Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I, too, certainly understand the concern about happy slapping. It is an awful thing. The noble Baroness referred to one case and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made reference to prisoners being abused and filmed as the abuse was being afflicted on them. It is appalling and we obviously want to try to do what we can to deal with it. I am certainly very sympathetic towards the aims of this amendment. That the amendment can accurately achieve what it desires is something of which I am not entirely convinced at this stage. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for saying that it is a probing amendment. We are not sure that, even by creating a new offence, we would be proceeding in the right direction. Such an offence would set a very important legal precedent. It would effectively criminalise the observing of an offence and it would represent a major step in extending the scope of the criminal law. Before we do that, we need very carefully to think through all the consequences. The existing criminal law deals satisfactorily with the primary offence of the attack itself; for example, it could constitute an assault or a wounding. Most people who record an offence would be criminally liable, either because they, too, are committing the offence being filmed or because they were involved in the planning of the offence. They would thereby be open to charges of conspiracy, incitement or aiding and abetting. So a new offence of this kind would capture only a very small group of people. That is not to say that the attempt to do so is wrong, but those people would in essence be those who embarked on that course of action with a purely malicious intent but who would perhaps not be otherwise involved or implicated. Moreover, where a violent offence has taken place and there is a happy-slapping element, this should be taken into account as an aggravating factor under current sentencing guidelines. So there is a way in which it can be built in. This type of offence would usually involve three elements: a degree of planning; offenders operating in groups or gangs; and additional degradation of the victim. Those sentencing must consider the combined aggravating effect. These factors would apply to all those committing the offence, not just to the person undertaking the filming. The noble Baroness alluded to the possibility that, with the offence being designed in the way in which she has done so, one might as an unintended consequence capture people who are attempting to provide a public service by collecting evidence, either on CCTV or through a mobile phone that makes a video recording. So we would have to be very careful on that front, too. So while we abhor the practice of happy slapping, we are not convinced that the offence proposed in this way by the amendment would tackle the problem that has been identified. However, it clearly is a problem and we certainly do not rule out giving it further consideration. For the moment, sympathetic though we are, given the magnitude of the step that we would be taking in extending the criminal law in this way, we should approach the subject with some caution and some further reflection. For those reasons, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.