Dear Mrs. Whitehouse,
Thank you for your letter of 12 September about the recommendations in the report of the Joint Working Party on Pregnant Schoolgirls and Schoolgirl Mothers that the law relating to the age of consent should be repealed.
The Government has no plans for amending the law in the way suggested. The position is that the Criminal Law Revision Committee is at present undertaking, as part of a long term programme for the review and codification of the criminal law, a comprehensive review of the law relating to sexual offences in England and Wales. Matters such as the age of consent naturally fall to come under examination in the course of this review. Because this area of the law raises medical and sociological as well as legal questions, a Policy Advisory Committee on Sexual Offences was appointed to provide the necessary expertise to advise on these matters and to provide an assessment of lay opinion. This Committee was asked to look into and advise on the age of consent in relation to sexual offences and to examine such other issues arising during the review as the Home Secretary or Criminal Law Revision Committee may refer to it. Last June the Policy Advisory Committee on Sexual Offences [end p1] published its Working Paper, of which I enclose a copy, on the Age of Consent in relation to Sexual Offences. The Committee's provisional unanimous conclusion was that the age of consent for sexual intercourse should remain at 16 and it also made recommendations concerning the minimum age for homosexual relations, on which it has sought comments.
I remain entirely unconvinced by the argument of the Joint Working Party on Pregnant Schoolgirls and Schoolgirl Mothers that the current law (which incidentally the Working Party appear to have misled themselves on, as the age of consent is to be found in the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and not the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 as stated in the report) is inappropriate in modern times.
However, as Patrick Jenkin told the National Children's Bureau Conference, he hopes that the bad publicity about the age of consent recommendation will not prevent consideration of the other recommendations.
My colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Education and Science will be considering those recommendations which fall within their field. Kind regards. Yours sincerely, (SGD) MT