asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What is their response to the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) latest The State of the World’s Children report, in particular its conclusion that west Africa is the only region in the world showing no progress on reaching the millennium development goal to reduce the mortality level of under-fives by two-thirds by 2015.

My Lords, we welcome the annual The State of the World’s Children report by UNICEF. While showing that good progress has been made in some countries, it highlights the need for a concentrated push to accelerate progress in west Africa and parts of Asia to cut child deaths. That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has called for 2008 to be a year of action towards meeting the millennium development goals.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Are we funding the International Baby Food Action Network to promote immediate and continuous breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life as the most effective and cost-effective means of reducing infant mortality in the first year of a child’s life? Given that 3 million children a year are reported to die from the forgotten killer, pneumococcal disease, what are the Government doing to complement the work of the GAVI Alliance’s PneumoADIP in funding mechanisms and delivery systems in the 22 west African countries that are identified as the highest priority in the “countdown to 2014” list?

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely correct to say that feeding in the first months of life is critical. However, we are not funding the group to which he referred because it is not UK-based and therefore not eligible for DfID’s funding window for such purposes. As he is aware, behind pneumococcal disease lies a range of childhood diseases, many of which go back to the basic roots of public health and nutrition. Not only are we supporting the fight against the specific disease, but we are putting a huge proportion of our funding behind trying to tackle those root factors of basic health and good food.

My Lords, declaring an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware of a recent article in the Lancet that says that malnutrition is responsible for about 35 per cent of the deaths of under-fives? DfID’s excellent annual report in response to the International Development Act does not isolate DfID’s spending on malnutrition. Can my noble friend give me any information on that?

My Lords, I will get back to my noble friend with the specific detail of our spending on malnutrition. About half our spending goes into the MDG areas of nutrition, public health and basic education because they are so critical to children’s welfare.

My Lords, is not one of the world’s biggest tragedies the recruitment of child soldiers in the northern region of Sri Lanka? UNICEF calculates that, since 2002, 5,700 have been so recruited, and recruitment continues every day. Should not the world community put extensive pressure on Prabhakaran and the Tamil Tigers to stop this ghastly dimension, whatever their views may be on having an independent nation?

My Lords, the Government are deeply opposed to the use of child soldiers in all situations. We have expressed our support for the under-secretary-general for children in armed conflict in her work in northern Sri Lanka, Uganda and other parts of the world where that phenomenon sadly still exists.

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that some 10 million children die under the age of five every year? Will he spell out to the House the principal diseases that claim their lives? Will he also confirm that in sub-Saharan Africa 160 out of 1,000 children under the age of five die each year? Would he care to tell the House what he thinks the links are between poverty and conflict that have led to the millennium development goals being pushed back to 2045 instead of 2015, when we had hoped to see the number of deaths of young children reduced by two-thirds?

My Lords, the noble Lord is right that nearly 10 million children a year die before the age of five. Almost 40 per cent of those die in the first few days of life because their condition is related to that of their mother. Therefore, we have to tackle maternal health in order additionally to solve the problem of the health of under-fives. Beyond that group, the core issues are malnutrition, malaria and dirty water. If a set of public health and nutrition interventions could be made at very low cost, the situation would dramatically change. On the postponement of the date for achieving the MDGs, if we can all support the intention of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to make this a year of emergency action to get the world back on track to achieve the millennium development goals, I do not think that we will have to wait until 2045.

My Lords, is not one of the problems of maternal health the fact that people are having far too many children? They are marrying too young, before they reach their teens, and are forced to have children. That is putting pressure on maternal services. Will the Government target aid and contraceptive services at Governments who co-operate in trying to reduce fertility levels, from seven children in Niger, where I was recently, to a more sustainable level?

My Lords, my noble friend is correct. We believe that about 200 million couples do not have access to effective contraception. That leads to 80 million unintended pregnancies every year. Providing choice for them in family planning assistance is a critical goal for us. Every $1 million invested in family planning avoids 360,000 unwanted pregnancies and 150,000 induced abortions and saves the lives of 800 mothers and 11,000 infants. We cannot get better value for $1 million.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords, my calculation is that, if we are going in order, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats.

My Lords, the United Kingdom has a distinguished record of training and educating people from west Africa so that they can go back to help to improve the welfare of mothers and children. How will the new immigration points scheme, which restricts people coming from overseas to the UK, affect educating those from west Africa to take up posts after training in the UK?

My Lords, I am tempted to say that I have no idea. I shall look into it. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has been doing a lot of work on how we can use training and other means to support the development of healthcare professionals in Africa and elsewhere.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords, when the clock says 8, we are in the ninth minute. The difficulty, if we go on, is that other Questions do not get their full time.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether NATO and its member Governments have been appropriately consulted about the implications of the deployment of United States missile defence systems in Europe and the bilateral negotiations through which these deployments have been agreed.

My Lords, first, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in offering sincere condolences to the family and friends of Sergeant Duane Barwood, who was killed on operations in Iraq on 29 February.

On the Question, missile defence is an important security issue for NATO and continues to be discussed regularly at a high level. The alliance has carried out its own studies into the military and political implications of ballistic missile defence and how that might link with the US system in Europe.

My Lords, we on these Benches offer our condolences to the family and friends of Sergeant Barwood and to the seriously injured soldiers who continue to come back both from Iraq and from Afghanistan.

On the Question, I congratulate the Government on their ability to maintain whatever consultations are taking place in this country entirely outside the press or any report to Parliament, in sharp contrast with the Czech Republic and Poland, where at least there appears to be a public debate. Is the Minister aware that several of us in this House heard former Senator Sam Nunn say here on Thursday, as part of the Nuclear Threat Initiative: “I don’t think NATO has been at all well enough engaged in missile defence discussions”? Given that there is talk in the US system about a mid-course, ground-based defence system for Europe—in other words, something that serves the United States but does not protect Europe—how far is NATO discussing a much more collaborative, multilateral missile defence system than this American system?

My Lords, the situation in the Czech Republic, and indeed in Poland, is very different from the one that we have here, because they have specific proposals for placing interceptors in those countries. Therefore there is a high level of engagement among their parliamentarians and in their Government. We do not have that situation here. If we did, we would have further parliamentary engagement, but there are no plans to go down that route.

The noble Lord asked about NATO involvement. He will be aware that NATO had a feasibility study, which reported in 2006 and which recognised the growing threat from long-range missiles. Further research has been undertaken in the NATO context, and a significant amount of information has been made available. There will in fact be a NATO summit in Bucharest in April this year, and it is anticipated that further discussions on this matter will be placed on the agenda.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the lack of consultation both with Russia and within NATO before the US took the decisions with the Czech Republic and Poland, the most important thing now is surely that, in the period ahead, consultations continue with Russia and a serious effort is made to see whether the offer made by the Russian Government to join up with anti-missile defences can be turned into a viable process? If the Government do believe that, are they making that view known to the US Administration, and what are they doing within NATO to try to ensure that there are further talks with the Russians?

My Lords, there are discussions between the Americans and the Russians, and various proposals have been made on both sides. We think it right that those discussions should continue in good faith and that NATO is informed of the general progress of those discussions. We support the search for a solution wherever possible. This will also be discussed at the NATO conference to which I referred earlier.

My Lords, did not Presidents Bush and Putin agree as long ago as 2002 in Moscow on the case for consultation on this between those two countries? Have not former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger repeatedly expressed their view that such multilateral, co-operative discussions on ballistic missile defence systems should include agreement on plans for countering missile threats to Europe, Russia and the United States from the Middle East?

Yes, my Lords, the noble and learned Lord is right to make those points and considerable discussions have taken place. The US has provided Russia with considerable assurances that the ballistic missile defence system does not threaten Russia and is not aimed at protecting the US against a Russian ballistic threat. The proposals put forward by both sides are serious and are being considered at a very high level. We should all hope that those discussions lead to some resolution and some agreement being reached on the way forward. It is always better if we can work multilaterally.

My Lords, in view of the extreme importance of very close Russian and NATO co-operation on issues concerning nuclear proliferation, which is, of course, crucial—without it we cannot get very far— does the Minister agree that fresh consideration should be given by NATO to that earlier Russian proposal for co-operation, which is now to many senior Americans appearing as a much more attractive possibility than they thought at the time?

My Lords, all I can do is reassure the House that those who are entering into these discussions are doing so in good faith. Assurances have been given and there is an intent to find a way forward. However, this is a complex issue and it is one on which we have been trying to assist through our relationships with NATO and through direct US/Russian discussions. People need a great deal of reassurance and as much clarity as possible would be helpful to everyone.

My Lords, in her response to the Question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, the Minister did not tell the House whether NATO and its member Governments had or had not been consulted. Were they consulted or were they not?

My Lords, NATO is kept very well informed of the discussions, but the decisions on whether to place interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland are the subject of bilateral agreements between those countries and the United States. It is only proper that that is the case, and it is also only proper that NATO should be informed as much as possible.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What level of compliance with building regulations is assumed in the calculation of official government estimates on carbon dioxide emissions from domestic buildings.

My Lords, it has been assumed that the accumulating stock of new dwellings will fully comply with the minimum requirements in the regulations. Since 2002, standards of energy savings have been significantly raised and, starting this month, we shall be undertaking systematic sampling of new-build dwellings against these higher standards.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, but why have the Government failed to implement the recommendations of the 2005 environmental Select Committee report on housing to increase compliance with the building regulations?

My Lords, to my knowledge we have not failed to comply. Our actions since 2005-06 to improve the technical efficiency of building will bring the savings that we have anticipated. Since 2002, we can look forward to a 40 per cent greater efficiency in the standards of house-building efficiency; not least, for example, because condensing boilers, which used to make up only 20 per cent of the market, are now up to 90 per cent. That alone will bring an extra 1 million tonnes of carbon reduction annually.

My Lords, will my noble friend give the House some information on non-domestic buildings and whether buildings such as offices, hotels, shops, et cetera, comply with the energy-saving requirements of the building regulations? If there is a problem, is she taking action to do more research on that?

My Lords, we clearly have to have greater compliance with non-domestic buildings than with domestic buildings. We announced that we would be moving towards zero carbon homes in 2016, and we have been looking at how we can set a road map equivalent for the non-domestic sector. We have commissioned the UK Green Building Council to provide a comprehensive analysis of the costs and barriers to that, which is on our website. We have set up two steering committees with external developers and government departments which manage large estates. We are working very seriously on this.

My Lords, the improvement in new-build quality is much to be welcomed. Can the noble Baroness tell the House what is being done about the 22 million pre-existing buildings, which of course create far more emissions than any new building is likely to catch up with for many years?

My Lords, the noble Lord’s point goes to the heart of the Question. There are things that we can do with the existing stock, but they are more difficult than with new build. For example, through the Warm Front initiative some £850 million has been allocated in the current spending round to improve carbon efficiency through insulation and so forth, and some 1.6 million people have been helped in this way. The initiative is expected to generate around 500,000 tonnes of carbon savings by 2016. There is an investment of £20 billion in the Decent Homes programme to modernise, draught-proof and increase the thermal efficiency of some of our worst council housing stock. Further, we need to work with the Technology Strategy Board so that we can encourage industry to develop improved products and better devices to increase efficiency overall.

My Lords, how much energy would be saved if the nation were to switch its lights off at night?

My Lords, that is really important. Work is going on across government to watch things like only boiling the amount of water required in kettles and switching off lights. While I cannot give the noble Earl a precise assessment, I would be happy to write to him because I should like to know the answer myself.

My Lords, can the Minister clarify today whether developers and builders will be able to use emissions trading in order to claim that they are actually complying with the Government’s zero carbon initiative? Does she agree that if they are allowed to do that, it will seriously undermine the intentions of this policy?

My Lords, I cannot confirm that, so I shall have to write to the noble Baroness. What I can say is that we are working with industry across a whole range of fronts to provide incentives for and improve compliance with these building regulations. After the 2006 changes, we embarked on the biggest training programme we have ever put in place, and we are continuing our dialogue with the industry. Last year we announced that we would be looking at building controls as a whole and are just about to introduce a consultation process to do that, because we need to sharpen up our enforcement of building controls. Those developments will make a real difference to compliance.

My Lords, in view of the limited progress made by the Government in achieving the 2010 carbon emissions target and in view of the importance of domestic boilers in this regard, will they consider making it a requirement that by, say, 2020, all boilers, including those already installed, will have to meet certain efficiency standards?

My Lords, as I have said, we are making real progress towards the introduction of condensing boilers, and I think that we are making good progress in terms of the 2010 target. Our assumed savings by that date are going to be in the order of 4 million tonnes from all dwellings. I will think hard about what the noble Lord has said because it is an important point.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that it is rather naive to suggest, as she did in her first Answer, that there is 100 per cent compliance with the regulations? Has she not heard, as I have, some of the horror stories told by owners moving into new-build houses and finding less than the proper amount of insulation in the roof, or even none at all? How many builders have been penalised for such breaches?

My Lords, we have some anecdotal evidence of the absence of compliance. Part of the problem with regard to insulation is that it is concealed, and that is why we are now taking systematic samples. I have no knowledge of prosecutions, and I am not entirely certain that we actually collect the data. However, I shall certainly get back to the noble Baroness about this.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

How many people they estimate will have been issued with identity cards by May 2010.

My Lords, the detailed plans for the rollout of identity cards have yet to be finalised, so it is not possible to give an estimation of the number of cards that will have been issued by 2010. However, I expect that updated plans will be published shortly.

My Lords, I thank the Minister most warmly for his reply. First, can he tell us how it came about that the records of 3 million driving licence applicants were shipped off to America and lost in the depths of Iowa, so what guarantee can he give that entries in the identity register will not end up in Timbuktu? Secondly, how will the issue of cards to non-European foreigners applying to stay here—law-abiding people who come forward voluntarily—help in the fight against illegal immigration, let alone terrorism; and yet am I not right that the issue of such cards to non-European foreigners is going to be almost first on the list?

My Lords, the noble Lord is right: it is our intention later this year to roll out the first tranche of identity cards for foreign nationals. We already have a rollout for the UK visas biometrics programme internationally which now covers three-quarters of the world’s population and operates in 135 countries. So far, that scheme has ensured that some 10,000 individuals have been matched to those who have been fingerprinted in the United Kingdom in connection with previous asylum applications. So it is already encouraging in its results in further enhancing the protection of our borders and in protecting us from illegal immigration. I am not aware of any plans to send data to Timbuktu or anywhere else. I am sure the noble Lord was being facetious.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, spoke of the “depths of Iowa”? As an honorary citizen of Iowa, I am horrified at such an expression. Iowa has nothing but joys.

