Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 167:"Before Clause 51, insert the following new clause—" ““RECORDING A CRIMINAL OFFENCE FOR GRATIFICATION (1)   It shall be an offence for any person intentionally to make an audio or visual recording of a criminal offence for the purpose of obtaining gratification for himself or another. (2)   A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable— (a)   on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both; (b)   on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”” The noble Baroness said: I now enter the more peaceful waters of happy slapping. I hasten to say that the amendment is probing at this stage. Having just provided the Government the opportunity to strip this Bill of 11 clauses, I am now being more helpful by trying to put another one in. The amendment would insert a new offence of recording a criminal offence for personal gratification—otherwise known as happy slapping, if you read the Evening Standard or other such newspapers. Noble Lords will be all too aware from press reports that there has been much concern about the prevalence of a new sort of activity. People who have a ready access to a camera phone or a smart phone that takes still or video pictures use them to record a criminal event, which usually involves a group kicking, beating or sometimes raping an individual. The pictures are then transmitted to others on the basis that they can all have a good laugh at the victim and applaud the criminal. Often the pictures are posted on the internet. One difficult issue is that pictures may be posted on the internet with a silly tag line, so that if one goes on the internet and looks up a place name or person’s name, one may find that a link comes up that looks as though it is wholly innocent, because it looks as if it is a joke, but when one goes into it, what one brings up is the footage of happy slapping. Having been warned about that, I decided to take a controlled experiment and look it up, via the BBC website—I see one or two noble Lords beginning to take an interest—as what more innocent website could there be? So, I put in ““happy slapping”” to see what I got. One link was, indeed, to a very serious article from Arlington, Texas, about the way that we have exported happy slapping from here to Texas—strange but true, it seems. It said that research had been done on this, and there was a link to click. When I clicked on it, what came up appeared to be an innocent linkage. I then decided that it was not necessarily a good idea to open it, just in case, as I would not want the parliamentary website being forced to track me—we do not need ID cards round here, as we are tracked by the Government—so I did not do so. What I did, through Google, was to look at what further information there was about it. Once you went into that, which most people would not bother to do, you then found it was a summary of five different camera-phone incidents that had been taken in Arlington, Texas that showed people being given a good kicking. An innocent user of the internet could easily get into that. Of course, in the first instance, to take the footage is a despicable way to behave. The whole purpose behind it is for people to enjoy watching—not to encourage others to commit the offences, which would obviously be a conspiracy—but simply for the person, in some sick way, to enjoy what they have seen. Incidents reported in the press here have ranged from minor assaults to the killing of the Soho barman, David Morley, in a gang attack on the South Bank in London in October 2004—all recorded and circulated on mobile phones. It is thought that this kind of activity began in south London but I understand that it has spread, as mentioned, to America and throughout Europe. That is not an export of which we can be proud. It is time that we try to do something, and make a stand against that behaviour. So, Amendment No. 167 introduces a new offence that would make it illegal for any person intentionally,"““to make an audio or visual recording of a criminal offence for the purpose of obtaining gratification for himself or another””." I always think of the word ““intentionally”” when the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, is in his place, as his amendments always focus on that. I am trying to ensure there that those who record criminal events for the purposes of prosecuting the same are not caught out by my new offence. I want to protect the police and journalists who take pictures and pass them to the police, using them in a perfectly laudable way. I also want to protect quick-thinking members of the public such as those who were present at the horrendous events in London last summer and took video footage or still pictures on their cameras and handed those to the police. I am sure that those were utterly invaluable in backing up CCTV footage. So, I want to protect all those innocent applications and reasons for taking pictures, while trying to get at those who take pictures for a sick purpose. If the Minister believes that the drafting of the amendment is not effective then I am happy to look at a different one. I know that in another part of the Bill the Government have created an offence regarding firearms and then listed specific defences—people who can be excluded, by profession. If the Government feel that would be the better approach, I am happy to look at that. I beg to move.