The Today programme had an item about new laws designed to safeguard children from sexual predators. Apparently they also criminalise two 15 year olds for having a kiss! What really got me was that the Home Office Minister, Paul Goggins, was saying that they couldn’t work out how to phrase it so that this wasn’t possible. I mean come on! What kind of excuse it that? He was going on about having to define what kinds of “sexual acts” would be covered… are our legislators this blinkered? How about going along the lines of if there is age difference of less than 2 years, then any wrong doing isn’t covered using the sexual predator stuff and we let existing laws cover it?
Mr Goggins’ rather poor comment that the police have promised that they won’t use the law against teenagers is equally stupid. We already know that when you give the police powers they will use them. Take the case of the demonstrators at the arms fair who were searched without any reason… Besides, if the law isn’t going to be used against teenagers like that, then phrase it such that it can’t be!
It just annoys me that we can’t even get a relatively simple law to protect children without cocking it up because we can’t think of the right way to word it.