My Lords, strange as it may seem, when the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, mentioned Iowa, the noble Lord, Lord Acton, came first to mind, and I knew that he would be incensed.

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether the computer systems for dealing with biometric ID cards are in place? If they are not, when will they be? Are the Government satisfied that they will be able to cope with the new biometric ID cards as they are rolled out?

My Lords, the computer system is not yet in place. We are in the early stages of the procurement process for that. We are making good progress in developing our plans for the introduction of ID cards. As I said earlier, we plan to introduce them for foreign nationals in the United Kingdom later this year. I suppose the question for me is: do the opposition parties still support the introduction of ID cards for foreign nationals? My sense is that they do not. I think they are making a big mistake in that because there is no doubt in my mind and the minds of their own national security and police advisers that ID cards will make a great contribution to ensuring that we can secure our borders and protect ourselves from illegal immigration.

My Lords, speaking for the Liberal Democrat Benches, I can assure the noble Lord that we think the money would be far better spent on proper measures to secure our borders and anti-terrorist intelligence work, apart from anything else. What is the latest cost estimate, first, for each individual who has to get a card; secondly, to the taxpayer for bringing in the whole scheme; and, lastly, for any business which has to implement it?

My Lords, the noble Baroness asks an important question. We have been very clear and up front—it is worth listening to the response—that roughly 70 per cent of the costs of introducing ID cards would be required in any event to ensure that the full secure biometric passports are introduced. So most of the costs are fully recovered. The remainder of the costs are recovered by the issuing of the identity cards. I know that some Conservative Members have the notion that somehow we could use the same £5.4 billion-worth of funding simply to enhance the security of our borders through the development of an extensive army of border security staff, but that is completely unrealistic. That money is already going to be spent on ensuring that we have a fully biometric passport system.

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what is the current prospect for the Government signing up to Schengen information system mark 2?

My Lords, I was looking forward to a helpful observation. I will write to the noble Lord on that; I want to ensure that he has an accurate answer.

My Lords, as an Australian, do I qualify as a non-EU foreigner, although I have not been an asylum seeker? If so, will I be the first person in this House to get an identity card? Will I have an option, or will I be obliged to have it?

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness has just volunteered for the scheme. I wish her luck being first in the queue.

My Lords, has my noble friend seen the widespread predictions that the Conservatives will return to supporting identity cards when they perceive themselves to be near to power again? Should he and I not welcome this continued vehement opposition?

My Lords, the position of the Conservative Party on ID cards is interesting. Back in June 1994, I think it was the MP Harold Elletson who moved a Motion to introduce ID cards. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, supported that Motion, as did the noble Lords, Lord Lamont and Lord Jopling. My research also shows me that three current shadow Secretaries of State in Mr Cameron’s shadow Cabinet and a number of other shadow Ministers supported the Motion, so it seems that the Conservative Party is deeply divided on this issue.

My Lords, if overseas immigrants are to get cards but the computer system is in the early stages of procurement, what is the use of the cards until the computer programme is up and running?

My Lords, this is going to be a highly sophisticated system.

Oh!

My Lords, noble Lords opposite have been in government and have also introduced highly sophisticated systems. The system will work to ensure that we protect our borders against terrorists and illegal immigrants and that we get people using services that are entirely proper for them to use in a fair sense.

My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 14 January be approved. 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Lord McKenzie of Luton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 23 January be approved. 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Lord McKenzie of Luton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 23 January be approved. 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Lord McKenzie of Luton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the fourth Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 23 January be approved. 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Lord McKenzie of Luton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 16 January be approved. 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Baroness Royall of Blaisdon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 16 January be approved. 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Baroness Royall of Blaisdon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 14 November 2007 be approved. 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Baroness Royall of Blaisdon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the fourth Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 7 January be approved. 6th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.—(Baroness Royall of Blaisdon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The LORD SPEAKER in the Chair.]

moved Amendment No. 117:

We support the amendment moved by the noble and learned Baroness. However, in her Second Reading speech, she talked of transferring the proceedings from the magistrates’ court to the family court. There is no machinery in her amendments that would permit that to happen. Perhaps she could explain whether that is required or whether existing provisions would enable that to happen.

The purpose behind the proposed new clauses is simply that of trying to avoid imprisoning young children. We have in previous debates pointed out how much out of step we are in that regard with the rest of the nearby jurisdictions in Europe. It is right that the local authority should be involved, as local authorities have a duty towards children. There should be an investigation by the local authority, particularly in relation to children under the age of 14, to which Amendment No. 118 refers. The court should take an informed decision that is in the best interests of the child and is understood to be in the best interests of the child.

I warmly support the intentions behind these proposals, although I do not know whether they meet all the legal requirements to deliver what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, proposes. It has been argued forcefully that this period is one in which children’s behaviour can be changed. A great deal of flexibility is needed, but it is possible to deter young people with the appropriate action from further wrongdoing and offending.

I support the intention of the amendments, but why is there a difference between the two? Which of them does the noble and learned Baroness prefer? Does she prefer the age of 14 or of 18? Why does she create a divergence in that regard?

I am sure that the noble and learned Baroness will answer the noble Lord in due course. I am sure, too, that the Committee is grateful to her for bringing forward these important matters, which in one sense could encapsulate the debate that noble Lords have had right from the beginning of these debates, which seems an awful long time ago, when we first discussed these important matters with regard to the youth justice system.

The Government sympathise with the underlying aim of the amendments. I understand why she has tabled the two amendments, so that we might consider more specifically the particular needs of the younger age group, which is why I suspect that she allowed us to have two options in this debate—to anticipate her answer to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway. Although the Government have reservations about the particular amendments in terms of what has gone before, the noble and learned Baroness will know of the work being done across government on the development of a youth crime action plan. I am very hopeful that that action plan can reflect a number of the important points being raised by noble Lords, especially in the way in which young people should be dealt with in the youth justice system.

As the noble Baroness has already said, in effect, her amendments replicate for criminal courts the power under Section 37 of the Children Act 1989 for a court dealing with family proceedings to direct the relevant local authority to undertake an investigation of a child’s welfare needs. The results of that investigation must be reported to the family court and include any proposals by the local authority for future action in relation to the child. The Government’s difficulty is that we do not consider such a power to be appropriate for the criminal courts. We see the primary purpose of the criminal court to deal with the offender for the offences that they have committed. We had extensive debate on the purpose of sentencing in Clause 9 of this Bill. Certainly, we consider the welfare needs of the child as important. That is why the courts are required to have regard to the welfare of the child under new Section 142A(3)(b) inserted by Clause 9. We do not believe, however, that they should override the courts’ duty in respect of administering justice.

The noble Baroness’s amendments would provide a power for the court to direct a local authority to undertake an investigation of the child’s welfare needs over a period of up to eight weeks. As she said, the criminal proceedings would be adjourned pending its completion. I understand why the noble Baroness is proposing that, but she needs to take into account the practical impact of adding to the court hearing process and potentially undermining the considerable efforts that are being expended on speeding up that process. It is generally accepted that young offenders should be dealt with as quickly as possible, and we have seen a reduction from 142 days to under 71 days in the average time for young offenders to have their cases heard before a court. We would not wish to see that set back.

A power under Section 9 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 places a duty on local authorities to investigate a child’s circumstances where they have been notified that they are appearing before a court. In addition, Section 9 provides for the court to request that the local authority undertakes such an investigation and makes it the duty of a local authority to comply with such a request. I understand that that power is rarely used. That might be taken to reflect acceptance by the criminal courts that youth offending teams now serve as a primary means by which information is provided about young people appearing before the court. As we discussed last week, the information is provided by the court by way of a pre-sentence report.

Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the youth offending team has the responsibility to prepare reports on young offenders, assess their needs and make recommendations to the court on appropriate interventions. There is a serious discussion to be had about the standard of pre-sentence reports. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, took me to task last week when I read a passage from the inspection of youth offending teams. I pointed out that those inspections had raised some problems as well as generally commending the work of youth offending teams. I did so in order to illustrate that there is a proper process of inspection and, following that, efforts to improve the whole process of pre-sentence reports and the work of youth offending teams.

I also suspect that behind the noble Baroness's amendment is a concern about whether one of the impacts of the role of youth offending teams has been the distancing of some children's services from young people drawn into the youth justice system. That point was made by a number of noble Lords last week. I do not agree with some of the suggestions that, in some ways, local authorities are cost shifting. However, I accept that more can always be done to ensure that local authorities, particularly children’s services, are as focused on the needs of this group of young people as they are on their general responsibilities.

I emphasise that I am sympathetic to the general tenor of the noble Baroness’s remarks. She spoke eloquently about the troubled background of many of these young people and about the positive impact of early intervention. I mentioned that this whole matter is under review. The Children’s Plan announced by the Government in December includes the development of the youth crime action plan. This action plan is looking at what happens in other jurisdictions both in the British Isles and in other countries—picking up points that noble Lords made about international comparisons—to see how those systems work and whether they have elements from which we can learn. As part of this work we are considering whether under-15s should be treated differently from the older age group.

I acknowledge the very eloquent way in which the noble Baroness put forward her views but I invite her to withdraw her amendments on the basis that the Government are taking forward this work. I also invite the noble Baroness to discuss this further with the Government.

I thank the Minister and am grateful to him for listening to what I have been saying. However, I am not alone in saying this. I am very interested in the idea that under-15s might be dealt with slightly differently. That seems to me well worth exploring. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that I felt the transfer to the family proceedings court was a step too far, and since Section 37 is also a step too far, I took the view that it would be unwise to include it. To apply Section 37 to the youth court would be extremely easy from a legislative point of view but it is difficult for the Government to accept that this should happen. The trouble is that the Government talk about dealing with the offender and then go through the mantra, “But, of course, we consider welfare”. I should like offending and welfare to be considered as equally important rather than putting offending before welfare. The particular point about which I am concerned is not to criminalise a young child of 10, 14 or 15 whose bad background, unhappy circumstances or whatever has created the atmosphere in which the child offended. That child should not necessarily have to plead guilty, have a finding of guilt and therefore become part of the criminal justice system.

At Second Reading I said that I hoped very much that we could put in something, before the child ever got to the youth court, so that he could be diverted from it if a group of people, chaired preferably by a magistrate or judge, thought that he needed help rather than going to the youth court. If that were possible, Section 37 would not be needed. However, it would be a very useful back-up for magistrates, who would not use it all that often but would certainly use it more than Section 9 of the Children and Young Persons Act, which to my knowledge has never been used. That is why I thought that Section 37 might be a more sensible approach.

I am sad that the Government do not think that this would be a useful tool; a lot of youth court magistrates think that it would be. As regards the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, I would prefer to see clearly in the legislation “under 14” or “under 15”. But aware as I am that it is often preferable from the point of view of drafting legislation to be in line with the rest of the magistrates’ courts, “under 18” might be a preferable way of putting it, as the Minister appreciated.

Purely and simply, I was trailing my coat with the hope that I would get the Minister to be attracted to one if not the other. I am comforted by some of what he said; I am sad that my suggestion has not found favour but, in the circumstances, with the hope of discussing a bit further—

Before the noble and learned Baroness takes the plunge of withdrawing the amendment, I should say that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talking about cross-government discussions. Presumably when those discussions are going on, a need for some form of legislation will appear, so you will have the criminal justice youth offender Bill number 17,423. Why could it not have been done in time for this Bill? It is not a new problem; it is a very old problem that has been talked about for a long time. It is a great pity that it was not got together before the Bill. The Bill has had all these muddles going through it, and it is perhaps not a good example of how to do legislation. When will the government consultation be finished?

I have received a lot of advice in the past few weeks on government and legislation. As I have said, I am sure that there are always lessons to be learnt about how to improve the legislative process. The noble Earl is such an experienced Member of your Lordships’ House that he knows that I cannot answer his question. I think that the development of this plan across government gives us a real opportunity to produce an integrated approach, which I hope would meet a number of the concerns expressed by the noble and learned Baroness. I repeat my invitation to her that we would very much welcome an opportunity for discussions with her on these matters.

I say to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, that if I got what I wanted I would not mind if it was Bill number 17,423; it would be well worth while. I very gratefully accept the opportunity for further discussions with the Ministry of Justice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 118 and 119 not moved.]

Clauses 109 and 110 agreed to.

Clause 111 [Compensation for miscarriages of justice]:

moved Amendment No. 120:

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for the way in which he has introduced the debate. The changes were foreshadowed in a Written Statement made by my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary in April 2006 and formed part of wider changes and reforms to the system for compensation paid for miscarriages of justice. As my right honourable friend then said, the purpose of those reforms was,

“to modernise and simplify the system, and to bring about a better balance with the treatment of victims of crime”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/4/06; col. 15WS.]

I shall go through each amendment one by one, because they deal with some specific and separate matters. Amendment No. 120 would extend from two years to six years the proposed time limit for making a claim for compensation in relation to a miscarriage of justice. Currently, compensation applications can be made many years after a conviction has been reversed as there is no time limit. That means that important documents may not be available, thus making it very difficult to make proper and fair decisions about whether, beyond reasonable doubt, there has been a miscarriage of justice, as the law requires. Clause 111(3), therefore, introduces a time limit for making an application for compensation, of two years from the reversing of the conviction or a pardon being granted. I should stress that the time limit applies from the date that the conviction is quashed or the date of acquittal at retrial and not the actual date of conviction. Two years is also the time limit for making an application for criminal injuries compensation.

Clearly, there may be exceptional circumstances which could delay an application. In exceptional circumstances, therefore, the clause provides that an application made outside the two-year limit may be regarded as having been made in time. Exceptional circumstances in this context might include the physical or mental incapacity of the applicant. While every application would be considered on its own facts, we do not expect mere ignorance of the existence of the compensation scheme to be regarded as an exceptional circumstance. Therefore, we think that the two-year time limit, with the possibility of an extension in exceptional circumstances, is entirely reasonable. The application form is fairly straightforward. It has a maximum of 10 pages. In normal circumstances, there is no reason why it could not be completed within the two-year period.

