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Lester Publishing, 2003
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Doc. No. 2003.001 |
SEXUAL ETHICS AND CRIMINAL LAW
FRANCIS BENNION
Page 34
Conclusion
70. Obviously in this report I have only been able
to scratch the surface of the problem. My main object has been to alert the public to
the radical and extensive nature of these intrusive proposals. What should be done? I
believe this grossly defective Bill should not be given a second reading. It should be
scrapped, and the Home Office should start again. Belatedly, it should work out what
ought to be the ethical basis of its proposals. It should acknowledge that human sexuality
is a delicate issue, not to be wrapped in bureaucratic red tape. It needs to recognise
that though much harm is done by sexual predators, who need to be contained, sex is essentially
an intensely private and personal matter. State forces should not come bursting into
the bedroom unless the need is dire. Children should not be frightened by hysterical
adults as they strive to come to terms with the life force, as all past children have
done. The mentally handicapped, who suffer enough, should not, on top of their other
deprivations, be denied sexual fulfilment. Sex should not be seen as a bogey by anyone.
71. When, at the age of eighty, I read through this
Bill I was dismayed. Plonking clause after plonking clause, framed in crass civil service
language, brings the police officer and social worker into our nation's bedrooms, to
the peril of our cherished humanity. Civilisation can surely do better.
72. Early media comment bears out my view of the
Bill. In its Thunderer column the Times said-
Queen Victoria's alleged scuppering of the criminalisation
of lesbianism on the ground that it would be impossible to imagine such grossness in
the female sex had much to be said for it. There are some things that the law should
just steer clear of, on the ground that they would not normally occur to people. David
Blunkett's Sexual Offences Bill, however, brings on to the statute book new crimes of
having sex with corpses and animals, as well as
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penetrating people's orifices with a
bottle. Is this really Mr Blunkett's idea of bringing law up to date, to reflect the
way we live now? . . . This is before we get to the exciting new offence of "grooming
a child for sex". Any man who can be shown to have "met or communicated with
that child on at least two earlier occasions" will be suspect, particularly if he
leaves the house equipped with "ropes, condoms or lubricants" .
. . the new Bill will introduce what would be a de facto raising of the age of consent,
by criminalising prostitution and pornographic photographs involving 16 and 17-year olds
who are now to be regarded as mere children. Somehow
I cannot help thinking that it might be a good idea to enforce the perfectly good laws
we have, before introducing rafts of politically correct nonsense."
73. I end with the view of the Daily Telegraph.
There can be only two possible justifications for
a new law: 1) that it meets a need unmet by existing legislation; and 2) that it puts
right something that is wrong with the law as it stands. The Sexual Offences Bill fulfils
neither criterion. At best, it is a fantastically silly measure that will do nothing
to redress any respectable grievance. At worst it will give rise to very serious injustices
. . . Human beings have been confused about sex since Adam accepted the apple from Eve
- and none more so than [Mr Hilary Benn MP] and his fellow ministers. They should tear
up this unnecessary and uncalled-for Bill before it does serious harm.
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Francis
Bennion is an author, constitutional lawyer and draftsman of state constitutions. A
former UK Parliamentary Counsel and member of the Oxford University Law Faculty, he is
currently
a Research Associate of the Oxford University Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.
This,
believe it or not, is a genuine quotation from the official explanatory note to clause
17.
.
See clause 52.
Robert
Whelan, The Times 31 January 2003.
Leader,
31 January 2003.
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