Member

Turning to Amendments 298B and 300A, as I have mentioned before, this Government wish to ensure that the courts have adequate sentencing powers to deal with those who are convicted of intimate image offences, but this must be balanced against the principle I set out at the beginning of this short speech: ensuring that the law and available mechanisms for courts are clear and do not simply replicate existing offences or existing powers in another form. So, in this spirit, I hope to reassure the Committee that this kind of behaviour can be—and, in my experience, is—already taken into account at sentencing. Although sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the independent courts, sentencing guidelines already make it clear that, when an offender did something to maximise the victim’s distress or humiliation, this can be considered as aggravating that particular offence. My personal experience of sentencing defendants is that judges would not hesitate to do so.