On Amendment No. 121, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is concerned about the proposed £500,000 limit. He is right to say that there is no limit on the amount of compensation payable for a miscarriage of justice at the moment. He is also right to say that in recent years a number of awards have exceeded £1 million. The highest ever award was more than £2 million. I know that the noble Lord says that there is no logic in making comparisons between the amounts payable for miscarriage of justice and the amounts paid for compensation of victims of violent crime. The Government do not agree. Compensation for victims of violent crime is currently capped at £500,000, no matter what the severity of the injury or its long-term nature. That scheme is probably one of the most generous in the world, in any case.

On the first of the three amendments in this group, which I support, it crossed my mind that if the Government stay firm on the period of two years it might be that one should look at proposed new subsection (2A) in Clause 111(3) and see whether it is appropriate to have the phrase, “exceptional circumstances which justify”. Certainly, as a lawyer, the phrase “exceptional circumstances” means exactly what it says: circumstances which should be very rare.

The psychiatric disability of someone who has been in prison for more than 10 years, has had that corroding element of knowing that he or she is innocent and is then released, may mean that they go to ground. They may not be capable of making the application until they get into the hands of a psychotherapist. It may be that if this came up on a number of occasions, the circumstances could not be said to be “exceptional”. There is nothing really all that unusual about having a psychiatric problem if you have been unjustly imprisoned for more than 10 years. Would the Government consider saying something such as, “if the Secretary of State considers it appropriate”, rather than “exceptional circumstances”?

I have considerable sympathy with the amendments of the noble Lord. It fell to me, when I was Home Secretary, to set up the royal commission that recommended the creation of the commission that investigates miscarriages of justice. It is much better for that commission to operate than for the Home Secretary to examine the cases, which it fell to me to do. When that Bill was passing through, the commission did not recommend that there should be any limitation on the compensation for victims of a miscarriage of justice. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that there is a fundamental difference between the compensation available to victims of crime and victims of a miscarriage of justice.

Yes, victims of crime should have compensation. Many of them receive relatively small awards; some are more substantial, such as for a broken leg or something of that sort. However, if someone has suffered a miscarriage of justice and has had to remain in prison for 12 or 15 years—I had to release several people who had remained in prison for substantially over 10 years including one who was accused of a gruesome murder but was absolutely innocent—his life is utterly destroyed. Your Lordships might ask what should be the compensation for that. It should certainly not be half a million.

The Government clearly half accept the case. The Minister said that he will table amendments on Report to raise the level for victims of miscarriage from half a million to a million, so they recognise there is a fundamental difference. The argument that has been used in the past—that they are comparable—is now out of the window. The Minister now recognises that there is a fundamental difference and that if someone has been in prison for a long time, there should be a level.

Why should there be a level? This is a Treasury provision—it does not stem from the Minister’s department. This is the Treasury wanting to cap, but what are they going to cap? Half a dozen cases a year? When this amendment comes back for £1 million, I think there should be no limit. The decision about compensation should be left to the discretion of the court. Only the courts can decide. When you have destroyed someone’s life and he has no way of working or going back to a normal life, it should be for the court to decide the compensation, not the Treasury.

I applaud the principle that underlies these three amendments. I suspect that it finds an echo in the heart of the Minister. I welcome the fact that there is to be some relaxation of the rigour of what otherwise would be an extremely unjust limitation. Nevertheless, the Government are not standing on any ground of principle that can in any way justify their actions. The argument is purely fiscal. They are saving money at the cost of injustice. That is not too harsh a way of putting it.

How much money are they saving? Is it not cheese-paring?

That may very well be so, but the noble Lord would accept that it does not really matter whether it is thousands of pounds or millions of pounds—the cost, the price and the value of justice are entirely different.

The principle of compensation in our law has always been on the basis of restitutio in integrum—restitution in full. A person should be compensated in full by the perpetrator of the unlawful act. In this case, the Government are not responsible for an unlawful act but for an act that is flawed in law, which is not a casuistic distinction. Authority with all its powers, sovereignty and resources has made a mistake. Therefore the moral obligation is exactly the same as where a deliberate tort is committed. If a person was badly injured, was owed a couple of million pounds of compensation and was able to sue the perpetrator of that act—assume that he was worth powder and shot—there would be no cap on that. Why should there be in this situation? The argument put forward by the Minister about documentation and the two-year period cannot stand for a moment. If any situation on this earth is well documented—and those documents will be there for examination in tens and probably hundreds of years—this is such a situation. There will be a full transcript of what happened at the court hearing; there will be a full transcript of exactly what happened at the Court of Appeal hearing. All the necessary documents will be there. Therefore, I cannot imagine why there should be an argument to reduce the period to two years. It is purely a cheese-paring economy that is not worthy of the Government. I have great sympathy with the Minister who has had to seek to justify this situation, but I still congratulate him on having, to some extent, ameliorated what would otherwise have been an extremely unworthy situation.

I strongly support the amendments, especially the second one. To put any formal limit on the time when application may be made for compensation is flawed in itself, but six years would be better than two. As the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said so eloquently, there is no moral equivalence between the state stepping in to offer some recompense for a wrong committed by someone else and the state itself being in one sense or another the perpetrator of the wrong. The noble Lord also referred to an important difference, which is that in the case of someone injured by another party, there is always the possibility of recourse to the civil courts if there is either an insurance policy or some wealth that can be attached. In other circumstances, there is at least the possibility of the courts giving whatever compensation they think is just in the circumstances.

It is wrong for the state to set a limit, even of £1 million. Imagine someone who had had a professional career who had been in prison for 15 years. Today, for someone rebuilding their career, even £1 million seems a modest amount. There is no moral equivalence between those different cases. That has been implicitly admitted by the Minister in his offer to come back on Report with a limit of £1 million. How much better it would be to leave the matter for the courts to take a proper, principled and moral view of the situation as cases arise and to do away with this rather shoddy proposal that the state should, as it were, insure itself against its own moral mistakes.

I cannot improve on the arguments that have just been adduced, or those of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, but it is important that someone from this side should also adopt the argument. I have not heard that yet. I hope that my noble friend will think again about this and come back to the House on Report.

I am most grateful for the support that my amendments have received from around the House, and especially for the most powerful support of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, who, as he told us, introduced the scheme in the first place.

It is quite wrong to equate this type of compensation with compensation for criminal injuries. When a person is a victim of crime, they are surrounded by agencies to assist them. It could be the police; it could be social workers. A person who has suffered in some way will be told about the scheme and what to do. When someone broke into an outhouse at my home and stole some tools belonging to builders who were working at my home, I was offered counselling. I do not think that I particularly needed counselling at that time, but I am trying to make the point that a victim of crime is surrounded by agencies of the state who will tell them how to gain compensation. That is not the case for a person whose life has been crushed by a miscarriage of justice of this sort.

The only reason put forward by the Government for putting a time limit on the making of applications was that the documents might be lost. As noble Lords, especially the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, have pointed out, that is ridiculous. The Court of Appeal will have all its documents for all time. Its judgment will be there for all time. There can be no question of the reasons for the decision of the court being lost, and it is not really for the independent assessor to go behind the judgment of the Court of Appeal and the documents brought before it to say, “It did not take into account this document, which was discovered many years ago”. The Court of Appeal decision is final. That gives rise to the right to claim compensation, so I completely reject the suggestion that you can justify a time limit because documents will be lost, as I reject the suggestion that two years should be a limit because that is the limit for criminal injuries compensation.

moved Amendment No. 122A:

I believe that those amendments have been degrouped.

In that case, I beg to move.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for moving the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. The reply I have is somewhat lengthy and I shall try to cut it down, but it is important that the Committee understands why this proposed new clause is not acceptable to the Government.

The proposed new clause in Amendment No. 122A seeks to address issues which were raised in an amendment in another place. Of course, the Government understand the concerns on this matter. We have to make allowances for the fact that some people, because they are vulnerable, do not respond when they ought to notifications from the court. That does not mean that the courts ought to permit those convicted in their absence to simply ignore the sentence imposed on them. But, if someone is identified as vulnerable, the courts should have the power to look again at the fine or financial penalty. We do not accept this proposed new clause because that power already exists and is used by the courts.

As the noble Lord said, the proposed new clause looks to provide an opportunity to suspend or halt the enforcement of fines against vulnerable people who are convicted in their absence by suspending or withdrawing any warrant issued against the offender. It would allow certain persons to be given the power under regulations to suspend or withdraw a warrant to enforce a fine or other financial penalty.

I am rather troubled by the phrase “vulnerable person”. Is that defined in any other statute?

As I understand it, it is not defined in statute. It is defined in guidance of various kinds. We, too, are troubled by that expression in this context, and I shall say a little more on that shortly. Subsection (4) of the proposed new clause attempts to define a vulnerable person for the purposes of this power.

Let me explain to the Committee the long process which would have to be gone through before a person sentenced to a fine in their absence ever got to the stage of having a bailiff at the door attempting to seize assets to pay a fine. It would involve many different opportunities for the offender to make it known that he or she found it difficult or impossible to pay the fine. The offender would have numerous opportunities to contact the court and to explain the circumstances.

Following any charge or final notice, depending on the offence which has been committed, the offender will receive a summons informing him when his case is due to be heard, together with a request to provide means information. If a person is summoned to attend but does not, he may be tried in his absence. That decision is made by the court, but it must have regard to the principle that a defendant is entitled to a fair trial, which must include a fair opportunity for the accused to be present and/or to be legally represented. The principle that the defendant should have a fair opportunity to be present does not amount to an unlimited opportunity or a defendant could indefinitely postpone the proceedings. There can be no veto on the court hearing a case in the absence of an accused. So trials in absence should and do happen, and the offender may be fined.

Where the offender did not respond to a summons and did not produce any means information, a fine or other financial penalty can be imposed, whether it is a compensation order, costs or victims surcharge. It may have to be imposed in the absence of any information about the offender’s particular circumstances. Since March 2006, the fines collection scheme provided for by the Courts Act 2003 applies and a collection order will normally be made where a fine is imposed. The offender will receive a copy, along with a notice of financial penalty. This will explain how to pay and offers the offender an opportunity to make contact with the court to ask for time to pay if they cannot afford to pay the fine as ordered. But if the offender fails to pay and makes no contact, what happens then? The fines officer will issue a final demand, a further steps notice, saying that unless payment is made, enforcement action will start without further notice. This further steps notice again provides the offender with an opportunity to engage with the court and ask for time to pay. The notice also explains the consequences of further default and outlines the sanctions which the court can impose.

If the offender still fails to respond, after approximately three weeks the fines officer will decide which enforcement sanction to deploy once a check has been made to ensure that the offender has neither made payment nor contacted the court to explain why they have failed to do so. While the ultimate sanction for fine default is imprisonment, this, I think the Committee will be pleased to hear, is a rarely used sanction. Of course it is used, but not often these days. However, the fines officer and the court have at their disposal a number of enforcement sanctions which they will consider and/or try before getting to this stage.

Let me move on to explain the enforcement process for a fine so that I can demonstrate the varied opportunities which offenders have to make contact with the court. The first sanction usually applied on default is either a deductions from benefit order for those offenders who are on benefits, or, in the case of employed offenders, consideration will be given to an attachment to earnings order. The court will only be able to make these orders if it holds the relevant information about the offender. If either order fails or cannot be used, the fines officer will issue yet another notice, another further steps notice, seeking payment. This notice asks the offender to make contact with the court and warns that failure to do so will lead to further enforcement action, including registration of the fine, clamping of the offender’s vehicle or—and here we come to the distress warrant—to seize the offender’s goods. If the offender again fails to respond to the notice, the fines officer will order the appropriate sanction. At this point the offender would have been contacted by the court on at least three occasions, if not more, and this does not include in practice the numerous text messages and telephone reminders that many courts now provide.

If the court does issue a distress warrant after all these steps have been taken, what can be done to stop the enforcement process because, unbeknown to the court, the offender is a vulnerable person? The distress warrant will be passed to contractors currently providing bailiff services to execute on behalf of the court. The bailiff will leave a notice of attendance to remove goods at the premises. This will allow a further seven days in which to make payment. If that does not happen, the bailiff will attempt to execute the warrant at the offender’s last known address. But if it is clear to the bailiff that the offender appears to be vulnerable, what is to be done? The situation is dealt with by the National Standards for Enforcement Agents, which provide guidance intended to build on existing good practice and raise the levels of professionalism across the enforcement sector. The standards, which are guidance rather than law, provide that, in respect of vulnerable people who are identical to those identified in new Clause 122A, agents must use their discretion on how to proceed and that they have,

“a duty to contact the creditor and report the circumstances where there is potential cause for concern”.

I hope that the Committee agrees that this is entirely right. Not all those listed in the new clause would be automatically considered to be vulnerable because it will depend on the circumstances; they may not necessarily be so. Others may be vulnerable for reasons not listed in the proposed new clause. Here I come back to the words of my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis by saying that this demonstrates to us the dangers of setting out such a list in the Bill.

The exception referred to in the amendment, “but not limited to”, is, by and large, less persuasive than the ones that have been mentioned specifically. Does my noble friend agree?

I agree with my noble friend.

It is important to point out that the guidelines, in Chapter 6.31, state:

“The contractor shall not take any action to levy distress without prior reference to court if the defaulter”—

and it then goes on to provide a list of who may be considered vulnerable. It continues:

“The Department also reserves the right to withdraw enforcement action where there is evidence that the defaulter is vulnerable”.

These are the terms, conditions and specifications in the contracts between Her Majesty’s Courts Service and the private enforcement companies which execute distress warrants on behalf of the department. In other words, the contractors are obliged to comply with these requirements.

If the bailiff considers the person to be vulnerable, or if the bailiff does not think so but the offender considers himself or herself to be vulnerable, what can be done? The short answer is that the matter needs to be brought back to the court so that its attention can be grasped and, if the court considers it appropriate, the distress warrant can be withdrawn. In Section 142 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act, subsection (1) provides that,

“a magistrates’ court may vary or rescind a sentence or other order imposed or made by it when dealing with an offender”,

if it appears to the court to be in the interests of justice to do so. Subsection (2) is also relevant. It states that where a person is convicted by a magistrates’ court,

“and it subsequently appears to the court that it would be in the interests of justice that the case should be heard again by different justices, the court may … so direct”.

