My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for again raising this matter for debate. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place but who gave up a lot of time last week to discuss this with me and the noble Lord.
I start by clarifying what we mean by a “position of trust” in this context—there may have been some confusion in Committee. The position of trust offences that we are discussing are set out in Sections 16 to 19 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. They are necessarily narrow in scope and were never intended to apply in all scenarios in which a person might have contact with, authority over or a supervisory role over another person, even those aged under 18. Rather, these offences were created to tackle potentially abusive relationships between those under 18 and adults who were in specific positions of trust.
The existing positions of trust, as set out in Section 21 of the 2003 Act, were so drafted in an attempt to capture situations where the young person had a high level of dependency on the adult involved, often combined with some vulnerability. These included those caring for a young person in a residential care home, hospital, school or educational institution. In these contexts, the power dynamic is such that Parliament considered that any sexual activity should be criminalised.
The law was created, therefore, in recognition of the risk inherent in these types of position and the power the individual could have over the young person, which could impact on and affect the young person’s ability to consent. As such, the offences are committed as soon as the adult in one of these specified positions engages in sexual activity with the young person they are caring for; there is no need to prove any abuse or actual manipulation.
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Expanding the situations in which consensual sexual activity between a person aged 16 or over and an adult is criminalised is therefore a delicate matter. Framing
these offences too widely could prohibit any person aged 18 or over engaging in sexual activity with anyone aged 16 to 17, which effectively raises the age of consent by stealth. A broad approach also risks legislating beyond the original intention of the current provisions: to protect young people in those relationships which, by their nature, involve unique opportunities to manipulate and abuse, rather than any relationship with an element of supervision. Therefore, it is essential, as I said—I will come to the examples from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, a little later—that any expansion of these provisions is backed by evidence.
We in the department led a review of the law in this area, which did not deal only with abuse in sport and religion, and we engaged with representatives from a wide range of backgrounds and sectors. After that careful review of the law, the Government have concluded that those who teach, train, supervise, instruct or coach in a sport or a religion are particularly influential over a child’s development and should be captured under the position of trust laws. That is what Clause 46 does.