Police and Justice Bill

I hesitate to be so certain in my own mind. We know enough about the criminal justice system to know that it is human and fallible. Sometimes accusations are made against individuals that are subsequently shown at trial not just to be unproven, but to be wholly wrong. There are circumstances about which I have anxieties. Those go beyond cautioning to extensive plea bargaining, with huge disparities between the sentence that will be attracted on conviction and that which will be visited on a guilty plea. One can end up with a situation—I see the Minister nodding—where there are excessive inducements to individuals to try to bring the matter to a premature conclusion. These are difficult matters, and those of us who have practised in the courts know the difficulties that we sometimes have in getting our clients to sign the back sheets of our briefs to indicate that they have been fully advised about cases before they accept any form of formal or informal plea bargaining. I wait with interest to hear what the Minister says in response. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point is that this is a matter that should properly concern Parliament. I shall not repeat the arguments ably put by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). Over a number of years he has been assiduous in trying to deal with the problem of paedophile sex offenders. We have had a number of opportunities, which we have sometimes missed, to try to firm up the framework of the legislation that we need to deal with them. As my hon. Friend rightly said, they are sometimes offenders whose high intelligence means that they have a unique capacity to wriggle off the hook, coupled with their unique capacity for self-denial about their behaviour. On the issues of child pornography that are at the centre of new clause 2, we know from all the research that has been carried out that there is an absolute causal link between the use of child pornography and the commission of substantive offences. That is becoming so abundantly clear that it raises some extremely difficult questions about, for instance, pseudo-photographs and even cartoons, and the extent to which we are over-tolerant of those and reluctant to prosecute those who may possess them. That is one of the serious matters that the House must go on to consider in future. What my hon. Friend proposes strikes me as eminently reasonable, and we support him. We take the view that penalties must be sufficient to act as a clear incentive to provide the keys to the encrypted data. If, in fact, people can escape with a rap over the knuckles by not providing the data and thereby save themselves from a substantial term of imprisonment, it is clear that many will avail themselves of that opportunity and that such cases will become more frequent when encryption becomes more readily available. So far as notification and powers of entry and examination are concerned, I have no difficulties in terms of human rights in saying that those who have been convicted of such offences can properly be placed under a regime on release—we know that we must do this for public protection—which may curtail some of the rights that others may enjoy. Entry into a person’s property to check whether there are clear signs that, notwithstanding whatever treatment that person may have received when they were in custody, the problems, which are of an wholly obsessional nature, are present and that that person is liable to commit further offences or is committing further offences such as downloading pornography or having pornographic material in their home seems to strike a reasonable balance. Whether the Government adopt new clause 10 or new clause 9, I hope that they respond positively, because we have raised the matter previously and the contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley is valuable. I do not want to take up any more of the House’s time. The matter has no party political aspect, and I hope that the Government will provide some reassurance that they will take this opportunity. On a number of occasions, we have missed such opportunities, and those of us who want to see something done look at each criminal justice Bill to see whether we can hang something on it. There is an opportunity, and when the Bill finally goes through, I hope that we receive reassurance that some of the loopholes have been covered.