In the other place, the honourable Member for Enfield Southgate, who sits on the Opposition Benches and is a practising solicitor in criminal law—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, and I had the pleasure of serving with him on a Select Committee a year or so ago—spoke of his experiences as a youth court solicitor. He said:

“I know that in such situations there are ways to get the warrant withdrawn and to ensure that true account is taken of the young person’s means. That often means that the fine is remitted to a level that can be paid.”.—[Official Report, Commons, Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill Committee, 23/11/07; col. 491.]

Our case is that, one way or another, distress warrants can be and are withdrawn. However, I must emphasise that the court’s power to withdraw a warrant is discretionary.

The criminal courts have to pass sentence on those who are guilty. The sentences include fines, which must be adequately enforced otherwise the public may lose confidence in our system. Of course, the enforcement of fines must be done with regard to those who may be vulnerable, and such people must have adequate opportunities to alert the court to their circumstances and the court to take account of them. We are satisfied that such opportunities exist and that procedures are in place to deal with those who are vulnerable.

I do not apologise to the Committee for having gone on at some length. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, has raised an important point with the amendment. I hope I have put the Government’s case that this new clause is not necessary because what it seeks can and does happen.

I am most grateful to the Minister for his lengthy exposition of the Government’s position. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, will read it with considerable interest and decide how far he wishes to pursue this matter. Listening to the noble Lord, I have the feeling that he has never had the experience of a bailiff knocking on his door. I recall my noble friend—or kinswoman or other half, as the noble Lord, Lord Acton, wishes—Lady Walmsley contested a congestion charge. She went through the procedure of making an application to the adjudicator. While she did that, there was a knock on the door. It was the bailiffs—one of the contracted companies to which the Minister referred—who could not be persuaded to go away for a considerable time. Following the adjudicator’s decision, she then applied to the divisional court and obtained leave to appeal. Following that, the bailiffs turned up again. They said they could not do anything; they had the warrant in their hands, which had come from the Northampton County Court, and what was she going to do about it. Again they were persuaded to go away and the matter was adjourned until the noble Baroness appeared in person in the divisional court and won her appeal.

I have put that personal experience before the Minister because he has come out with a great deal of detail about what they are supposed to do, but what in fact happened with these contracted companies is a world apart from that. I could go on at some length on this matter. I am not suggesting that my noble friend, kinswoman or other half is a vulnerable person, but a vulnerable person in that position—children under the age of 18 years, persons with a disability, the seriously ill, the recently bereaved—

I am in a bit of a muddle about how this operates in practice. Presumably the magistrates have to know before the chap goes to serve the warrant whether it ought to be withdrawn or suspended on the basis of the person being vulnerable, so that somehow or other one has to go to subsection (4) before one comes to subsection (1) and the court has to decide. The court is the only person who can decide whether the person is vulnerable. Then we come to the definition clause referring to “vulnerability”. I am distressed to see that it includes the elderly, which would include most of your Lordships, with the qualification that they could not be reasonably expected to act on their own behalf—which I would not say applied to many of your Lordships.

Then there is another problem: pregnant mothers. This is all very difficult; you have somehow to discover at what time the mother was pregnant and whether that affects her ability to act on her own behalf. And why should unemployed persons be unable to act on their own behalf just because they are unemployed? The whole set-up, involving the person concerned having to be brought back to court, is very difficult. As I understand the Minister, that is what would happen in any event. The court decides, under extant procedure, on the basis of any reason; not just these reasons—there is no exclusion clause. What is the necessity to codify this situation, which is really a matter of common sense from the magistrates on the facts of each case?

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. I would point out that the premise for the new clause is that the magistrates’ court is proceeded in the absence of the accused, so it does not know who it is dealing with. The point of contact comes when the very large person from the contracted company, to whom the Minister referred, is knocking on the door. The point of the suggested provision is that that person should have the discretion, looking at the individual who comes to the door and against whom the warrant is issued, to decide, “Is this a person who is vulnerable?”—in the sense that they cannot be reasonably expected to act on his or her own behalf. If they come to that conclusion, at that point they should be able to refer the matter back to the court and say, “Well, you’ve never seen this person. They weren’t before you when you imposed that fine. Now, I’ve actually met the person in question and I think they are vulnerable and therefore you should rethink your position”. That is what the provision is all about: it is a safeguard which we suggest should be in the Bill.

The noble Lord is correct. We are talking about someone who has never appeared before the court and has not responded in any way to the various methods—through which I am afraid I have gone at some length—to try to contact them. There may be bad reasons for their not having got in touch with the court; there may be valid reasons. Our answer to the proposal that the provision be put in law, which the amendment would do, is that the guidance to which I referred states that the bailiff or “the contractor”—the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, described him as a very large person; I do not think that that is a requirement for the job—

“shall not take any action to levy distress without prior reference to the court if the defaulter”—

it then lists a whole series of possibilities, including being in hospital or a nursing home, or being heavily pregnant; there are others. They are the terms and conditions and specifications in the existing contracts. They should not be broken and the contractor must take some notice of the person who answers the door. If the person falls into one of the listed categories, the contractor is obliged to go back to the court. That is better than putting it in legislation, which is not necessary because it happens now.

There seemed to be a level of unreality in what the Minister said—the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was almost too polite to make the point. The Minister in his description of the gentlemen and ladies of the contracted organisations was speaking as if they were ideally placed to make delicate decisions about the needs of the person whom they faced on the doorstep. My experience of working with people who have suffered the attentions of bailiffs—I admit that it is small—is that that is not the kind of people they are, regardless of whether nice organisations exist to limit their activity. The amendment has been proposed in part because, notwithstanding all the professional arrangements, the reputation of bailiffs is very poor. Their wretched reputation for rough treatment of all kinds of people with whom they have to do is only too well known.

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for that intervention, because it made the point that I was seeking to make. If the contractor’s man, large or small, who appears at the door does not follow the guidelines, there is a breach of contract, but those are the contractual arrangements between the contractors and the court. It is of no help to the person who is being oppressed by this large or small individual to know that the contract may at some subsequent date be withheld from that contractor’s organisation. The bailiff should be trained to know that they have a statutory duty under this Bill to look at the person with whom they are concerned and to determine whether they could be described as vulnerable, and therefore that the matter should be referred back to the court for its determination. The duty would introduce a feeling of humanity in that individual, whose profession, as the right reverend Prelate correctly said, does not enjoy the highest reputation among the people of this country who are subjected to distress warrants. I shall discuss with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, what to do with the amendment but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 122B:

I have some 11 amendments grouped with this government amendment. I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the Government’s purpose and for his letter of 29 February which further expanded how the Government seek better to define their intention in this clause. Our difficulty with the clause is that this material is seen on the internet by someone in the privacy of their own home and is produced abroad so it cannot be caught by the Obscene Publications Act, as the Minister said. Therefore, the first person to judge whether the material falls within the scope of this Bill is the person viewing it. That is a very difficult position for the Government to put an individual in.

While I find myself in a difficult position defending people who want to watch violent pornography as I find that very distasteful, nevertheless I believe that, in taking a step in this direction, the Government are effectively becoming the “thought police”. Has somebody a bad thought behind what they are doing? The Minister referred to the context in which the material is viewed. If I watch a violently sexual scene while chopping onions to make chilli con carne, is that context all right? Does that make it a bit less titillating as I am crying due to the onions and so am unable to concentrate on the film? Would that be viewed in a different light from somebody watching this sort of material in the privacy of their own bedroom? What exactly does the Minister mean by context?

The Joint Committee on Human Rights put it very clearly. It said:

“This means that individuals seeking to regulate their conduct in accordance with the criminal law cannot be certain that they will not be committing a criminal offence by having certain images in their possession”.

The Government have brought forward helpful amendments which meet the arguments about “appears to” and result in a much better definition. However, I do not see that any of the amendments they have brought forward so far deals with the point made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. He referred to the need for this measure given increased internet usage, but how much study have the Government undertaken of the problem of such viewed violence leading to crime to justify their concluding that this is the right legislative step to take? Is the problem due to internet viewing or is the increased amount of sex and violence in late night television films more of an issue? The Minister referred to the rapid evidence assessment. My understanding is that that assessment was made overseas. I would like to know how much of the UK context is relevant to what we have before us today.

Like the noble Baroness, I, too, have received a large number of letters and e-mails on this clause, some of which are frankly quite disturbing, some of which are quite amusing and some of which are very serious. My favourite came from someone whose e-mail address included “affordable-leather”, which I thought was a reference to sofas and armchairs, but when I went to the website it turned out to be something very different indeed.

The most important point that has been made to me in those representations has come from Liberty, which summed up its argument as follows:

“The fact that many people find pornography morally offensive, damaging or worthless is not a good reason in itself to outlaw possession. Extreme caution should be exercised when new criminal laws are imposed with the intention of imposing a subjective opinion of what is morally acceptable”.

I think that the Minister is conscious of that point, and the amendments that he has come forward with make this clause a great deal better than it was at the beginning of our debate.

Like the noble Baroness, I am concerned that we are intruding into people’s privacy and that we are potentially making illegal activities that I suspect no one in this House would find interesting or in any way stimulating but which, for some people, represent an important part of their lives. For example, I have had an e-mail from Dr Tuppy Owens of the Outsiders Trust, who works with disabled people. He says:

“I work with disabled people, helping them find partners, through the Outsiders Trust. Disabled people have a hard enough time enjoying more conventional sexual lives, but fetishistic sex can be even more out of reach, both because of the prejudice they face in society generally, and because of often limited access to appropriate venues. Because of this, disabled people often need to rely on the internet and films for their satisfaction and mental and physical well-being. These proposals will therefore have a disproportionate impact on many people with a physical disability, by adding yet another barrier”.

I hope that, when my noble friend comes to reply to the debate, he will answer that point.

Perhaps he could also answer one other point that has been put to me. As a new offence is being created, what will be the position of people who have already downloaded material on to their computers which up until now has not been illegal but henceforth will be? Will the possession of that material be regarded as a criminal offence and, if so, what advice does he have for people to get rid of it?

I, too, wish to speak to this group of amendments and, in doing so, I should like to make a couple of general points. The first concerns the attempt to regulate material which is becoming increasingly difficult to regulate because, as the Minister told us, most of it originates abroad. I did quite a lot of work on another area of extremism and the analogy comes to mind of similar issues concerning material of another nature which the Government also describe as extremist—that relating to terrorism, which is also mainly produced abroad.

When we debated “glorification of terrorism” and all such phrases, I cautioned about introducing legislation which is too broadly drafted and very wide in scope and which encompasses, as my noble friend Lady Miller said, some element of thought crime. I do so here for many of the same reasons. We know from the case of the young woman who wrote a poem that the courts do not like convictions concerning thought crime, and I suggest that, if this provision becomes law, it will encounter similar problems further down the road when it comes to regulating very ambiguous and broadly defined and drafted clauses.

Moving specifically to some of the terms, I welcome the removal of the ambiguity created by the words “appears” and “appears to” throughout this clause. However, I believe that, although there has been a genuine effort to remove the subjective element of these terms, the Government are still muddled as to how to approach the problem of the dissemination of extreme pornography, which is why they have introduced the new and, as I see it, much more subjective standard in Amendment No. 125B. That would insert a new subsection stating that an “extreme image” is one which is,

“grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character”.

The problem here lies in defining what is offensive and disgusting, which is naturally subjective. It is dangerous to attempt to comment in criminal law on where the boundaries of taste lie. As I understand it, pornography covers a wide range of acts of different levels of what might be described as extreme acts of a sexual nature. For legislation to attempt to draw subjective parameters is, at worst, unworkable and may criminalise people who would not otherwise have seen those acts as disgusting, particularly if they had filmed themselves committing the acts as consenting adults and were viewing them themselves. I suggest that in those conditions they would probably not find them offensive or disgusting.

Moreover, the definition of pornography will be left to the jury. The Minister is aware, as are many other Members of the Committee, that there is a debate in the country about values, about diversity and about religion and religious faith. The debate on diversity and the erosion of social cohesion is important, and one that the Government recognise as important—hence, the plethora of speeches by the Prime Minister and by other Ministers and initiatives concerned with integration, religion and extremism of the other kind. While they recognise that values in Britain are changing due to diversity, and that religious belief is becoming a more potent source of conflict, the Government are seeking to bring in legislation which is highly subjective and then they are leaving the test to be decided by juries, who could deliver very different outcomes in cases with similar content depending on the part of the country where they take place. The onus on the jury to define pornography will place good people in an invidious position on matters that are so sensitive that, if the law has to enter here at all, it should be law that is capable of being clearly understood and demarcated. These clauses will not achieve that purpose.

I want to offer some general support to the Government for what they are attempting to do with these clauses. To bring pressure to bear in our society on the extraordinary explosion of what we might generally call pornographic images seems to me to be laudable and right. I share the view of those who have already spoken in this debate that to address the issues as set out here seems to beg as many questions they answer. This relates to the whole Bill and it seems to me that whenever there is a criminal justice Bill before Parliament all manner of things get added in, things which need rather careful discussion and joined-up thinking on how they relate one to another.

I notice that the Government have withdrawn certain proposals about prostitution, which is right. That whole area requires profound consideration about what should and should not be legal in our society. Personally, I would welcome the thought that for a man to solicit sex from a woman or to pay for it ought, prima facie, to be a criminal offence. However, it is surrounded by so many questions that only through the most detailed and careful consideration can good law be made.

I happen to think the same about blasphemy, to which we shall come, I believe, on Wednesday. I support what is being proposed, but I think it interrelates with other issues in our society and it is not really suitable to be put in. I would welcome a thorough look at the whole issue of what pornography is and its impact on our society. Clause 113(3), as amended by Amendment No. 122B, would state:

“An image is ‘pornographic’ if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal”.

You can see that when you go into many newsagents in our society and look not just at the top shelf but at almost any shelf these days. Many of the soft porn films seem to have been produced precisely for that purpose.

The last thing we want to do is to produce an aura where everyone is a potential criminal. In one sense, we are and we need to acknowledge that, but that produces very negative reactions in the population. One can instance all sorts of ways in which that is the case. This whole area needs very careful examination not least in terms of whether there is any link between what is published and broadcast and crime. There are definitely imitative patterns of behaviour. There are the awful tragedies of the suicides in south Wales at the moment which is an illustration of how images can be created, as it were, and behaviour follows those images and is repeated. Sexual arousal is simply part and parcel of the whole of the creative world. When one looks at David Attenborough's series “Life on Earth”, one sees that much of the depiction of the way in which the creative world operates is tied in with the reality of sexual arousal—let us be honest about it. If we are going to produce laws in this sort of area, they must carefully define what they are attempting to criminalise.

