An intrusive and unnecessary law

LEADING ARTICLE

Who wants to see pictures on the internet of someone having sexwith a corpse? Nobody, or one hopes, precious few of us. Likewise,images of bestiality. Both are to be outlawed in less tha a month,when Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008takes force.

All well and good. Well, no, actually, or at least not entirely.Past experience has tended to vindicate the saying that hard casesmake bad law, and it is worth remembering in connection with thislegislation that a prime reason for its adoption was the campaignwaged by Liz Longhurst, the mother whose daughter was killed by aman who claimed he was addicted to violent pornography.

The usual problems with such legislation are that in the firstplace the law is adopted in a mad hurry and is thus vague andunclear and, second, a set of general principles is wrongly deducedfrom truly exceptional circumstances.

With this law, the evidence of haste and a knee-jerk response toa specific event can be seen from the imprecise wording. As aresult, the viewing of images of a number of practices that arelegal, and which most people would consider acceptable if notexactly desirable behaviour between consenting adults, will becomeas illegal as viewing images of bestiality and necrophilia. All suchviewers will have the same potential to be caught under the samedragnet.

Regrettably, the Government will probably get away with it. Inthese "on-message" days, no politician wants to be seen as thespokesperson for sexual freaks. A reputation for a partiality tobondage is not the way to boost the career of a junior minister orrising backbencher. And so a few more of our civil liberties aredone away with - and the opportunities for police surveillanceincreased.

Ministers may even think they are on to a winner, by givingunpopular Sixties-style liberals a good drubbing - and a good doseof New Labour Puritanism at the same time. Well, perhaps so. It'salso possible that the Government's obsession with regulating everyaspect of peoples lives will rebound on it. We can only hope so, forthe Government should beware of poking its long nose into people'ssex lives, and when it is far from clear that such intervention isnecessary.