Clause 66
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
5:45 pm
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
I will answer the latter point first. The hon. and learned Gentleman thought up one answer already when he referred to police officers in rooms looking at this material in the course of their job, with quite legitimate reasons to do so. That would be one example, and there may be others, but certainly there will be some people who need to look at this material for the purposes of law enforcement. There may be others who work for ISPs who operate filter systems that block this material coming from servers into their ISP, who also would have legitimate reasons for being in possession of such material. It is that kind of possession that we are seeking to deal with in the clause.
The clause sets out defences for a person charged with the offence of possession. It is not the intention of the Government to penalise people who may stumble across the material when using the internet or who have it sent to them without their consent, or to penalise those who need to possess it for a legitimate reason. The defences mirror arrangements that already exist for those charged in respect of the possession of indecent photographs of children under the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
On the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome—the relevant amendments tabled in their names were not called—I think that they both know the answer to those points, because we dealt with them in considering previous clauses. Providing the defence that the image was made by consenting couples or groups does not deal with the fact that we are trying to catch the harm caused by the images themselves and their impact on those who view them, rather than the impact on the participants, whether they participated because they wished to or because they were forced to. On that basis, I hope that the Committee will accept clause 66.