Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

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 the 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.