My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, this is a good Bill for victims. It contains many provisions that I strongly support. I hope and believe that we can make it an even better Bill by working across the House, which is the mood tonight, as it was then.
I put my name to Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I also support other amendments in this group, including those that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol, who is unable to be in her place today, has signed. Amendments in this group seek to clarify how the Bill properly addresses the needs of children.
Amendment 10 places on the face of the Bill a short but clear definition of “child criminal exploitation”. This would include any child under 18 who is
“encouraged, expected or required to take part in any activity that constitutes a criminal offence”.
This is not widening the definition of a victim, merely giving it clarity. I learned in my teens that if I was on the receiving end of some wrongdoing, I was a child. By contrast, if I was deemed the perpetrator, I suddenly became a youth.
We have also heard too often in your Lordships’ House of the adultification of children. It is an ugly word for an ugly phenomenon, where a child is treated as a grown-up when they are caught up in wrongdoing. Moreover, we know that in the absence of a strong countervailing pressure, this is disproportionately applied to black children. This has been a long-standing concern of many civil society organisations focused on countering the exploitation of children. I hope we can begin to respond to it today.
In my own diocese of Manchester, we are still reeling from the discovery of the extent of grooming gangs exploiting children for sexual crimes, most notably—but I doubt exclusively—in Rochdale. If the children caught up in these crimes had been seen by the authorities primarily as victims, and treated as such, I believe that the gangs would have been brought to justice far sooner.
Getting a clear definition of child criminal exploitation into the Bill will, I hope and pray, not only improve this legislation but set a precedent for how we treat child victims better, both in future legislation and in practice at every stage of the criminal justice system. I hope that the Minister will either accept our words as on the Marshalled List or come back to us on Report with a suitable government amendment to that effect.