INDECENCY WITH CHILDREN BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 29 February 1960)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, we have given very serious consideration to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and I am sorry that on that consideration we have felt ourselves unable to meet his point of view. Your Lordships will appreciate that there are two matters which, if I may put it in legal language, lay a very heavy onus on the noble Lord. The first is that the Criminal Law Revision Committee made a firm recommendation that it would be wrong to choose an age as high as sixteen. They chose the age of fourteen, and the runner-up in ages to fourteen was thirteen. The second point is really an aspect of the point which was made with great strength by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, during the Committee stage, and that is the point of the difficulties which the existing special protection afforded to girls under sixteen already cause in relation to offences by boys of the same age with mature fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls. I am sure that your Lordships who heard the argument of the noble Baroness will realise how important the point is. In view of both of these points a strong case would have to be made out if the age limit in the Bill were to be raised; and, as I say, I have considered, but not been convinced by, Lord Silkin's argument that there are some girls between fourteen and sixteen who are still at school and may be lacking in sexual knowledge and therefore need protection as much as younger children.

With regard to the Crowther Report, apart from the general argument that Sir Geoffrey Crowther was speaking in a different context, I should say that the emphasis on the excerpt which the noble Lord referred to would be on the word "some". Of course the point applies to some, but we have to consider the problem in the context of this offence, and that argument seems to underestimate two points. First, a fourteen to sixteen-year-old girl may be relatively ignorant of sexual matters, but it does not follow that she is unable to recognise indecent conduct. Secondly, it does not seem that, as a matter of fact, the girls in this age group are likely to be the subject of the offences at: which Clause 1 (1) is particularly aimed; and 499 that is particularly borne out by the ages of the victims in the Director of Public Prosecution's group of 70 victims which I quoted in Committee.

One must come to the real point of this offence. This was made an offence to close a gap in the criminal law which had been discovered after many years, and the principal form of indecency which it is desired to prevent is the invitation to a young girl to handle a man indecently. And the type of child whom it is necessary to protect against this particular form of indecency is the child who will do or submit to indecent acts without realising, first of all, their significance, and, secondly, that they are indecent. This presupposes a fairly young child, a child who is not only ignorant of sexual matters but ignorant of the context of indecency. A child of fourteen or fifteen who is lacking in sexual knowledge may not understand why a man behaves as he does, but must surely know that such behaviour is indecent and ought not to be indulged in or permitted.

I should have thought, with regard to the girl of fourteen to sixteen, that the offence which is more greatly to be feared—the one to which she is more likely to be subjected—is that in which the man goes beyond the offence which is contemplated by Clause 1 (1) and the offence passes into the sphere of indecent assault. A child of an age to know about acts of indecency of that kind is unlikely to be exposed to indecent invitations of the kind in question, because it is of the essence of the reason for this offence that the men who commit it get their sexual gratification out of the very innocence of the child and the fact that the child is indecently handling them and knowing nothing about the implications and is an innocent little girl. It is a form of perverted sexual activity and it is, as I say—one must be blunt about it—the very innocence of the child that produces the sexual gratification in this unfortunate class of man.

In dealing with that, I think it is right that one is dealing with young children; but in the case of girls of fourteen to sixteen, it is much more likely to be an indecent assault—and, of course, the prohibition and sanction against that is already provided for in the criminal law. As your Lordships know, the figures that 500 I gave to the House in Committee were obtained after inquiries of the various police forces by the Director of Public Prosecutions in order to see whether this gap in the law was one which ought to be dealt with; and, on that point, it is interesting that the Director's figures showed that 65 of the 70 victims in the cases which were brought to his attention were under eleven, and only one was fourteen. My Lords, these figures are not all the cases, but we have no reason to suppose that if one had all the cases the figures would show a different variation in constitution.

Now, my Lords, I think we have to face the fact that the disadvantage of raising the age of the victim beyond what is strictly necessary is the one which the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, raised in the debate during the Committee stage. It is that it increases the area in which difficulty arises because a girl permits, or even incites, an offence well knowing what she is doing; and it is in this connection that the fear expressed during the debate in Committee on Lord Saltoun's Amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, that young people may be prosecuted for indecent conduct with consenting young people, has some substance. If the age of a victim were raised to sixteen, a fifteen year old girl might incite a sixteen year old boy to acts of indecency for which he would be liable to be prosecuted; and the courts already have difficulty with the somewhat similar situation which occurs at present when a girl under sixteen incites a boy to have intercourse with her. He commits an offence, and if he knows her age he has no defence, although morally she is, or may be, more culpable than he. I submit to your Lordships that a similar situation should not be allowed to arise in relation to this lesser offence. There is little likelihood, I suggest, of a girl over fourteen becoming a victim because she does not know that the conduct is indecent; but there is considerable likelihood of a boy committing an offence with a girl who knows very well that the conduct is indecent and permits or incites the offence. It has consequently been thought better to keep the age down to the level below which the protection of the clause is really needed.

501 My Lords, those are the arguments which we have considered. It is a difficult point, because all of us—and especially those of us who are the fathers of daughters—have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord's desire to protect girls between fourteen and sixteen; but it is essential, when one is asking Parliament to create a new criminal offence, that one should consider the whole balance of the subject. That is what I have tried to do. I am fortified by the fact that my view follows that of Lord Justice Sellers and his colleagues on the Criminal Law Revision Committee. For the reasons which we have heard, and weighing the views which have been so forcibly put before this House, I think that we ought to follow the Committee and take the age of fourteen, remembering that the alternative to that would have been thirteen, and that, for the reasons I have given, we ought not to put up the age. Like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I am sure that this subject will receive attention in another place. It is obviously one of great importance: and I think the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, knows that if I could have met him without doing harm to the views which I hold very strongly and very sincerely I would have done so. But as or consideration, I find that I cannot, I ask him not to press his Amendment to-day.