should amount to the arrangement of the commission of the offence. My proposal is that ''arranges or'' be deleted.