My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have taken part in this debate.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, said from personal experience in a very moving speech, it is the effect of this sort of behaviour that we are trying to target. It is a pernicious effect, because it is not just the immediate effect on the victim, as the noble Baroness identified; it is the effect that the victim starts to change their behaviour. Even when there is no actual harassment going on, because of the fear that there
may be harassment and because of knowledge of previous occasions, people change their behaviour. Of course, they should not change their behaviour; the behaviour we should seek to change is the behaviour of the perpetrators. Ultimately, that is why this is a matter of social and cultural change, and not just a change in law. But change in law, as all speakers identified, is part of the solution, even if it is not all of the solution. I am very grateful for her support and for what she said.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, who made the important point that we have to target actions in both the private sphere and the public sphere. Over the past few years, this House and the other place have done quite a lot of work in the private sphere, and it is therefore right, as he said, that we should turn our attention now to the public sphere.
I am also very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his comprehensive support for the Bill and for identifying the change of culture that is needed. I was going to say a couple of words on the point about intent, but my noble friend the Minister dealt with that. I add only that courts are used to dealing with questions of intent—it is an ingredient in many offences—and I would not expect it to be a problem for the courts with this offence. Indeed, it is already part of the underlying offence in Section 4A.
On public sexual harassment and what it means, it is better not to have examples in the Bill. As I said, we have some examples in the Explanatory Notes. The danger is that examples in the future Act itself can limit the application, because you could be limited to the nature of the examples. The way we normally do legislation here is to allow the courts to interpret it. We can be confident that in this area the courts will interpret these words in a sensible and natural way.
As I have said on a number of occasions, this will not solve the problem, but it is part of the solution.