SEXUAL OFFENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL

Speech delivered on Wed 10th Jun 2009

I join colleagues in thanking my fellow members of the Justice Committee, the clerking and other parliamentary staff, and the cabinet secretary and his staff for their professional and helpful attitude during consideration of the bill. I also thank the witnesses who gave us written and oral evidence during its passage, not least the Lord Advocate.

The bill addresses many difficult and sensitive areas, some of which are potentially controversial and provoke strong feelings in people. Not for the first time, the Parliament's committee system has unravelled and analysed many of the issues with great skill-corporately, not individually-so that we have ended up with a bill that will command wide consent and a sense that individual views have contributed to the end result-as, indeed, they have.

The most controversial and difficult area relates to the age of consent, in respect of which the Government departed from the Scottish Law Commission's recommendation. That was the right decision, not least because it sends out a clear and easily understood message to young people, but it raised issues about whether the provision might deter young people, not least girls, from accessing sexual health and other services at the right time. That was one of the reasons why Liberal Democrats and others made such an issue of the importance of finding out young people's views and attitudes so that those views, as opposed to our assumptions about their views, could inform the bill and its implementation. It has been a useful debate.

Any age limit is arbitrary to a degree, but there is a big difference between the position of young children under 13, who have no capacity to consent to sexual relations and who require clear and unambiguous legal protection, and the position of young people from the ages of 13 to 16, who also need protection, advice, support and guidance but who should not normally be criminalised for consensual activities with young people of roughly their own age.

The other major difficulty relates to the concept of consent in cases involving rape and other sexual offences. Matters of sexual relationships are unusual in being criminal and highly reprehensible when conducted against the will of one party, particularly in a brutal or violent way, but an entirely legitimate part of ordinary life-and, dare I say it, necessary for the continuation of the species-when conducted via consent. That underlying principle, elegantly explained in the Law Commission's report, is joined together with the concept of sexual autonomy.

The bill is a progressive one, modernising the law and putting heterosexual and same-sex issues on the same basis. It provides protection and sanctions in cases in which men are the victims of nasty and brutal sexual attacks, as well as when women are the victims. The tidying up of outdated phraseology relating to male prostitution is also welcome, having been agreed to by the Government, at the suggestion of the Justice Committee, at stage 2.

The bill replaces the common law, and it should provide greater clarity and certainty and a more modern definition in some important areas. As a whole, it provides what we hope will be a modern statute, fit for purpose in the 21st century, playing its part in deterring crime and securing justice for the victims of serious crimes of a sexual nature.

I am glad to add my support and the support of the Liberal Democrats to the passage of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill.

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SEXUAL OFFENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL.