Clause 49 - Paying for sexual services of a child
Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre, Labour)
The amendments are designed to ensure that the judiciary have the power to hand down a maximum sentence of 14 years in any case where a person is convicted of paying for sex with a child, and to remove the upper limit of seven years where the child is aged 16 or over. I am grateful to Liberal Democrat Members for supporting the amendments.
The Government are worthy of enormous praise for the introduction of clauses 49 to 53. For the first time, the range of offences related to the abuse of children through prostitution and pornography are properly laid out in law. The clauses acknowledge that all children up to the age of 18 are victims of those dreadful forms of abuse. The fact that they are in the Bill is a great credit to the Government, as they are some of its most important elements.
Clause 49 could be improved, and I am extremely grateful to a range of child care organisations for supporting the amendments. They are supported by Barnardo's, Childline, The Children's Society, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes, the National Children's Bureau, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, NCH and UNICEF UK. The amendments ask the Government to reconsider the age distinctions that relate to sentencing, to ensure that the circumstances of each case can be taken into proper consideration. At the moment the clause proposes that, for cases involving under-16s, the maximum sentence should be imprisonment for 14 years, and for under-13s, it should be life; that is entirely in accordance with the principles set out elsewhere in the Bill. However, for 16 and 17-year-olds, the proposed maximum sentence is seven years. The amendments would ensure that the court had at its disposal a maximum sentence of up to 14 years imprisonment in all cases involving children over 13.
The offence of paying for sex with a child is based on the recommendations in ''Setting the Boundaries'', a major review of sex offences which sets out clearly that the law needs to make it plain that young people under 18 should not sell, or be sold for, sex. Quite properly, the review uses the United Nations convention on the rights of the child's definition of ''child'' as anyone under 18. Article 19 of that convention states that all children should be protected from violence and abuse.
By making distinctions in the maximum sentence on the basis of age, the clause implies that, in all cases, the gravity of the offence and the effects on the child are
less if the child is over 16, whatever the evidence of the circumstances in which that crime was committed. The lower maximum sentence for 16 and 17-year-olds, and for 17-year-olds in Northern Ireland, implies that the fact that the child is old enough to consent to sexual intercourse is relevant to the offences, and that the child can give informed consent to involvement in prostitution.
All research would suggest that the reality for children is that prostitution has nothing to do with consent and the age of consent. The experiences of children abused through prostitution demonstrate that a high level of control and coercion by adults is involved. That means that any distinctions in the law made on the basis of the concept of consent to sexual intercourse outside the context of prostitution are irrelevant.
I have before me a book called, ''More than one chance! Young people involved in prostitution speak out''—an interesting and worthy document, which I recommend to the Committee. There is a relevant quote from a woman called Frances, who says:
''There's nothing nice, nothing empowering, nothing glamorous about prostitution, it destroys you, it destroys your soul, it's an awful way of life. I've met lots and lots of women while I worked as a prostitute and since I've left prostitution . . . never once have I met a confident, happy, contented hooker, I've just met very devastated and damaged people and drug-addicted people. And people get out and can rebuild their lives, you know, and be happy, but when you're in it it's a very sad and lonely world.''
That woman was 32, but she had been working as a prostitute since the age of 14. We should all acknowledge that the age of consent is completely irrelevant to that sad and lonely world, which would destroy the soul of someone aged 16 or 17 just as effectively as that of someone aged 14 or 15.
The charities say that because of their work with children and young people abused through prostitution they know that the control and coercion imposed on 16 and 17-year-olds most often commences at a much younger age. Young people at that age are conditioned into a lifestyle of sexual exploitation, with the result that they are not able to make informed choices, whether they are 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old. By making payment for sex with a child under 18 an offence, the clause recognises that there is a complex range of factors behind children's involvement in prostitution.
We know the risk factors: the prevalence of disruption in early life, experiences of family breakdown and conflict and of physical and sexual abuse, the trauma of being looked after and the experiences that led to that, the targeting of care institutions by adult male abusers, the experiences of children and young people who run away or are forced to leave home or substitute care, and drug use. Vulnerability at whatever age—14, 15, 16 or 17—is identified and targeted by abusers and the risk factors that we have identified apply to all children abused through prostitution, irrespective of whether they have reached the age at which they are legally deemed able to give consent to sexual activity in more normal circumstances.
In making it an offence to pay for sex with a child under 18, the Bill should follow through its rationale by ensuring that the provisions on sentencing recognise the reality of the abuse that children suffer through prostitution and recognise that 16 and 17-year-olds have no more ability to make informed choices about their involvement in prostitution than younger children aged 13 to 15.
In accordance with the fact that much is truly excellent in the Bill, we should support the amendments and ensure that we protect all children in every way that we can from all the harm caused by that dreadful form of abuse.