Equality: The Age of Consent

House of Commons

Hon. Members may be aware of a statue, which was put up last year near the Strand, dedicated to Oscar Wilde. It is a sad and sobering statue, but, like much good and great art, it is provocative. Looking at that statue, I see a face of misery, and perhaps other things about the way in which we, as a society, have behaved. I see what we, as a society, did to an individual, and have continued to do through much of this century. Our society has, I believe, been intolerant and hypocritical and has perpetuated the belief that the behaviour of people such as Oscar Wilde was unnatural, wrong and, by our statutes, criminal.

There have been improvements in this century. The Wolfenden report, for example, was an important new chapter in the story of our progress towards behaving as a more civilised and more tolerant society. That chapter continued with our vote in 1994, and today's debate is one more chapter in what started as a sad and miserable story for our country. It is also a chapter that owes no small debt to last year's amendment to the Crime and Disorder Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen). It was a brave and important amendment, and, like a number of other people, I am only sorry that it was lost in another place.

I should register an interest: I am a director and former deputy chairman of Childline, the charity set up to help children in trouble or danger, which has worked with young people. As the subject has been referred to a number of times in another place, I should also register my interest as an Anglican. It may be the province of some Anglicans to speak against the amended legislation this evening, but many people who believe in God also believe that perpetuating the law as it stands is a profoundly unchristian and unloving action.

All hon. Members should recognise at the outset that amendment of the law is now overwhelmingly supported by organisations that are specifically concerned with protecting children and young people. Those organisations are not pressure groups; many, such as Childline, are simply there to listen, and the role that they play in listening is crucial. Evidence from the young people who have telephoned Childline paints a sad picture — a picture of misery, fear and bullying, which is perpetuated by the stand of the current legislation.

A tragic fact of which many hon. Members will be unaware is that young people trying to come to terms with their sexual identity often become desperate. Not only do they feel that they are not part of the mainstream; they feel that they are ostracised from society. As a result, they are compelled to disguise their feelings, and, far from supporting them, we force them into isolation. Their hiding place is the repository of fear and worry.

We set such young people apart. We do not help them with the current legislation; we hurt them. Any attempt to engage in a relationship with someone of the same sex faces them with a terrifying dilemma, in that what they are doing is committing a criminal offence. That fear cannot possibly breed any desire for a loving relationship with another individual. It is a wholly destructive force, but it will continue for as long as the present legislation exists.

It is not surprising that Childline has evidence from a number of young people who, as a result of that dilemma, have tried to take their own lives. Sexual identity is a significant factor in suicides and attempted suicides, especially in the case of young men, and our current legislation must bear a heavy responsibility for perpetuating such desperate feelings.

Over the past 200 years, Parliament has debated a number of moral issues, the crucial question being whether something is right or wrong. Those issues have tested our humanity, and our sense of Britain as a civilised and civilising nation. We have discussed the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, votes for women, civil rights and racial discrimination. In every instance, there has come a moment at which Parliament has been the focus of a great national debate.

Those arguing against change have always reached for the morality of the enfranchised majority, but does any hon. Member believe today that Wilberforce was wrong — although at the time the Cabinet, the monarchy and Britain's most powerful interests were ranged against him? The same enfranchised majority wished to deny women the vote, but does anyone believe today that the country would be a better place if women did not sit in the House? Until tragically recently, a similar morality justified the treatment of some people as different members of the human race, and as inferior beings, because of the colour of their skins.

Today, we are debating again whether the criminal law should continue to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This is an issue of compassion, and of protection; but it is also, crucially, an issue of discrimination. The current law is wrong because it is wrong. Hon. Members should consider carefully what we mean by right and wrong. Currently, young people may be forced to spend the first years of their sexual awareness — their early adult years — knowing that, if they express their true feelings, they may spend time in prison. That can breed only shame, fear, resentment and — as the evidence of countless children's organisations shows — a culture of bullying.

Let us be clear. The issue is about whether a relationship between one human being and another should be a criminal act. It is not about urging people to be promiscuous, or urging young people to have sex at 16. It is not a debate about anal intercourse. It is a debate about whether society should judge young people to be criminals because, at 16, their sexual orientation sets them apart from a so-called majority.

We need an equal age of consent to protect young people from injustice and from prejudice. It will protect them from fear and from exploitation. Crucially, it will also protect their health. By amending the law, we will make them part of a civil and civilised society and strengthen our society for all of us — heterosexual or homosexual.

I respect the views of those who take a different view from me on the important moral issue of the age of consent, but, in thinking of their reasons, hon. Members should ask themselves the actual reason behind their arguments. Is it reason, is it principle or is it prejudice masquerading as principle?

We load on to those young people whom we ostracise at the moment a burden of responsibility, and risk ignoring the far greater worries that I have seen many times in my work for Childline. The immorality is not committed by gay young men who wish to engage in a consenting relationship with someone of their age but by those in the heterosexual community: by and large, the abuse of children is committed not by homosexual people, but by heterosexual people. Very often, they are in a position of trust. Sadly, the Bill will not make it any easier to identify them. Far too often, the abuse happens in the confines of the home and is perpetrated by those whom children most trust. The issue of the age of consent is far different because it is something that the House can change.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells spoke eloquently on the subject in what was probably the most important speech in another place last year. He said:

"I cannot help but feel that there is a scapegoating procedure going on here which is not new in history and not new in our society." — [Official Report, House of Lords, 22 July 1998; Vol. 592, c. 953.]