I intervene early and apologise for trying to pre-empt the right reverend Prelate. He made some valuable points; first, the general point that this issue needs a lot of further thought. As I think he put it, whenever we see a criminal justice Bill we see a hotchpotch of things added by the Government, some of which need considerably greater thought—a classic example of something that this House is good at. Bearing in mind that the Government are anxious to save a bit of time on this Bill, when the Minister comes to respond he might want to take the amendment away, give it some further thought—possibly send it to a Select Committee, or whatever—and bring it back having done so.

More generally, following on from what both the Liberal Democrat spokesmen had to say about the Bill, there is a difficult point about definitions and subjectivity and objectivity. We are all agreed on certain things. For example, we probably all take what I might describe as the Mrs Patrick Campbell view of these things: we do not mind what appears, so long as it does not frighten the horses. Our problem is that we cannot quite define what does frighten the horses. That is what we must identify in the amendment, and why the Government’s wording is being amended from,

“it appears to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal”,

to,

“is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed”

to. That is why the Liberal Democrats are rightly suggesting that “appears to have” is changed to something more precise, such as “has”. It is a question of defining what exactly is frightening the horses, by which I mean creating some public mischief rather than just being something that might offend me or the Liberal Democrats—or even the Government.

This is obviously a difficult issue. I notice the Minister looking hard at his papers and wondering about it. No doubt he will respond in due course. I go back to my original point of whether he might want to take the amendment away and bring it back on some other occasion after we have had some further thought about it and about how properly to define the mischief we are trying to address.

I understand fully why the Government should be exercised about the matters addressed in this part of the Bill, but I wholly agree with what the right reverend Prelate said about the anxiety that the Government have not come up with the right answers. The problems of definition in this area are immensely difficult to resolve. What I find missing from this part of the Bill is the consideration, which ultimately made acceptable the Obscene Publications Act, that the judgment of expert witnesses about whether the works being considered were of literary merit would be capable of being led in a case about something that might otherwise be regarded by some as open-and-shut pornography.

The definition of an image in Clause 113(3) that the Government’s amendment seeks to amend is not capable of improvement by the amendment the Government have advanced. It suggests that it would be appropriate to cut out any image that induced sexual arousal. Hardly any great classical play does not have such a moment. If one looks at renaissance painting or sculpture, there is hardly an artist of merit who has not employed an image for that purpose. The definition is far too sweeping, and if one is considering the dangers, the threat or the unattractiveness of filmed material reproduced by electronic means, is one really to take the view that because an image in a film might have that effect, indeed, might be intended to have that effect, the whole work should be regarded as being of such a nature that the possessor of it should be criminally responsible?

I also think that the Government have not succeeded in improving the language in respect to what is extreme. The issue of whether something is grossly offensive is treated as though it were objectively definable. The fact that something is grossly offensive to one person does not necessarily reflect the general view. It might be thought that the film that recently won an Oscar in Los Angeles, “No Country for Old Men”, was grossly offensive and, indeed, extreme, not only because of the continuing threats in it but because there were acts that threatened a person’s life. I cannot imagine one of Shakespeare’s tragedies that does not involve an act threatening a person’s life that, in itself, might be regarded as grossly offensive if taken out as an image. Lady Macbeth’s famous speech when she is seeking to stir herself up seems to me to have been deliberately, explicitly sexual and designed to evoke a response from the audience.

Secondly, in the definition of an extreme image here we have, under subsection 6(b), a definition that would certainly have led to “Last Tango in Paris” being regarded as a film that it was a criminal offence to possess. The fact that Marlon Brando was engaged in the activity would apparently not be any defence, were the provision to be enacted.

Images fall under the definition in subsection 6(d) where a person performs an act of intercourse with an animal. How many images of “Leda and the Swan” would fall foul of that—images that are regarded as great expressions of human artistic endeavour? A remarkable example springs to my mind in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. I doubt whether anyone would deny for a minute that it was intended to have a sexual purpose and a sexual response—or that it was a remarkably realistic image.

The provision is just badly thought out. The whole thing needs to be taken back and worked on again. We will be legislating in haste if we allow this to pass; and we could regret it very much at leisure.

I join other noble Lords in their concern that this part is still in the Bill. It is quite clear from the contributions that have been made just how widely that view is held. As someone who comes, not many years ago, from the background of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the sort of late-night viewing that we were looking at and having to give some sort of judgment on whether it was going too far, seems mild—to put it mildly—in comparison with the sort of things that, as another noble Lord said, we see late at night regularly on practically every channel.

One urges the Minister and the Government to think again. As another noble Lord said, a Joint Committee—a pre-legislative committee of both Houses might be the best way—should look at the implications of what has happened in the past few years. We are having to do that as a result of the Broadcasting Act 2003, which is clearly outdated in a number of respects. It did not take account of just how far the internet was likely to be involved in almost every aspect of our daily lives. It certainly worries me that anyone slotting into the internet, Google or any of these places can almost inadvertently come upon the sort of images that they might feel could result in a charge being made against them. That is an appalling thought, not least because of how easily and quickly these things pop up. Liberty makes that point very clear in its briefing to us. That reinforces my clear belief that a much more detailed study needs to be done.

We appreciate why the Government have tabled their amendments—they have seen the concern and have tried to remedy it—but they certainly do not satisfy me. More problems arise from the particular words that have been used. I therefore join other noble Lords in asking the Government to think again. This is too vital an area for us to allow it to be simply an add-on—yet another thing. My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham describes the Bill as a yet-another-thing Bill, which has some justification.

I share the concerns, which have been expressed by many noble Lords and noble Baronesses about the clauses as they are presented to us at the moment, even with the amendments that I acknowledge have been tabled to try to address a number of concerns that were expressed in another place and by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on this particular issue.

There is still a degree of uncertainty about what the criminal law will be. If we are indeed about to create a statutory offence with the potential for a serious term of imprisonment, we really need something that stands up to scrutiny much more than the terms of the clause. In his final remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said something about trying to determine what the mischief is. I tried to think who the potential victims of this crime are. Is it those who participate, because if actual events are being filmed, clearly a crime of serious assault will have been committed in any event? If it is simulated and if people are engaged in a consensual activity, it is stretching things a long way to suggest that people who are engaged in that kind of consensual activity, albeit in an activity that may be abhorrent to most if not all of us here, should be criminalised for that.

It is quite clear that in the case of child pornography, a child is incapable of giving consent. Therefore, it is only right that that is totally beyond the pale and is criminalised. We should tread very warily before we engage in criminalising something that is consensual. It would be very odd if a couple engaged in a consensual act which in itself would not be criminal but, if it was photographed, the possession of the photographs could be criminal. That seems to be going too far. On those who are perhaps viewing this material, again I have difficulty in accepting that that might be the case.

In introducing his amendments, the Minister made the point about how the Government are trying to bring the definitions more closely in line with the Obscene Publications Act. I note that Section 1(1) of the Act provides:

“For the purposes of this Act an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where the article comprises two or more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it”.

It has already been said in this debate that the type of people who are liable to see this are probably those who seek it out. It is very difficult to perceive, therefore, if one is trying to import the Obscene Publications Act, the type of people who are liable to see it and whether they would be victims of the crime intended to be created by this clause.

On whether the wider society could be the victims, my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer has indicated her concerns about the reference to the rapid evidence assessment referred to by the Minister. But it is equally the case that in the Government’s consultation document on these proposals, both in the executive summary and on page 10, they acknowledge the question:

“In the absence of conclusive research results as to its possible negative effects, do you think that there is some pornographic material which is so degrading, violent or aberrant that it should not be tolerated”?

In their consultation document, the Government accept that the case is not made and that there has not been conclusive research to the effect that it has a negative effect on wider society.

Before we create this, we are entitled to ask who the victims are. As yet, I do not think that that question has been answered. Just because we may find the type of material abhorrent, that is very often the time when we should stop and pause. It is very easy to talk about defending liberties and freedom of expression when people are making comments about things that we most readily agree with. But, as the European Court of Human Rights said in the case of Müller v Switzerland,

“it is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population”.

We should hesitate before we go down this road. I agree with Members of the Committee who have said that there will be other ways to address our concerns; perhaps a Joint Committee of both Houses could look at the evidence, or we could tackle more and engage more with the internet service providers. In the long run, that may be a more effective way of curbing this activity rather than trying to create an offence, which many Members of the Committee have said has many weaknesses in it.

I had not intended to speak in this debate. The government amendments may be flawed, but other Members of the Committee have more expertise than me on that. I want to put the perspective of different experience. I am the deputy chair of the Faithfull foundation, which deals with sexual and child offenders. I also worked for 10 years on the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services, which regulates pornography on telephones. I was one of the people responsible for ensuring that we have an opt-in rather than an opt-out service, so that children cannot look at that kind of pornography. Therefore, I have some background to and understanding of the research and information in relation to pornography. I was very struck by the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, who described the experiment of people seeing a great deal of pornography and their shock at it being eroded, as against those who come to it fresh and feeling quite disturbed.

Much of our work is with men who have telephoned the Stop It Now helpline through the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. These men have either watched adult pornography or have attempted to access child pornography. I should mention to my noble friend Lady Howe and perhaps to the Government for their information that it is quite difficult to get on to one of these sites. If one has to have the unpleasant experience of watching this material as part of one’s job, one cannot get to it by accident; a determined effort has to be made. This means that someone has to be mentally and emotionally attuned to wanting to see this material. The men who have come to us report that they became increasingly disturbed by the material they viewed, indicating that there is a progression here. Some people can see this material and maintain their stability, but not many. It erodes disgust and distaste, allowing someone to move on to the next stage. A person may start by looking at adult pornography, progress on to child pornography, and then begin to exhibit difficult behaviour that results in wanting to go beyond visual images and get in touch with real children.

It may be that the Government need to look at this again, but like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, we must not try to avoid the fact that there is a problem here. The research can be looked at in a number of ways, and I certainly looked at the methodology of some of the original research. I was left feeling uneasy with its conclusion that pornography does not have the effect that experience clearly shows me every day in men who come to the Stop It Now programme saying, “I want to stop this now. Can you help me, because I can see where I am going?”. I am not commenting on whether it would be right or wrong to accept the amendment, but I plead that we do not shut the door on having a provision to deal with what is a very real problem in our society.

We have had an interesting debate more like that held at Second Reading rather than on the detail of the amendment before us, and it is none the worse for that. I know that noble Lords would love to see a Select Committee set up to consider this issue in greater detail, and I shall come on to that in a moment. First, however, I want to say to noble Lords that this clause has had substantial consideration. It was consulted on widely through the consultation held on the case for a new offence in 2005, which was followed by publication of a summary of the responses to that consultation and then the Government’s conclusions in 2006. In addition, when the Bill was considered in the other place, the Public Bill Committee took evidence from a number of witnesses. There was also considerable discussion in Committee. Indeed, the reason I am bringing forward a number of amendments today is because they reflect the discussions held in the other place, which shows that parliamentary scrutiny is indeed working.

I understand that noble Lords would like to see more consideration of this matter. I do not know whether it would help but, if between Committee and Report noble Lords would like me to arrange a meeting to go through this issue in detail, I would be happy to do so. I am sure that they would then be able to access as much information as I can produce in advance of further discussion on Report. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, I should say that the Conservative Party welcomed the consultation on this matter, and indeed the submissions made by Mr Tim Loughton and the right honourable Mrs Theresa May supported the Government’s determination to address abuse of the internet in order to gain access to extreme images of violence and pornography.

I understand the balance that must be struck between freedom of choice, individual freedom and the “thought police” on the one hand, and the potential ill effects of pornography, particularly some of the most appalling pornography we are discussing here, on the other. I do not think anyone would claim that it is easy to get the balance right, or that we will have unanimity of opinion. However, I stress that this is not a debate about the rights and wrongs of pornography in the round but about the wide availability of extreme or violent pornography, particularly with the growth of the internet, which because it is often produced in other countries is not covered by the current legislation. That is the reason we are here today and debating what I accept is a very difficult matter.

The noble Lord mentioned earlier “what most people find abhorrent”. Are the Government aiming for something that will cover what most people find abhorrent or something which will create a public mischief, a point on which I touched but which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, put better? That is very different from what most people find abhorrent.

Undoubtedly the aim is what most people find abhorrent.

On the difficult question of material made by consenting adults which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised, it is often very difficult to tell from an image whether or not consent has been given. Images can be circulated far beyond those who participated in the act. Broadly, most of these images will have been made in another country and the immediate concern of the Government is on those who possess those images. That is why the Bill is drafted in the way that it is, bearing also in mind that production will be covered by existing legislation.

I understand the points raised by noble Lords about the clarity of the law. The amendments that I have brought forward seek to respond to the points raised by Members in another place and to give greater clarity. Of course information will be made available to members of the public when this is brought into fruition. We have tried to make the clause as clear as possible.

As regards the concern of my noble friend Lord Faulkner in relation to disabled people, we have no evidence that disabled people are more likely to access extreme violent pornography than anything else. I have been talking about the very extreme end and not pornography in general.

On the question of those who are now outside the law who will be covered by being in possession if this was enacted, the position is that those who continue to possess material which would fall under the scope of this offence after the legislation is brought into force will be committing an offence. Again, rather as in answer to the last point, we will want to make sure that information is made available about the offence and the circumstances in which it operates.

I have offered to arrange meetings between Committee and Report to discuss this further. The Government remain convinced that we need to tackle these elements of extreme violent pornography. Noble Lords may have points to make about the way the amendment is drafted, but I hope they will not dissuade the Government from pursuing this course.

It may very well be right that the Government should tackle this problem, but this debate indicates that the way they are trying to tackle it is unclear, as are their aims: are they trying to ban people from possessing simply material that causes sexual arousal, or, as my noble friend Lord Wallace said, material that incites a public mischief?

I am taken back to the Oz trial back in 1971—that may be before the Minister’s time. The indictment in that case is interesting. The editors were charged with:

“Conspiring to produce a magazine containing diverse lewd, indecent and sexually perverted articles, cartoons, drawings and illustrations with intent thereby to debauch and corrupt the morals of children and young persons within the Realm and to arouse and implant in their minds lustful and perverted desires”.

