My Lords, Amendment 78DA, moved by my noble friend Lady Noakes, is in regard to the maximum penalty for the sexual penetration of a corpse. I first place on record my shock and horror at David Fuller’s horrifying offending; my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I assure the House that the Government are committed to looking in detail at what happened in this appalling circumstance to ensure that it simply never happens again.
As we have heard, just this afternoon Mr Fuller has been sentenced to a whole-life term of imprisonment. An investigation into other aspects of his offending is ongoing. The House will understand why I will not comment on the sentence passed in this case, but I thank all those in the police, the CPS and the wider criminal justice system for bringing him to justice.
The Government have announced an inquiry into the events that occurred in hospitals in Tunbridge Wells. This will help us understand how the offences took place without detection in the trust, identify any areas where early action by the trust was necessary and consider wider national issues, including for the NHS as a whole. The Government have already made good progress in establishing the independent inquiry. I understand from colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care that the inquiry’s chair, Sir Jonathan Michael, has developed draft terms of reference already and will engage with the families on them in the new year before they are published.
As well as that inquiry, I assure the House that the Ministry of Justice is reviewing the existing penalties available for the offence of sexual penetration of a corpse. The statutory maximum penalty for that offence is, as my noble friend indicated, two years’ imprisonment.
I reassure your Lordships, however, that that is the statutory maximum penalty for one offence. Where the offence is sentenced alongside other offences, each
offence will be sentenced individually. The overall sentence passed will therefore reflect the totality of the offending behaviour.
I also pay tribute to my noble friend’s work in supporting the inclusion of this offence when it was debated during the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It was created primarily to deal with a different circumstance—different circumstances were in mind at the time. The focus was on the situation where a murderer abuses the corpse of their victim after death, and it was therefore perhaps thought likely that those sentenced for this offence would, for the most part, be sentenced at the same time for another offence, such as murder—which of course carries a mandatory penalty of life imprisonment. As we have seen in the Fuller case, that is sometimes the case but may not always be so.
It is therefore right that, in view of this depraved—which is not a word I use often, but I think is appropriate in this context—and horrifying offending where we have seen an individual commit this offence independently of other offending in relation to that victim, we review the current statutory maximum penalty for the Section 70 offence. It may also be that this review, and the public inquiry into the offending in hospitals in Kent, will highlight other issues that need to be considered relating to the existing offences that deal with sexual abuse of corpses.
To be clear, I am not saying—I cannot this afternoon —that the Government will adopt the specific approach taken in this amendment, but neither do I rule out future changes to the maximum penalty. Rather, we are reviewing the maximum penalty in its context, and speaking with DHSC officials to ensure that learning from the inquiry into events in hospitals can be taken into account into our review of the penalty. That is the best way to reach a considered conclusion about how to amend Section 70 appropriately.
As to timing, the inquiry into the events at hospitals in Kent is due to publish interim findings in the new year, with the full report at a later stage. I will write to my noble friend, and place a copy in the Library, with any further information on the inquiry’s timescales as soon as that is available. Our review of the available maximum penalties is likely to follow a similar timescale, to ensure that findings from the inquiry can be taken into account in our conclusions. It is therefore important that we await the findings of the inquiry before amending the current legislation. I listened carefully to how my noble friend opened this short debate, and I therefore ask her formally to withdraw this amendment.