Absolutely. To answer the shadow Minister’s question about whether a civil standard would be appropriate, I think that it is important to ensure that we maintain the balance. The reason it was not possible to achieve ROSHOs previously was the combination of two contact offences plus a standard of serious sexual harm. I do not think that the necessary approach now is to lower that standard of proof.
Some have expressed concern that these orders are intended as an alternative to prosecution, but that is not the case; they are simply a practical necessity alongside prosecution. As a civil order they are no different in nature from other civil orders designed to protect children, such as injunctions or restraining orders in a family court or a barring order in respect of regulated activity.
If we fail to intervene and protect vulnerable people from foreseeable harm, even if prosecution is not possible, we are failing in our duty of care. The current orders are failing. The requirement to prove two contact offences for the ROSHO produces the absurd result that an offender who sexually touched a 15-year-old twice would be eligible for an order but an offender who raped a four-year-old once would not be—the police would have to wait for the offender to do it again. That is not a sensible way to assess risk.
Furthermore, given the existence of a specific form of order to prevent foreign travel, ROSHOs have never been used in practice to protect children abroad. The outcome is that non-UK children enjoy a materially lower level of protection than an equivalent child in the UK. I hope that the House will agree that there is absolutely no defence for that disparity. Today’s proposals put an end to that inequality, which must be welcomed.
There are other basic flaws in the existing regime. Application for all three orders can be made only by the local chief of police, but all too often an offender
travels ahead of the evidence between force areas, especially in grooming and trafficking cases. The ROSHO applies only in relation to children up to the age of 16, meaning that 16 to 18-year-olds, who might have been caught up in abuse from a much younger age, can only be protected by a SOPO with a much higher threshold.
Meanwhile, the sexual abuse of children is big business in many destination countries. Hundreds of thousands of children are routinely trafficked for that purpose. Although offenders often have a clear record of offending in different jurisdictions, they can still escape prosecution in each, as many jurisdictions simply fail to prosecute due to different standards of children’s rights or pure corruption. In that context, the FTO threshold for offending behaviour subsequent to a conviction is entirely unworkable. It is unsurprising that since 2005 only 50 FTOs have been granted. In 2007, a year in which 70 British citizens sought consular assistance for child sexual offence arrests, not a single FTO was granted.
New clause 5 applies solely to children because that is the focus of my campaign, and it is intended to remedy these shortcomings: it abolishes the arbitrary requirement to prove two contact offences; it includes UK and foreign children, offering them equal protection; it allows a senior specialist officer from the National Crime Agency to apply for an order to plug the gap of itinerant offenders travelling ahead of the evidence and it raises the age limit to 18; and it introduces an interim provision to prevent itinerant offenders from fleeing the jurisdiction.
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I am delighted that the Government’s proposed sexual risk order incorporates all these changes and applies them more widely to adults and vulnerable adults, but well-drafted guidance will be crucial to ensure these orders are effectively used as an offender management and disruption tool within a wider strategy of prevention and prosecution. That guidance will need to clarify that offenders under the age of 18 must be treated in an age-appropriate way. This order is much less likely to be appropriate to regulate activity between older teenagers than it would be where, perhaps, an older child presents a serious risk to a much younger child. I hope the guidance will include an understanding of sexually-related activity to take into account documented patterns of grooming and sex tourism.
Peter Davies, chief executive of CEOP, has called these reforms a very powerful, very useful new tool to prevent harm to children at the earliest possible opportunity, and I am grateful to everybody who has supported the Childhood Lost campaign. Over 100,000 people have signed our petition, and 67 colleagues have signed up to new clause 5. Police, lawyers, the Children’s Commissioner, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, PACE—Parents against Child Sexual Exploitation—Save the Children, ECPAT, Action for Children, OXCAT and others have all been very vocal in voicing their support, but one particular parent explained why she was supporting the campaign by telling the story of her daughter. She wrote:
“A group of men I didn’t know befriended my 14 year old daughter, Alice, and started to sexually exploit her. They did this by giving her gifts, taking her to ‘parties’ and giving her drugs and alcohol but all the time with the real threat of actual violence hanging over her. There were rules at the ‘parties’ and girls were beaten if they did not have sex with the men…We knew who they
were, where they lived and what they were doing; yet nothing was done to stop these men contacting my daughter again and again.”
She added:
“I was told it was not enough for action to be taken”
and continued:
“Police should have had the power to prevent these men contacting and abusing my daughter…I believe that if the police had been able to use a prevention order children would not have been raped by these men.
It is terrifying that these men got away with so much for so long and that other children are still trapped in similar situations.”
Used properly, these orders will protect victims, they will disrupt grooming, and they will prevent sex tourism. These reforms are the right thing to do, and for these reasons I will not press my amendment to a Division, but instead I ask all Members who think the police should be able to step in to protect girls like Alice to support the Government amendments to protect people from child sexual exploitation.