Geoffrey Robertson, now Queen’s Counsel, a colleague of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and later to write the leading legal textbook on obscenity, said in an article in Cherwell,

“They don’t write laws like that any more”.

He added, “Nor should they”. He went on to quote from an Arts Council report of 1969 where it had quoted with approval the evidence of Dr Anthony Storr, a well known and leading psychiatrist of the day, who said that when people use the terms “depraved” and “corrupted”,

“they are very often referring to the idea that persons could, by reading literature, for instance, be encouraged to engage in sexual perversions which they have never thought of. In my view, disturbances of sexuality of this kind have their origin in early childhood and are the result of the family environment to which the individual was exposed during his first five or six years”.

As the Minister said just now, recent research seems to confirm the views that were expressed nearly 40 years ago. If the offence—not of producing and distributing material of this sort but of simply possessing it, never mind whether you are looking at it—is to be punishable by three years’ imprisonment, it is necessary to know precisely what the limits, boundaries and purpose of that offence are to be. The clause may have been drafted after consultation, as the Minister said, but it is clearly held all around this Committee to be unsatisfactory. It should be looked at again and withdrawn from the Bill.

To use what most people would find offensive as a central criterion is too subjective. We live in a society where we have a diverse range of tastes; there are lots of things I do not like at all but which are legal in this society. It is interesting that certain noble Lords got a great number of letters and e-mails on certain topics. I got none, and I wonder why; no doubt it was assumed by those concerned that I was a hopeless case. What most people find offensive cannot be the right principle to operate on; it is too much the law of the crowd.

I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, here: if a clear link is established between pornography as we would generally describe it and child sex abuse, that is something we should seriously consider, even if that puts restrictions on other individuals. That is an objective criterion. If there is a criterion of “the common good”, something about society on which we agree just for the good of society, that is also more objective. But to legislate on the basis that this is what most people do not like is a recipe for transient and bad law.

I accept that the expression is very vague, but there are three elements to the test that has to be passed. The government amendments I have brought today seek to clarify the position some more; it is not just a vague test consisting of what most people think, although I would certainly pray in aid what I think public opinion would be in this regard. The amendments are a genuine, relevant attempt to deal with the specific issues that were raised in the other place about whether the test was too vague and to give greater clarification.

The problem that noble Lords have wrestled with, as have I, of whether there is a link between the possession of the material and a crime then being committed—or being more likely to be committed—or whether it is just that there is distaste for this material is something that the Minister still has not really nailed. That is what I would like to understand.

I have already prayed in aid the rapid assessment. I have also said that since most of this awful stuff is produced in other countries, it is difficult for the Government alone to deal with the producers. That is another reason why, in addition to the impact it might have on those who possess it, it makes good sense to deal with the whole issue through possession; in many cases it is not possible to deal with the actual producers.

It would be useful, certainly for me and perhaps for other noble Lords, when we meet the Minister between Committee and Report, to hear a little bit more about what other countries—such as other European countries, the United States and Australia—are doing about this. I do not expect him to address that now, but what laws have they brought in to deal with this problem?

I am happy to do that. I reassure the noble Baroness that the Government seek to work very closely with other nations to deal with this problem, and I am happy to report to her in detail on where we have got to with that.

I have no doubt that the Government are to be praised and applauded for their efforts regarding this. It is a real problem of considerable magnitude. However, I very much doubt, with the greatest respect, whether the test, in so far as it is going to turn on the question of what the public in general feel is abhorrent, can be sustained.

There is nothing inherently wrong in setting a benchmark in law that is based upon the attitude of an ordinary, decent person. In the definition of dishonesty, judges day in and day out will tell their juries that the test of dishonesty is the test of what ordinary, decent people regard as the line where something ceases to be honest. That is a test that works. The difficulty with abhorrence is that whereas most people would be able to agree absolutely where that line is in relation to honesty or dishonesty, people might have hundreds or thousands of different views about what exactly is abhorrent. To my mind the use of that word carries echoes of the Lady Chatterley trial, which must have been 50 years ago, and Mervyn Griffith-Jones, learned counsel for the Crown, exhorting the jury to consider whether that was the sort of disgraceful book they would allow their servants to read.

And their wives.

Their wives and servants. I am not deriding the Government at all; they have a difficult situation here and they have grasped the nettle. It would probably be better to concentrate upon the causal link between the possession of such material and the dangers that they envisage.

Reference has been made to the fact that my own chambers do quite a deal of work in the pornographic field—I do not get very much of it myself, and I cannot express any regret about that. However, because John Mortimer’s practice passed to certain people in my chambers, a lot of work concerned with pornography comes to us. It is interesting that, precisely for the reasons that we have just heard expressed by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches, juries on the whole have great difficulty in dealing with what is likely to deprave and corrupt, and one sees shifts, depending on what is happening in society. Twenty years ago, there was a great deal more horror about pornography that was homosexual in nature. Nowadays, juries are much more accepting of that, but much less accepting of violence towards women. The way in which these shifts take place is very interesting.

I have always argued that extreme pornography of this kind has to be accessed on the internet using credit cards. Why have the Government not thought of that as a course to dealing with it? They could approach credit card companies and say, “It is your responsibility to put a block on these sites, and when someone seeks to use their credit card for this extreme pornography, they cannot do it”. Why are we not seeking to address it that way rather than introducing the problem of finding a criterion that does not fall foul of the problems raised in this debate? I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether efforts have been made to go down that route.

I thank my noble friend for that. The Government are working, and will continue to work, with industry, be it the mobile device or internet industry, or the credit card companies. The advice that I have received is that we are in a much stronger position in discussing, for instance, with the credit card companies restricting payment methods if the material is illegal to possess.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

[Amendment No. 123 not moved.]

moved Amendments Nos. 123A and 123B:

moved Amendment No. 125A:

If Amendment No. 125B is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 126 to 130.

moved Amendment No. 125B:

moved Amendments Nos. 131A and 131B:

moved Amendment No. 134ZB:

I understand the objective behind the proposed new clause in Amendment No. 134ZB, and there is more than a modicum of sympathy for it on these Benches. It is designed to increase the maximum penalty for an offence under Section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000—that is, failing to comply with a requirement to disclose protected information or the key to it. The increase in the maximum penalty would apply in the circumstances set out in a new subsection (5C) of Section 53 of RIPA, including when the offender has a previous conviction for possession of an indecent image of a child.

Use by criminals of information technology, such as encryption tools, to conceal evidence of their unlawful conduct to evade detection or prosecution did not materialise as rapidly as was expected back in 2000, when we looked at this issue before, but it is beginning to happen now. That is why the Government concluded that the provisions of Part 3 of RIPA, including Section 53, should be implemented. That happened on 1 October last year, following the affirmative resolution of both Houses approving a code of practice relating to the exercise of the powers and duties in Part 3. That code of practice was published in draft for consultation in 2006; the same consultation also invited comments on amendments to Section 53 along similar lines to this new clause. Only some respondents addressed that issue; most focused on the detail of the code of practice. There was both support for amending Section 53 and responses urging the Government to implement the provisions first and consider any evidence for amending them in the light of experience.

The Government remain very sympathetic to what this amendment seeks to achieve, but we want to assess how the provisions operate in practice. That process is taking place as the first disclosure notices are prepared and served, and the first offences for refusing to comply with a notice are being prosecuted. However, before any prosecution is secured for the existing penalties there will be complex issues to address in court around the presentation of evidence and the explanation of how encryption technologies work in practice.

The Government will consider amending RIPA very much along the lines of this proposed new clause if there is evidence that the two-year penalty is not effective in cases involving, or believed to involve, indecent images of children. We are very much where the noble Lord seeks to take us, but we ought to see what happens in practice so that we have a better feel and understanding for the effect of the original legislation before we proceed any further. We want to see how the law operates before taking that further step. If the noble Lord agrees to withdraw his amendment, we entirely agree to keep the matter under review, because there is not a great deal between us on the matter.

I thank the Minister for that sympathetic reply. I also thank him on behalf of my honourable friend, Sir Paul Beresford, who raised this issue in another place. It was discussed there and then he took it up with the Minister’s colleague in the Home Office, Vernon Coaker. We shall want to look very carefully at what the Minister has said before considering whether to come back with this amendment. But it sounded pretty sympathetic to me, and in the light of what the Minister has said it is possible that not only will we not need to bring it back on Report—we might even have discussions about it beforehand. The Minister might want to include my honourable friend Sir Paul in those discussions between now and Report.

Of course, we shall try to assist in the course of discussions. These issues can be properly discussed.

Bearing that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clauses 119 to 122 agreed to.

Schedule 24 agreed to.

Clause 123 [Amendment to offence of loitering etc. for purposes of prostitution]:

moved Amendment No. 134A:

It would be very churlish of me not to express my deep thanks to the Government for doing exactly what I asked them to do at Second Reading and at successive meetings with Ministers from the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, but his colleagues in the other place, who listened very carefully to what we had to say, also deserve our thanks. We were opposed to the inclusion of these clauses, except for the provision of the relation to the common prostitute, which we welcomed in the original Bill. I imagine that when there is a substantive review of the law on prostitution in the next Session, we shall see that phrase removed. I would also have wanted a debate on the definition of a brothel, which was the subject of my Amendment No. 136, but I shall not be moving that because of the Government’s decision to withdraw the three clauses.

I thank, too, my three noble friends from other Benches, the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe of Idlicote, Lady Stern and Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who put their names to the amendments that I tabled and to the proposal that these clauses should not stand part of the Bill. It is very good when the Government listen to reasoned argument and a very strong submission from outside this Chamber, and I thank them for that.

As someone who very strongly wished to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, I join the chorus of appreciation. My noble friend and the Government have yet again demonstrated that they do listen and that when there is profound anxiety they try to respond. That is altogether wholesome and I put my good will towards the Government on record.

As we understand it, the Government are removing Clauses 123 to 125, which deal not with prostitution at large but with one aspect of prostitution—street offences—which in short terms we could refer to as, for example, the four or five drug addicts who were killed in Ipswich but not the wider issue of prostitution as a whole. Do I take it, therefore, that the Government will come back to that wider issue later when they have a report from the tripartite ministerial group that went to Sweden the other day? In my day, one Minister normally went abroad to look at these things; now, we understand, one Minister has to be escorted by another Minister and they need another Minister as a chaperone to go with them.

It was cross-departmental.

Oh, it was cross-departmental work. It seems a very extraordinary way of dealing with things. However, that is on the wider question of prostitution. No doubt the Government will be able to respond to that issue in due course.

We are grateful to the Government for withdrawing these three clauses. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, for whom I have a great deal of respect, says that they are withdrawing them because they have listened to him and taken notice of what he said. I wonder whether the Government could respond by confessing that they have withdrawn them because, as with so much of this Bill, they are running short of time and have withdrawn this and other aspects to get it on the statute book earlier than they originally hoped. I do not know why the Minister is smiling at me. However, I would be grateful to the Government for some comment on that point and on the more general point of what they propose to do about the wider issue of prostitution and not only the simple issue of street offences.

I suspect that other noble Lords have, like me, received a large number of documents, comments and letters from people all around the country about this particular part of the Bill. One document, which I suspect others have not had, is a remarkable brief from a very brave young woman called Laura Seebohm. She is working on a programme in Newcastle upon Tyne with women involved in prostitution. Not only is it an immensely humane and brave document, it contains an enormous amount of wise advice about what these people need to help them break out of the situation they find themselves in—which does not include imprisonment for breach and such matters. I hope that the Minister will allow me to pass this document to him so that he can make use of it with his colleagues in conducting the examination which, I hope, will accompany the withdrawal of these clauses.

As my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath announced last week, we have somewhat reluctantly agreed to withdraw Clauses 123 to 125 and Schedule 25 in order to facilitate the speedy passage of the Bill, to ensure that the Bill is in good order and because everyone recognises that we need to work to a timetable if we are to ensure good order in the prison estate. The removal of these clauses in no way indicates a lack of commitment from the Government to tackle issues relating to prostitution head on. I do not think that there is a will in the Committee to avoid the issues: the issue at heart here is to ensure that we deal with these things in a sensible, timely, proportionate and, having listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, well-informed way. We remain fully committed to legislating to remove the stigmatising and outdated term “common prostitute” from the statute books and to reframe the offence of loitering and soliciting. We also remain committed to providing a new court disposal to help those convicted of loitering or soliciting to break the cycle of offending and to develop routes out of prostitution. There is a degree of consensus that that is a highly desirable policy objective.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred to the visit last year of my honourable friend Vernon Coaker and others to Sweden. He said he thought that it was unusual for two or even three Ministers to go abroad to investigate issues such as prostitution. However, I read Alan Clark's diaries and learnt from those that it was not uncommon for Ministers when the Conservative Party was in Government.

I have a great deal of respect for the Minister and I, too, found Alan Clark's diaries extraordinarily amusing, but are they the principal source of his knowledge about how we behaved when we were in Government between 1979 and 1997?

I do not know about that, but they were a jolly entertaining source and a damn good read. Anyway, Alan Clark informs us in some of his diaries that it was not uncommon for more than one Minister to go abroad. The important work that Vernon Coaker and others are undertaking is to review the policy area. The Government recognise that there is considerable support for us to do more to tackle demand and its impact on trafficking. That review is scheduled to last approximately six months. All Governments undertake reviews and look again at policies, and it is sensible from time to time to do so.

We will look to reintroduce the legislative changes in Clauses 123 to 125, along with any others that are necessary following the review into tackling demand, as soon as parliamentary time allows. In the mean time, we will continue to encourage services and schemes that seek to divert individuals away from the criminal justice system and into routes out of prostitution. Government Amendments Nos. 178ZA, 178AA, 180ZA, 180E and 180F are consequential amendments relating to the withdrawal of Clauses 123 to 125.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for raising the issue. We certainly recognise its importance, as she does in her amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and others who contributed to the debate on the background to this issue and assisted us in reaching a position that enabled us to bring forward these amendments. We have had some further discussions with the police. They are concerned about some of the amendments that have been tabled and their potential impact on our ability to safeguard young people. That is important and we need to listen carefully to those views and representations.

