Clause 15 - Arranging or facilitating commission of a child sex offence

Part of Sexual Offences Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 9:10 am on 16 September 2003.

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Photo of Dominic Grieve Dominic Grieve Conservative, Beaconsfield 9:10, 16 September 2003

I think that the Under-Secretary has persuaded me that I would not want someone to be prosecuted in the example that we have just discussed.

My only concern is that the loophole is potentially very large and enshrined in statute; it is not a discretionary issue where, for instance, the prosecution would decide whether to prosecute. That is the reverse of what the Under-Secretary has been telling us in previous sittings: that the law would be very draconian but that members of the Committee could be reassured that it would not be used, nor would the guidelines have it used, in circumstances where it would be oppressive.

However, the clause provides a statutory exemption. On the question of physical safety, it is a pretty wide exemption, which might well be used by all sorts of people little better than pimps. They would say, ''I provided the accommodation in which the sexual activity took place because it was desirable for

the physical safety of the person concerned.'' Obviously, they would have to persuade a jury of that, but that raises the prospect of the exemption's wide use as an exculpation, or an attempted exculpation, for behaviour that is thoroughly undesirable. One inevitably has difficulties over wording; that is the one bit of the exemption that causes such difficulties. The others are sufficiently tightly drawn to make such difficulties much less likely.