With the Huw Edwards court case complete – and the disgraced BBC News presenter given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children – attention has returned to the fact that he could still receive a £300,000-a-year BBC pension. Many are horrified by this. There have been demands that some way should be found to withhold payment from Edwards. I disagree.
Imagine if we did decide that those convicted of crimes such as Edwards’ have no property rights
A pension is part of the remuneration we receive for work done. It isn’t some extra perk or discretionary bonus handed to us if we have behaved well. Payment of a pension is a contractual obligation. The fact someone has committed a crime does not cancel our unrelated contractual obligations to that person.
Suppose, for example, that a builder had been resurfacing Edwards’ drive, that Edwards had paid in advance, with the work starting before his crimes had emerged and the drive dug up but not yet resurfaced. Would the building contractor be entitled to leave it unsurfaced and keep the money, on the grounds that Edwards had committed a crime? I presume most of us would accept that the answer is no. Edwards’ crime had nothing to do with the resurfacing work and it had been paid for and was committed to (the drive had already been dug up). Contracts are not binding because the parties to the contracts are nice people. They are binding on anyone, nice or not.
Edwards did some work for the BBC. Part of the remuneration he received for that work takes the form of a pension. The work is complete, so he’s entitled to receive his remuneration for it.
People point at cases such as the police, in which pensions are withheld under certain circumstances. But it’s important to understand what those circumstances are. They specifically relate to treason, or crimes conducted in the course of being a police officer. So, for example, the police officer who murdered Sarah Everard approached her and identified himself as a police officer, arresting her before kidnapping, raping and murdering her. His crime was performed in his role as a police officer. He therefore did not do his job as a police officer and hence should not receive his remuneration for doing that job. His pension is forfeit.
That is not the case with Edwards. His crime, while terrible, was not an abnegation of the essence of his job. So there is no basis for withholding his pension.
When people commit crimes, courts decide upon punishments. These might include prison, fines and other forms of punishment. Perhaps you think that the court ought to have fined Edwards some large amount of money? You should feel free to argue that: there’s plenty of scope to say that is the best way to punish certain crimes. But if the court did not fine him or overturn his property rights in some other way, the rest of society cannot simply deem that, because he committed a crime, he has none of the normal protections from the law.
Imagine if we did decide that those convicted of crimes such as Edwards’ have no property rights. Anyone who wants to can simply take their car or their house or their wallet. You can enter into whatever contract you like with them, receive any payment or work, then renege on the contract without discharging your side of it. Is that the sort of society we want? That those convicted of certain crimes, such as Edwards’, become non-persons with no property rights any more? And if those convicted of making indecent images of children, why not those convicted of other crimes? How about rapists, murderers, armed robbers, wife-beaters? Is any gang of thugs with an idle moment to be entitled to go around looking for such people and taking their stuff, without legal comeback?
Criminals receive legal punishments. And there are extensive social consequences: shunning, job application refusal, a refusal to provide other services, and so on. We can refuse further dealings with criminals. We can hate them. We can insult them. But recognition of property rights and contracts are (along with family) one of the three classical pillars of a civilised society. If we say that those who commit crimes should not have their property rights or contracts honoured, we will have set off on a dark path from which we would find it hard to turn back.
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