We must be careful not to be seen in any way to be condoning prostitution involving under-18s. For that reason, we need to reflect further on this particular proposal, whose aims we share and with which we have some sympathy. Many noble Lords should be congratulated at this point in this series of discussions and debates. I am grateful to all those who have contributed and who have been supportive. I trust that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment, understanding as she does the position that we have reached.

I thank the Minister for those statements. In withdrawing my amendment, I say again that when the Government bring back this legislation they should look at the example from New Zealand which we certainly heard a lot about. Three Ministers may have visited Sweden but none visited New Zealand to see whether decriminalisation was effective. That gap does the Government discredit in looking at this issue. I hope that the intervening time will allow the Government to draw from those examples if not to visit New Zealand, which I hope a Minister will bother to do.

I completely agree with the Minister's comments about under-18s. However, I did not hear him mention the important issue of brothels. We will not press our amendment, but the Minister and his department made a commitment to redefine “brothel”. There are some serious issues around trafficked women but, at the same time, women who are running brothels responsibly say that two or three individuals can work safely together, not on the streets but with decent health provision and in safety. That is an important issue and the Government have to address it.

On 9 January 2007, the Home Office confirmed that no consultation had taken place although an announcement was to be made. This legislation has been introduced and then withdrawn so I hope that the Government will take the time to think not only about addressing street offences, but what they are going to do. In the mean time, brothel owners are being prosecuted, so this difficult situation is continuing.

In my haste to bring this discussion to a conclusion, I omitted to say a word or two about brothels. To clarify that, I understand the argument made by the noble Baroness and we did indeed make those observations. It remains part of a co-ordinated strategy. That is why we want to consult further before any legislative changes are brought forward. We believe it would be wrong to pre-empt the demand review by consulting on the change to the definition of “brothel” now but we shall come back to the issue once the review is completed. I believe that makes for a more coherent approach that is plainer to all.

I thank the Minister very much for that clarification. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 135 not moved.]

Clause 123 negatived.

Clause 124 negatived.

Schedule 25 negatived.

Clause 125 negatived.

[Amendment No. 136 not moved.]

[Amendment No. 136A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

Clause 126 agreed to.

Schedule 26 [Hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation]:

moved Amendment No. 136B:

While it is very easy to understand why the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was moved to put down this amendment, it must be wrong to state in a statute that any and every reference to the possibility of there being a connection between sexual orientation and a propensity to commit child sex offences must be treated as a threat when in the particular circumstances it obviously may be nothing of the sort. Imagine a scenario of four people, perhaps academics, talking among themselves about the nature of paedophilia. One—let us assume entirely misguidedly— says there is evidence that paedophilia is more likely to be found among homosexuals. It is absurd to say that although the proposition was put forward in the most moderate terms and the proposal was based on an honest belief, the words must be treated as a threat when clearly they were nothing of the sort. In other words, it must be bad law to have a definition of a threat that covers things which clearly are not threats.

Of course, I recognise that the offence requires intent but that is beside the point. We are talking here about the definition of threatening words or behaviour. We must not make bad law and wrongly define as a threat something that may be nothing of the sort. So I hope that we will not spend very long on this amendment, although I well understand the reason why it was put down and the very real mischief to which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, referred.

The noble Lord is right to say there may be circumstances where an association between homosexuality and paedophilia is made that do not amount to a threat, as we would think of it. However, it can very easily be a threat, as I am sure the noble Lord understands and accepts. The protection from prosecution on the basis to which the noble Lord referred is that the consent of the Attorney-General is required to a prosecution. Clearly, the innocent discussion to which he referred would not form the basis for a prosecution to which the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General—whom I am pleased to see in her place—would respond.

There is a problem to be dealt with because, as the noble Lord rightly says, the association between homosexuality and paedophilia may not be a threat in itself but it can be. It is for the Attorney-General to decide on the facts of a case whether it should be the subject of a prosecution.

I, too, sympathise with the purpose of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. However, is it not the case that as many boys as girls are victims of paedophiles, if not more so, and yet the overwhelming majority of those who perpetrate paedophile crimes are men? Does this not suggest that there is a tendency among paedophiles towards homosexuality, compared with the proportion in the population as a whole? Perhaps the noble Lord would like to comment on that.

On the contrary, I am not suggesting that there is any association at all. However, the charge that they are paedophiles is frequently made to incite violence against homosexual people. This amendment would guard against using that association as a threat.

My understanding, having done some reading on this, is that boys are as much at risk as girls, but there is nothing to show that those who offend, who are largely men, are men who incline towards homosexuality. People who have had heterosexual relations are also paedophiles.

I entirely share the intention of the mover of the amendment, but the question is whether and why one should single out this form of threat and put it in the Bill. Once you start to do that, you lose the whole basis on which the legislation has been framed, which is to allow context. Words which in one context can be non-threatening in another context can be very threatening. It seems to me that the law is precisely framed as proposed to allow the court to judge context. Once you start to spell out context, you get into the sort of difficulties that are being alluded to.

There is an interesting parallel here, because the law as proposed is modelled on the offence of incitement to religious hatred. Because of well-publicised cases of the abuse of children by clergy—I am glad to say not mainly clergy of my denomination or of this country—and because of that association in the news, clergy not uncommonly get that sort of abuse hurled at them. I have known it myself. Simply because of wearing a dog collar, someone makes that sort of allegation. I find that very distasteful, but I would not want that to be used as the basis of a criminal prosecution. It seems to me that that is going too far, and I would not want that to happen. Because these offences by their nature are so contextual, it seems to me that once you start to spell out the context, you wrap the thing up in an inappropriate way.

I listened with care to the response of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, to the point at the heart of my noble friend Lord Waddington’s amendment; namely, that we must not legislate to declare a threat something that in some circumstances cannot be a threat. To that, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, responded that the safeguard lies in the requirement for the consent of the Attorney-General to a prosecution.

I am very hesitant indeed about placing on the Attorney-General the function of a jury in deciding whether in a particular scenario a threat is a threat. My understanding of the function of the Attorney-General, when given the discretion of the character that we are talking about, is whether a prosecution would be in the public interest, not to undertake the function of a jury in deciding whether a fact or a component of a complaint of a charge is present. I speak with some hesitation about this, having just heard the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. That would be my anxiety.

A number of noble Lords have said that they quite understand what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is getting at. I am afraid that what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, has suggested is rather alarming. He has said that there may be many cases where people will make remarks like this one and they need not be threatening, but that there are some cases when they might be threatening and therefore that it would be a good thing to have this clause in the Bill. I find it frightening because you will end up with people being too frightened to say anything. It is not a question of an argument going up to the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General; it is a question of a person being frightened and alarmed at the prospect of possibly going to court and possibly going to jail for saying something in a perfectly innocent way. I think that we are getting ourselves into far too much of a straitjacket by trying to determine the whole way through life what people must say and what people must not say and what they can and cannot do. To accept the amendment would be a retrograde step.

In a sense, this is a prelude to our next debate. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, in raising this matter, where allegations have been made by organisations and papers suggesting that homosexuals must all be paedophiles and therefore should be treated as criminals. The noble Lord is right to raise that as a matter of concern and to understand that for the gay community that can be very divisive and can generate fear and hostility. Where I do not agree with him is on the necessity for his amendment, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, suggested.

The question is whether the Bill is capable of catching the circumstances raised by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, if an allegation is made in a threatening way. We do not think that we should expand the offence automatically to cover all suggestions that homosexuals are paedophiles, even if those suggestions are made in a way that would not otherwise be threatening. That would be a small but significant extra incursion into free speech. We have determined that the right place to draw the line in this case is for the offence to catch only material that is really threatening in the ordinary sense of the word. If we extend the offence specifically to cover allegations of a propensity for child sexual abuse, what about other allegations that might be made against homosexuals? What about allegations, for instance, that all gay people have AIDS and intend to infect everyone else, which has been the subject of some material in the past?

If we specify, it leads to the old problem of criminalising one specific aspect of homophobic hatred. There is also the danger that perpetrators will simply shift their line of attack to some other suggestion that is threatening and will stir up hatred. The noble Lord raises a matter of very real concern, but I rest my case in the wording of the Bill under which, when an allegation is considered to be threatening and with intent to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, it would already be caught.

Do I understand the Minister clearly to be saying that if the association were made by a person between homosexuality and paedophilia that amounted to a threat in the context, that would be caught by the provision as drafted?

Yes, because it rests in terms of whether what is said can be judged to be threatening and with an intention to stir up hatred.

On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 137:

To ensure that the record is accurate, the noble Lord is right to say that there was no contact whatever between me and the police, which was interesting at the time. However, partly supporting his point, the police seemed to assume that the newspaper report was accurate without making any attempt whatever to check with me whether it was. Therefore, I assure the noble Lord that at the time I did not feel particularly liable for the high jump because I believed that any offence was caused by the reporter. However, I think that the police should at least have checked whether the report was accurate before engaging in media activity.

I am very glad that the right reverend Prelate took the opportunity to make that absolutely plain, but of course it does not affect the point that I am making. The fact is that the police quite wrongly wasted their time, as well as other people’s, carrying out some sort of investigation into the words, which perhaps they had read in a local paper. They took it so seriously that they issued a public statement saying that they had investigated the matter and that they had wasted police time having discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service.

That same lack of sense by the police was shown in the case of Mr and Mrs Roberts of Fleetwood, who were subjected to police interrogation after doing no more than complain about their council’s gay rights policy. The police certainly did not show themselves very expert at recognising the difference between fair comment and stirring up hatred when they questioned Lynette Burrows after she had said on the radio that homosexual men might not be the right people to bring up children.

I could go on and on but the point is that all this has happened under the present law. When Christians and others have already been subjected to questioning and investigation by the police for expressing their views, it is surely very difficult to argue that there is no risk at all of this new provision, if left unamended, being misused. Having been so ready to conclude that words are likely to cause harassment under the present law, the police, without help of the kind afforded by my amendment, may well be all too ready to conclude that he who criticises fiercely must have intended to stir up hatred.

I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that we would be wise to pay regard to the churches’ submission to the Public Bill Committee’s hearing on the Bill. I should like to quote one passage from it:

“There should be the maximum possible clarity about what is forbidden and what is permitted. Christians engaged in teaching or preaching and those seeking to act in accord with Christian convictions in their daily lives need to be assured that the expression of strong opinions on marriage or sexuality will not be illegal”.

In plain words, it should be clear in the Bill who will be caught by its provisions and that a Christian expressing strong views will not be caught. A promise that guidance will be provided for the police, the courts and the prosecution cannot possibly be an adequate substitute for clarity in the law itself.

I have to say in parenthesis that the Liberal Amendment No. 137ZZA does not begin to address the problem with which we are confronted. The problem is not that the Attorney-General may not recognise his responsibilities; the problem is that unless something is done people will be interrogated and locked up long before the matter can reach the Attorney-General. We need clear words in the Bill so that police officers do not interrogate people like the Roberts and do not arrest people such as the fellow who appeared on “One Man and His Dog” and then made facetious remarks at a country fair. We need clear, plain words in the Bill and not guidance after the mischief has been done.

I have already said that the religious hatred provision contains a provision to safeguard free speech, to make it plain that criticism—even robust criticism—does not constitute a threat. If a similar provision to the religious hatred provision is not inserted in this clause, there is the obvious danger that a police officer will notice the difference between the two provisions and conclude that, when it comes to considering words used about sexual behaviour, the right to free speech is something that he does not have to consider although, if it were a case of religious hatred, he would have to consider free speech.

I cannot see why the Government resisted this amendment in the Commons, cross-party as it is and similar to, but narrower, milder and not as far reaching, as the provisions in the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. It is surely not good enough to say that it is not necessary. If this amendment will do no harm and will give a clear signal to the police that they must pay due regard to the legitimate exercise of free speech and religious liberty, that will surely be a good thing. I beg to move.

I apologise for jumping up but sitting around here all day waiting for this moment has put me a little on edge. Like many other Members of the Committee, I have received a good deal of correspondence on the subject of this clause—a clause that I and others seek to amend. I shall quote one sentence from one of the letters that I have received. The writer, a gentleman from York, said:

“I am writing to express my great concern about the need to protect freedom of expression”.

I share his concern.

The concept of bringing in laws that forbid the precious right of free speech in our society is in itself a frightening prospect. In a nation such as ours, with proud traditions of freedom, even contemplating the suppression of opinions is frightening to all who genuinely want to be able to speak out against that which they think is wrong, harmful and potentially dangerous—they fear they will be treated as criminals. It is indeed frightening. Is this what our Government want? The amendment is clear in its intent to ensure that nothing in this part shall prohibit discussion of, or restrict criticism of or expressions of antipathy towards, other people's conduct or their lifestyle.

I have received a number of detailed legal opinions from various sources. As a lay person I found them most interesting. However, my support for the amendment comes from my very strong feeling that to prevent the discussion of subjects that cause very real concern for many individuals and groups is wrong. No matter how many legal opinions you get, I believe that what is being suggested is wrong. This amendment will give protection to those who hold the view that certain activities are wrong so they may express their views in an open and honest way.

The Government have said that a free-speech clause is unnecessary. They say that the wording of the offence already strikes the right balance between preventing incitement to hatred and protecting free speech. If that is so, why not underline the need for balance by introducing and including a free-speech clause? From what I have read, the Government do not object, in principle, to such a clause. It has been argued by the Government that there is a high threshold set for the offence which covers only threatening words or behaviour which are intended to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. It is also necessary to obtain the Attorney-General’s consent before any prosecution may proceed.

I believe that it is most necessary for a free-speech clause to be included for a number of reasons. My view is that criminal law should be clear in explaining what is and what is not an offence. If this Bill is enacted without a clause that protects freedom of expression, religious believers will be uncertain about what they can say as well as uncertain about what they can discuss or debate on the subject of homosexual practices in their teachings. I fully understand what Clause 126 means: it will be an offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation and it appears to be the same wording as the offence of incitement to religious hatred in the Racial and Religious Act 2006. In the case of a religious hatred offence, if I understand it correctly, a specific clause protects the principle of free speech which the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, has just mentioned.

This issue should not be left to ministerial guidelines. Guidelines are not the same as clear definition in law. At Second Reading a number of illustrations were given by noble Lords and we have heard some repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington—a whole list of examples can be found in the debate at Second Reading. There is quite a lot of evidence that the public, the police and, on occasions, some courts failed to take sufficient account of the protection of freedom of expression in cases that involve criticism of the practice of homosexuality. I hope that my noble friend will tell me whether my understanding of the difference that there appears to be between the Act I have mentioned and the Bill is correct. I urge the Committee to give wholehearted support to the amendment and to demonstrate to the Government that we seek to protect the very precious principle of free speech.

