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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 13: 13: Clause 62, page 49, line 31, leave out paragraph (b) and insert— ““(b) is obscene as defined by section 1 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (c. 66) (test of obscenity).”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, there are many things in these clauses about extreme pornography with which we on these Benches remain deeply unhappy. On Report, the Minister did not explain why he could not move at least a little nearer the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Linking these clauses to that Act would have made the measure more objective, and less subjective, and would have had the other strength of targeting the producers of such material rather than the end user. It would target those who are making vast amounts of money out it. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, had a suggestion, but the Government did not take up, to make it illegal for credit card companies to allow the spend on extreme porn sites. I thought that was a constructive suggestion that the Government had not chosen to pursue. The other reason to link these clauses to the Obscene Publications Act is that that is a tried and tested definition in court. It talks of material that tends to ““deprave and corrupt”” as opposed to ““extreme””, which the Minister admitted at Report stage is a very subjective judgment. It is something that he does not like. I appreciate that the Minister feels that ““deprave and corrupt”” is old-fashioned language and not suitable, but it has stood the test of time in court for printed material and it addresses what the Government say they are trying to do with these clauses. The Government want to stop people becoming depraved and corrupted and therefore more likely to commit criminal acts. I will come back to whether there is enough evidence of that—and I will contend that anyway. The legislation as drafted does simply allows the word ““extreme””. Although the Bill defines that word, when a case comes to court it is going to give juries a great deal of difficulty when they start to look at it in any detail. The legislation allows the police to pick up someone watching this material before they commit any crime, before they actually cause any harm to another person. The Government may be right that the person might have gone on to commit such a crime, but often they may be arresting somebody who has strange tastes, ones we might find repugnant, but who is never going to harm anyone else and is no threat to society. Their life is likely to be ruined by the subsequent court case, even if it fails or if the accused is successfully produces one of the defences. That is truly the domain of the thought police. These clauses are the state entering the bedrooms and minds of citizens before they commit any crime that involves harm to another human being. I know that the Minister will again quote the evidence. However, the academic world is not of one voice on the effects of this material. A number of academic studies quoted by the Minister show that extreme pornography may affect violent criminals—people who had criminal intent in the first place. On the other hand, he could have chosen to quote from Professor Todd Kendall who presented his paper to Stanford Law School. It showed that as the United States brought in access to the internet at a different rate in the 50 states—not intentionally—a 10 per cent increase in internet access yielded a 7.3 per cent decrease in reported rapes. The purpose of quoting that is to show that different academic studies show different things. I now turn to Amendment No. 15, which concerns the tariffs. Will the Minister explain why the tariffs are as they are for simply watching an act, when committing the act results in a lesser or equal tariff? Surely it is much worse to commit an act under the Sexual Offences Act than to watch it on the internet. I want also to ask him about the guidance that he will issue to the police. How on earth are the police going to enforce this law? Will it be by random raids on people’s bedroom, by reports from neighbours or by trawling through hacked internet access? Policing this area will be a nightmare when it comes to otherwise law-abiding citizens watching alone or with their partners things that we may find distasteful or even disgusting. This affects an awful lot of British citizens. I have no way of telling whether extreme or just ordinary pornography is involved, but internet service providers estimate that about £1 billion a year is spent on pornography. That is either 1 million people spending £100 or—my maths is failing me. Anyway, it is a lot of people. There is another route that the Government could have chosen to take that might have been very constructive. It would have been to set up a government website that allowed the reporting on non-consensual abusive acts, slightly along the lines of Crimestoppers. That would have allowed users to report anything truly criminal or suspect and would have led to the arrest of genuine sexual offenders from whichever country they originated. That idea could be put into practice and would be very cost-effective. We feel that the Government have gone down a number of wrong routes with this Bill, and that is we why we have tabled this amendment. I beg to move.