Written evidence to be reported to the House
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
2:00 pm
Gareth Crossman: It is both of the first two. It includes the technical aspect, as to how it will be determined that the purpose of an extraction of the type that we are talking about might be for purposes of sexual arousal. More broadly, there is concern over the idea of criminalising activity where you are dealing with something that, in itself, is perfectly legal—a film that has been censored and given a 12 certificate. A part might be extracted for the purpose of sexual arousal and the possession of that extract becomes a crime. It is where you feel comfortable about the limits of the criminal law, when no one else is being affected. Obviously, no actors were harmed in the making of this film. So it is about where you define the limits of where the appropriate criminalisation is to be.
This is difficult, because, as I said at the beginning, we do not have an issue with the creation of this offence. The difficulty arises when you are dealing, effectively, with offences involving morality; it is very difficult to draw a specific line where the criminal law should begin and where it should finish. This is the Government’s offence. We will obviously try to make suggestions as to where we think that that line should be appropriately drawn, and we do not pretend that it is easy. We will try to make positive suggestions, but frankly we would be uncomfortable with the idea of something being criminal simply because it is going to cause sexual arousal, if no other criminality is being alleged.