I have an adjacent amendment to this one. Of course, we support the principle of free speech and we try, in Amendment No. 137ZZA, to put it in an appropriate way in the context of the offence that is suggested or promoted by Schedule 26. The offence is not one of criticising people because of their sexual orientation, or of criticising people for their conduct relating to their sexual orientation. The offence is using threatening words and behaviour with the intent of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. That is the burden of this offence. It is not generally saying that you cannot express your views about gay people or what they do.

Suppose there were a British National Party meeting and a speaker were to address that meeting saying, “These gays have it coming to them if they insist on committing sodomy with each other”. It is conceivable that the free-speech amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, particularly its latter part, would prevent that being a criminal offence, even though it was threatening and used with intent to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. Why do I say that? Because it refers to conduct; it refers to sodomy as opposed to being a homosexual. That is the problem with the way in which this exception is drafted. It is about conduct rather than about sexual orientation itself.

Taking on board the criticisms of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, on the previous amendment, we impress on the Committee that, when a person uses threatening words and behaviour with intent to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, it would be better and more appropriate for the Attorney-General to consider whether it is in the public interest—having regard to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the right to freedom of expression—that a prosecution should be brought at that point. That is why I support the second amendment.

Speaking as one whose name is on the amendment—I am glad it is there, and grateful for the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Clarke—and responding immediately to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, it seems that his illustration was not helpful to his case. If someone says in a BNP meeting that people “have it coming to them”, it does not take a lawyer to suggest that that is clear example of threat. That is different from the kinds of things explicitly in the amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, referred, although rather generally, to the memorandum of the Public Bill Committee from the Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and the Mission and Public Affairs Council of the Church of England—the churches that he mentioned. The amendment’s form of words, both in the other place and this place, is explicit in the last paragraph of that memorandum. It is particularly there, as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, made clear, to safeguard the rights of expression of those who judge that they should speak and write with no intention of stirring up hatred, whether out of an orthodox Christian or other faith context. I have vivid memories of a number of times recently when the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, who is not in his place, has made it clear that although he was saying the same kinds of things in recent months in this House, he was doing so, as I think he put it to me on one occasion, not as “a paid-up member of the right reverend Prelates’ faith, though perhaps as a fellow traveller”.

This is not simply a question of discussion in a religious context, or by religiously motivated people. As the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, made quite clear, there is a whole range of people in this society whose freedom to talk, discuss and offer views runs the risk of being chilled unless some such amendment as this is in the Bill. I recognise that the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on page 19 of its report, believes that there is already appropriate protection for freedom of speech in the Bill. However, the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, in particular, note that the view of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and the Government in another place and at Second Reading in this House, is not well sustained.

It is important that the amendment—this form of words—should be tested. It must be there if we are to recognise the considerable weight of opinion in the country generally, as well as in the churches, not rabidly or threateningly put, or with any intention to raise hatred, but simply because many are of the view, as the noble Lord stated, that full sexual activity is for life-long marriage of two people of opposite genders. That is an extremely important point of view from whatever perspective it is put. It should not be chilled into silence by the possibility—which is not just a fantasy, but for which there is a great deal of evidence—that there have been points when, long before the question gets to prosecution, there has been investigation.

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, is now in his place. It is very nice to see him. I hope that he does not feel that I have misrepresented what he has said in recent weeks in what I said a moment ago.

My sense is that the amendment needs to be there. Lastly, with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, I note that a number of people, of whom Ben Summerskill is one and who speak from the point of view from which he speaks, have also expressed concern that without a provision like this in the Bill there will be a chilling effect on precisely the sort of straightforward, open discussion of these issues which, as I have understood it, people like him want to engage in. I respect Ben Summerskill and others for making that point.

There is a good reason for the amendment, which arises out of a strong sense that this point needed to be made by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in this country. I am glad that the matter is here under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington.

I hope that the Government will not feel disposed to accept the amendment. I support the Bill as it stands because there is, regrettably, a great deal of homophobia. I have received a number of letters, as I am sure all Members of the Committee have, about this section of the Bill. I received a letter from a woman yesterday in which she described how her son had been shadowed and eventually kicked to death. Everybody concerned, including the police, agreed that it was because of his sexual orientation. That is clearly unacceptable. It is unacceptable that people should be put in fear of their lives because of their sexual orientation.

I do not support the wording of the amendment. The last sentence in particular—

“urging persons of a particular sexual orientation to refrain from or modify conduct related to that orientation”—

seems to run against the established law in this country, which allows people to have civil partnerships. It is their right by law to have civil partnerships, but under the wording of the amendment it would be perfectly all right to urge them—perhaps even threaten them—that they should not participate in one.

You cannot describe this situation in terms of the provisions on religious hatred. We are in a different environment here. We are talking not about a belief but a state in which people have a certain sexual orientation whether they want it or not: that is what they are like. That is why they ought to have protection and be able to live their lives in accordance with what the law has laid down and made arrangements for.

I understand what has been said about freedom of speech. If I were to choose between the two amendments, I would prefer that of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, which seems very reasonable. This one, however, I do not accept at all. It contains a threat, particularly in the last sentence, which the Government should not be prepared to accept. The Bill as it stands should be supported because it attempts to deal with a genuine problem and give protection to those who deserve it. They do not deserve to be harassed and threatened. I therefore hope that the Government will not be prepared to accept the amendment.

I am fascinated to hear the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and admire the way in which she puts it, so clearly and carefully, on something she obviously feels very strongly about. I would like to agree with her but unfortunately do not find that I can.

When the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said that my noble friend Lord Waddington’s amendment would mean that somebody giving such-and-such an observation would be not guilty, I can only tell him that my concern is that people who are making certain observations which they are entirely entitled to make will find themselves guilty. I worry about freedom of speech. Of course we understand about people who are homosexuals and are that way inclined, but that should not prevent a priest or, indeed, a right reverend Prelate getting up and saying that the belief of his church is that that practice is wrong. A lot of people may think it is right and natural, but it is reasonable for a church to say that it is not right.

Would the noble Earl accept that the priest concerned is not likely to be using threatening words and behaviour with intent to stir up hatred against a person on the grounds of his sexual orientation, unless he was using hell fire or something?

I need only ask: what about the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester? As far as I know, he was making a perfectly reasonable observation, but his speech was gone over by the police, who then got hold of the Crown Prosecution Service which decided that they should announce that there was no harm done. That is a bad state of affairs. First, it is bad that the police should spend their time doing that, and secondly, it creates an aura of fear of what you say. I do not think that that is right and proper. We have gone a long way down the path of trying to make people who have thought one way think another way. We are almost in the position of having reverse discrimination, where if somebody says something it is an offence, even though he has always been used to saying it. I am fearful about that.

My noble friend Lord Waddington referred to the late Harry Hammond, a disabled pensioner who was dragged to the ground by a mob and assaulted. What had he done? He had displayed a banner calling upon people to stop their immorality. People have held banners for ages saying, “The wages of sin is death”, and I do not see that there is anything particularly wrong about that. Somebody got hold of him and pulled his banner, and he fell to the ground. He then suffered an attack from which he subsequently died. But Mr Hammond was the one arrested by the police, and he was convicted as a criminal by the local magistrates before he died while attempting to uphold what he felt was Bible morality. The fact is that he was attacked by homosexuals for his protest against homosexuality. He was arrested and fined, and his attackers were not even questioned. That is what I refer to as reverse discrimination. We have seen it all over the place. I do not think it is a good thing that we should put people so much in fear of what they say that they dare not say it. That is what happens in a police state, and I fear that we are going down that road. I agree with the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Waddington. People ought to be able to say what they think; churches ought to be able to say what they think, even if one does not like it. This amendment would help that come about.

I find myself following the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and agreeing with every word he said. I shall not attempt to go over the same ground. I support the amendment. When the Lord, Lord Waddington, was taking his rather large stick and belabouring the constabulary in various parts of the country, a number of noble Lords looked at me, making eye contact, almost urging me on. I therefore stand to address that one point if nothing else.

The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, was a little harsh on the police who are between a rock and a hard place because the current law is confusing. I have some sympathy with forces that have a complaint made to them as to what they should do in the current state of affairs. Were they to turn their backs on the complaint, they could almost guarantee that Stonewall and others would immediately complain about them. They therefore have little recourse but to investigate the facts and put them to the Crown Prosecution Service, which makes the decision. The decision is with the CPS and would remain with it.

Having tried to put that part of what the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, suggested to the Committee into context, I agree with everything that has been said about the need for clarification on this issue. Noble Lords will have shared my experience of a post-bag full of letters from well meaning, honest, decent people who are fearful of being prosecuted if they simply express an opinion. One may or may not agree with the opinion, but they want to be able to express an opinion on this issue. I make no comment about where I stand on that, other than to say that I recognise the need for freedom of expression. It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that roundly I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington.

On this issue, I agree with Peter Tatchell. Over the years, I have not always agreed with him, but on the creation of a homophobic hatred offence, he is right. He has concluded that the introduction of such an offence is unnecessary and a danger to free speech. I also note that Matthew Parris and Iain Dale, both prominent homosexual journalists, have also declared themselves opposed to this offence. In fact, when the Government announced they were bringing forward Clause 126, they found themselves being criticised in the media by almost everyone from the Christian Institute, to Liberty, and to the comedian Rowan Atkinson. There is very little support for this, but we are where we are. The Government have pressed ahead, so we have to find a way of making it less bad.

The Government have an almost perfect record of completely ignoring protests from the people they are supposed to represent. Whatever the Government want, the Government get, whether or not it is a manifesto commitment. I therefore support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. It is an eminently sensible attempt to make sure that this legislation does not add to the climate of fear that already exists around the controversial subject of homosexuality.

Noble Lords will know from their postbags that there is already a great deal of concern among the general public—Christians in particular—about the freedom to speak out, however moderately, on sexual ethics. Given the number of high-profile complaints to the police, some of which were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Waddington, it is easy to see why. Noble Lords might not agree with the churchman who says that all sex outside marriage is a sin, but do we want an environment in which he feels afraid to express his point of view? Some noble Lords may want to live in that kind of a society; I do not.

A lawyer recently told me of the case of a street preacher who was preaching the Gospel in the streets of one of our major cities. He was not preaching about homosexuality per se, but he read out a Bible passage which listed various sins, including homosexuality. A complaint was made to the police, who duly turned up. The preacher spent the next hour in the back of a police van answering questions about the Bible passage. The police eventually let him go and turned their attention to the complainant, who they finally concluded was just a trouble-maker. Some will say, “All's well that ends well”, but the fact is that those policemen, no doubt reluctantly, deprived the preacher of an hour of his valuable time for no good reason. It should have been immediately obvious that the reading from the Bible was not a criminal matter, but the politically correct climate in which the police now operate meant that they felt obliged to take that silly complainant seriously. The amendment before us would make clear to the police that expressing an opinion on homosexuality is a matter of freedom of speech. If the words used really are threatening, existing public order legislation will apply and the police can intervene, but disagreement should not be a crime.

I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. It is clear from what the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said that there are terrible cases that need to be dealt with. She gave the example of a young man who was killed because of his sexual orientation. The amendment would not in any way affect the proper way of dealing with such a terrible case, but I am affected by the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, about the chill factor. I just wanted to add this: the chill factor applies not only to Christians; it applies to Jews and Muslims and, I think, to Sikhs. The Muslim and the Jewish populations in this country have been much quieter about it than the Christians, but they will also be subject to the chill factor if the freedom of expression is not included by way of the amendment.

I speak as a Christian, but, far from the chill factor, I realise that in another era I would probably have been burnt at the stake, because I hold very different views.

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, that freedom of speech is extremely important. Voltaire said, “I may disagree fundamentally with what you are going to say, but I will fight to the death to ensure that you are able to say it”. The real worry that I have with the amendment moved by the noble Lord is the flip side of its wording. I believe that it gives freedom to those who are homophobic to use it in a homophobic way. That is why I support the government amendment and what the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said.

I worked for many years in Childline. One of the major problems that children brought to us was bullying and, in particular, homophobic bullying. Those children experienced extraordinary things being said to them in the playground, whether they were gay or not. Very often, that was allowed by teachers because they found it difficult to know how to manage or stop homophobic bullying. We have discussed that in the House before. Many of your Lordships have agreed that homophobic bullying, whether the child is homosexual or not, is unacceptable, because of what that does to children. When they grow up, they believe that it is all right to use that sort of language.

I, too, have received correspondence from the mother whose child was kicked to death. In my time, I have met other people who have received severe beatings because they were homosexual. My great worry is that the wording of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, would give licence to that, because it would appear in the Bill. If there were some other wording that did not include the issue of behaviour, I could support the noble Lord in saying that we all have a right to freedom of speech. As I said, I may disagree fundamentally with that point of view, but I believe that those who have a different religious perspective and point of view have a right to put it. With that, I shall support the Government's position.

I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington; indeed, I am a signatory to it. I do not intend to say very much, because most of what I would have said has already been said.

On 27 February, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that he was short of time and that he wanted the Bill through by 8 May, I think it was. I asked him whether, if he was short of time, he would drop Clause 126. There would then have been no need for the amendment or this discussion tonight. As the noble Lord seemed happy that people should ask him further questions about what clauses should be dropped, I wrote to him and asked whether he would either drop Clause 126 or agree to an amendment. I have not had a reply yet, and I am taking that to mean that he is still considering it. I sincerely hope that he will. Perhaps he will indicate what he intends to do when he winds up the debate.

I cannot understand, especially in the light of people's views, which have been expressed to all of us in many letters, why the Government will not agree to the amendment or some other amendment that safeguards freedom of speech, which is absolutely vital to our democracy. Without freedom of speech, we have no democracy. The more legislation of this sort you produce, the more concerned and confused people will be as to what they can say. I simply do not understand why the Government do not accept that. The Minister’s reply to the debate on Second Reading was totally unsatisfactory. It did not properly explain—to me, anyway—why there should be a difference between racial and religious incitement and incitement on sexual orientation, in that two of them have the safeguard for free speech, but he will not accept a safeguard for the third, which we are discussing at present.

I want to make another point to the Gover