My Lords, I dedicate this speech to Lord Cormack because, the last time I spoke to him, we discussed this very issue. I make no claim that he would agree with me; it is just that, as was his wont, he was very supportive of me tabling this amendment. I acknowledge that he did not agree with me on many things but he was still a great Peer.
Amendment 148E looks at identity changes and recording on registers. On the front page of Scottish newspapers over the weekend was the story of Marc Sherland, the head of the Robert Burns World Federation, who has been unmasked as a convicted sex offender who abused two boys in the past. He exploited a legal loophole that meant that Douglas Hammond, which was his name when he committed earlier offences, could change his name to get the job. Chillingly, his role at the federation allowed him access to children.
Thankfully, instances of sexual offenders changing their name to escape their past are being tackled, not least by the efforts of campaigners for Della’s law, named after six year-old Della Wright, who was raped by a man who had legally changed his name five times. I am glad that the Government have endorsed amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill that will block offenders from, for example, using deed poll to obtain a new identity.
I particularly congratulate the honourable Labour MP Ruth Jones, whose Private Member’s Bill, the Community and Suspended Sentences (Notification of Details) Bill, passed its Second Reading in the other place only on Friday, 23 February. I congratulate the Government on signalling their support for that Bill. It is designed to tackle the hundreds of sex offenders across the UK who slip off the radar because they lawfully change their names and then apply for fresh identity documents, allowing them to escape the authorities and their past and, potentially, to secure jobs working with children.
Now, you might say that, because of the Private Member’s Bill that I just mentioned and the Government’s support for it, which deal with my worries, there is really no need for my amendment. However, we are told that the Bill will mean that all offenders will have to notify their probation officers and others about any name changes, online aliases or changes in contact details when, actually, perhaps not all offenders are covered by this. My amendment probes another loophole that seems to have gone beneath the radar. I hope that the Minister will address this—I do not necessarily mean this evening, but before we get to Report.
The new arrangements that I have discussed are about not allowing sex offenders simply to change their identity to escape their past crimes. Offenders will not simply be able to change their identity on official documents. This is true for everyone, except for when a little-known exemption applies. It relates to a sensitive applications clause that applies to those who have changed their identity not simply via deed poll but via transitioning gender. This sensitivity clause can be utilised by convicted male sex offenders who change gender after committing a crime, once they are incarcerated.
I discovered this loophole from a bizarre tale that ended up being rather personal to me. Ceri-Lee Galvin is now a delightful 25 year-old mum who is training to be a paramedic, but she had a traumatic, hellish childhood. From the age of eight, she was sexually abused and raped by her own father, Clive Bundy. This horrendous ordeal went on for eight years until, eventually, in 2016, Bundy was arrested and sent to prison for 15 years. Having served only half of his sentence, Bundy was released on licence less than a year ago.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this seemingly early release—I think it was unseemly that Bundy was released so early—one would think, after his release had been agreed, that at least Clive Bundy would be in clear sight of the relevant criminal justice agencies for protection and safeguarding. But there is a catch. Two years prior to Clive Bundy’s release, he declared himself a woman and changed his name to—wait for it—Claire Fox. For those of you who know me only as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, my name is Claire Fox, so I noticed when I heard this story.
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Think about what that means. A “Clive Bundy” might well be on the sex offenders register, but Clive Bundy does not exist anymore—Clive Bundy is Claire Fox. Clive Bundy was not let out of prison early on licence—Claire Fox was. What is more, the proposed new changes on restricting identity and name change via deed poll, which I have already discussed, will not apply to Clive Bundy, because when someone changes gender as part of changing their identity—it makes no difference whether that is achieved by self-declaration or in accordance with the provisions of the Gender Recognition Act—they are afforded an extraordinary, enhanced right to privacy, wholly unlike those granted to any other individual.
These special protections, given to them by the state, represent a concrete safeguarding risk. It means that a loophole has been created, whereby an individual is able to conceal their past identity for the purposes of, for example, the Disclosure and Barring Service checking processes. An individual such as Clive Bundy can request, based on this special category of privacy, that his past identity or name is not displayed. I am confusing myself, because it is not Clive Bundy who can request that but Claire Fox. Claire Fox can say, “I don’t want the name Clive Bundy to be displayed on any DBS certificate issued to me—my name is Claire Fox”.
A prospective employer is not entitled to know whether a candidate has used this sensitivity clause to cover up who they are. I remind noble Lords that DBS checks are supposed to play an important role in safeguarding, by helping organisations make safer recruitment decisions. They are designed to deter unsuitable people from applying to work with vulnerable groups, and to assist organisations in identifying and rejecting such people. But organisations are able to rely on the DBS checking process only to the extent that checking systems are robust, and that the information displayed on DBS certificates is both accurate and complete. Thanks to the work of people such as Kate Coleman and the campaign group Keep Prisons Single Sex, or KPSS, we now know that these sensitive application
loopholes mean that organisations have no way of knowing whether information displayed on DBS certificates presented to them is an accurate or complete record concerning any individual.
Think about what that means for Ceri-Lee and her paedophile father. Since his release, Clive Bundy—Claire Fox—has gone to live in the same town as his daughter. That means that he could apply for jobs locally working with children, even with Ceri-Lee’s own daughter, and his past would be hidden. It is worth noting that, due to the special privacy rights afforded to Bundy, the victim, Ceri-Lee, had no right to know about Clive’s gender transition and found out only when Bundy gave permission for the information to be passed on via Ceri-Lee’s victim liaison officer—part of what writer and activist Julie Bindel described as an example of “coercive and controlling tactics”.
The key issue is that there is no legal requirement for a victim to be warned. Ceri-Lee would not have had any idea that Clive Bundy had been erased and that the new person who had entered the town—Claire Fox—was in fact her father. Therefore, there would have been no alert given to the family children if they were being shown attention by a local employee called Claire. I stress the familial connections point because, grossly, Clive Bundy’s argument at the Parole Board as to why he did not represent a threat to wider society was that his incestuous abuse had been kept within the family. Think about that as a sick retort.
In rounding off my remarks, I am keen that your Lordships note that this amendment is driven by Ceri-Lee’s experience, rather than my own views on gender identity, which I know not all noble Lords will agree with me on. Ceri-Lee is not involved in gender politics. She got dragged into this by her paedophile rapist, noting that:
“My father wasn’t dysphoric about his male genitals when he was abusing me”.
In a way, I have been dragged into this issue by Clive Bundy using my name. When the story was first made public in the other place, and then in the press, I was mortified and wished it would go away. It was so embarrassing to have my name being sullied by such an association with a perpetrator. But when I thought about it, and heard that Ceri-Lee had broken her own anonymity, it gave me a jolt. She appealed to those of us with influence to help her expose the loophole that could allow dangerous sexual predators to evade detection and potentially target other child victims, perhaps in female-only settings. Ceri-Lee knows that it is too late in her case, but it does not have to be for others. I hope, therefore, that we can perhaps create a “Ceri-Lee’s law”.