Tonight, we have a chance to end the scapegoating. We have a chance because we genuinely have an opportunity to ask ourselves whether we speak from principle or from prejudice; whether we speak from knowledge, or are simply rehearsing old stories and old prejudices that we have given ourselves no time fully to reflect on and consider.

I say again to hon. Members who are unhappy with the Bill: have they truly looked at the evidence? Have they spoken to organisations that work with young people? Have they spoken to the medical profession? Have they spoken to the psychiatrists who have to pick up the pieces for those who are damaged by the legislation as it currently stands? After all, it was so-called principle which led us to sustain a slave trade, and which, in South Africa, allowed the townships of apartheid to be sustained for so long.

Let those who reach easily for opinion polls ask what a Gallup or a MORI in the mid-18th century would have told us about the slave trade. Would it have been right to use that evidence to sustain that inhuman, unjust and barbaric practice, which degraded not only those engaged in that trade but the society that condoned it?

The House would do well to remember the views of one of its most principled members this century. Enoch Powell argued from first principles. Soon after the 1967 report on homosexual offences, he stood firmly — against many — for its implementation. Public opinion would not have been with him, but today a majority are in favour of what he stood for. He was convinced on principle. For him it was a matter of freedom, but it was also about leadership, which required bravery. This is a time for Parliament to do the right thing: to amend the law and demonstrate leadership.

Parliament is addressing the issue in 1999. There can be no more fitting time to change the law than as we approach the next millennium. This has been a remarkable century — remarkable for its achievements, but remarkable for its injustice, too. As a society, we may like to think that we have come a long way, but there is still much that we have to learn, and much to do.

Some hon. Members may be aware of the wonderful lectures given by Leonard Bernstein at Harvard. He spoke of the repeated cycle in this century of greed and hypocrisy, which led to genocidal war, which led to a time of post-war hysteria, injustice, booms, crashes and totalitarianism, before the cycle repeated itself. In all that, there is a profound sense of injustice. Our capacity for injustice is enormous. Tonight we have an opportunity to redress that.

Some will say that there is a moral case not to amend the law, but there is a stronger moral case for change. The argument is not about numbers and how many people will be affected. It should not be about majorities or minorities. It does not matter whether we are talkingabout 5,000, 50,000, 500,000 or 5 million people. Discrimination is bad. It is abhorrent in principle and should be removed wherever we find it.

The House should be aware of the pain that the law engenders. We need to look at the evidence. That must come before our feelings. I ask those who are against the Bill to look again at the evidence. If they will not, they must ask themselves why. In 1989, the United States Department of Health and Human Services produced a report on youth suicide, which said:

"Gay youths are 2-3 times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people. They may comprise up to 30 per cent. of completed youth suicides annually."

It also said:

"The root of the problem of gay youth suicide is a society that discriminates against and stigmatises homosexuals while failing to recognise that a substantial number of its youth has a gay or lesbian orientation."

A number of voluntary organisations that work with young people in this country provide tragic evidence of the loneliness and despair that those young people feel because of the way in which our society continues to discriminate. Bullying is a real problem in our schools. Accusations of homosexuality provide plenty of cause for those who wish to bully.

Some argue that we should uphold the discrimination because boys, unlike girls, are not mature enough at 16 to make decisions about their sexuality. Many hon. Members will find it bizarre that young men should be thought to need such protection, but that young women should not. That is an insult to young men and a crude injustice to young women. I ask those who fight for the status quo, why should not women be equal before the law, too?

The greatest responsibility that any of us will assume in our adult lives is that of being a parent. I have four children. The first was born when I was nearly 30, but legally I could have been a father at 16. Our current law recognises the maturity of a 16-year-old for the greatest responsibility that any individual can undertake — that of being a parent responsible for another human being during their childhood years. Yet as regards personal orientation, the law would seek to deny that individual his or her maturity. If one's orientation is homosexual, one is an outlaw. To practise it is criminal.

As a Conservative, I believe firmly in freedom and the rule of law. As a Conservative, I ask my hon. Friends this: why should the law interfere in the private behaviour of citizens when that behaviour does no harm to others? The answer should be the same for those who dislike homosexuality as for those who practise it. The answer should be that there should be no discrimination — for a Conservative, because he or she believes in individual freedom; for a Socialist, because he or she believes in equality.

The rule of law should be there to uphold our freedom, and to protect it. We must protect our children, and that is why we need an age of consent. However, the question that we are addressing today is not whether there should or should not be an age of consent — of course there should. Today, we are debating whether we should continue to use the power of criminal law to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual acts, and by doing so, terrorise young people and cause terrible damage at the critical age when they are embarking on their first adult, mature relationships with another human being.