Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th February 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Benjamin]

177A: After Clause 72, insert the following new Clause—
“Impact of online pornography on domestic abuse
(1) Within three months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must commission a person appointed by the Secretary of State to investigate the impact of access to online pornography by children on domestic abuse.(2) Within three months of their appointment, the appointed person must publish a report on the investigation which may include recommendations for the Secretary of State.(3) As part of the investigation, the appointed person must consider the extent to which the implementation of Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 (online pornography) would prevent domestic abuse, and may make recommendations to the Secretary of State accordingly.(4) Within three months of receiving the report, the Secretary of State must publish a response to the recommendations of the appointed person.(5) If the appointed person recommends that Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 should be commenced, the Secretary of State must appoint a day for the coming into force of that Part under section 118(6) of the Act within the timeframe recommended by the appointed person.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require an investigation into any link between online pornography and domestic abuse with a view to implementing recommendations to bring into effect the age verification regime in the Digital Economy Act 2017 as a means of preventing domestic abuse.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 177A in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord McColl, and the noble Baroness, Lady Healy. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to commission a person to investigate the impact of access to online pornography by children on domestic abuse. It further requires that the appointed person must publish a report on the investigation and that, if they recommend that Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 should be implemented, the Secretary of State must appoint a day for that part coming into force, under Section 118(6) of that Act.

Some may ask why this amendment is central to the Domestic Abuse Bill. During its passage through the other place, the Bill was amended to embrace what is now Clause 65, which very properly removes the defence of consent in cases of rough sex when someone suffers serious injury or death. Embracing this provision, the Bill before the Committee rightly makes it plain that sexual violence is part of domestic abuse. One of the striking things about the debate in the other place that gave rise to Clause 65 is that it was informed by material that made it plain that there is a connection between an interest in experimenting with rough sex practices and the prior consumption of pornography depicting such practices.

Louise Perry of We Can’t Consent to This, the key group that campaigned for Clause 65, said:

“We can’t really ignore the porn factor … It’s there at a click of a button and can be accessed at such a young age. And the algorithms push you into a rabbit hole of more and more extreme stuff.”


The argument for Clause 65 was also informed by Savanta ComRes, which polled 2,049 men in Great Britain between 7 and 10 February last year for Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio Scotland. The polling asked the following question:

“Thinking specifically of times you performed slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sexual activity, to what extent do you think pornography influenced your desire to do so?”


The answers were striking: 57% of those questioned said that it did, of whom 20% said that it influenced them “a great deal”.

I am very pleased that the other place amended the Bill to insert Clause 65, which addresses problems resulting from rough sex practices. However, to date, Parliament has only followed through on the logic of Clause 65 taking rough sex seriously at the level of dealing with the consequences of this form of domestic violence. We have not exhibited the same level of concern in relation to the steps that can be taken to prevent this form of sexual violence in the first place.

We need joined-up thinking here. We need action to prevent injury or death through rough sex, as well as criminal justice measures to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. One of the most basic strategies of prevention in that regard is to protect under-18s from material that normalises the expectation of violence in sexual relationships. Taking the step proposed in the amendment would constitute strategic investment in the next generation to ensure that as children enter adulthood, they do not do so believing that violence is a natural part of sexual relationships, with all that that means for their adult behaviour.

The irony, of course, is that Parliament has passed legislation that protects under-18s from such material on commercial pornographic websites, but the Government have refused to implement it. Had the Government implemented Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 in 2019, under-18s would now be protected from exposure to pornographic content on pornographic websites, including significant rough-sex material. An interviewee said in a recent government report: “On ‘Pornhub’ you don’t have to look in the rough sex category to get rough sex. They’re just standard videos of men having sex with women by grabbing them by the throat”.

Of course, when the Government announced that they were not going to implement Part 3 in October 2019, they acknowledged only one downside to that approach—that of delay. They suggested that having to wait was worth while because the forthcoming online safety Bill would provide better protection from commercial pornographic sites than Part 3. However, in December 2020, when responding to the online harms consultation, the Government conceded not only that there would be a huge delay in providing protection to under-18s—probably until 2023, possibly even later—but that the alternative means of protecting children from commercial pornographic sites would also be much weaker. In the first instance, the Government confirmed that, unlike Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, the protections afforded under the online harms Bill would engage only with user-generated, not non-user generated, content. In the second instance, the detail that the Government provided about enforcement did not provide the reassurance required.

Noble Lords will recall that when Parliament scrutinised the Digital Economy Act, the point was made that of the 50 most accessible pornographic websites in the UK, none were based in the UK. Consequently, the only way to gain leverage over the sites in other jurisdictions in relation to enforcing age-verification blocks would be through IP blocking. A site accessing the UK market from Russia without robust age-verification checks would be told by the regulator to put those checks in place within a certain timeframe or risk being blocked. The site would then have to decide either to put in place those robust checks or lose significant UK revenue as a result of blocking.

However, in responding to the online harms consultation in December last year, the Government proposed fines as the main means of enforcement and seemed to entertain IP blocking only as a last resort, which is very concerning. At Second Reading, I raised those concerns, along with the noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord McColl and Lord Morrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. Since that debate, the Government have taken two steps that only amplify the difficulty. First, on 26 January, the noble Baroness the Minister wrote to Peers to address the points we made in relation to pornography at Second Reading. However, rather than addressing the presenting problem, the letter simply repeats it and makes it plain that unlike the Digital Economy Act, the online harms Bill will only engage pornographic sites that

“host user generated content or facilitate online user interaction”.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister and, accordingly, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for their powerful speeches. I listened very carefully to the Minister, but I have to say that I have a very heavy heart tonight. I am so disappointed by her response. I do not accept for one moment the argument that we should simply wait for the online harms Bill: that is too long. The Government must recognise, for all the reasons outlined by noble Lords in their powerful speeches during the debate, that this approach is not remotely credible.

On the non-implementation of Part 3 and the proposed delay of another three years or so, just think about the harm and damage that will be done to children and their future. This is simply not acceptable when the House has already passed legislation that could easily be implemented now and could, as a minimum, be used in the interim between now and the proposed online harms Bill, for which I cannot wait. When that Bill has been passed and is ready for implementation, so be it. I thank the noble Baroness for what she said will happen in that Bill; I will fully support it and I look forward to it.

There is one thing worse than not taking action to prevent the indoctrination of children and young people into thinking that violence is a normal and natural part of sexual relationships, and that is having the capacity to address the problem, as we do now through Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, and not bothering to use it. This is deeply concerning and disturbing. It is tragic that, having led on the issue from 2015, the Government should now have performed such a radical turnaround and be dragging their feet. We have to wait three years or more for any action to be taken.

In spite of the Minister’s official response, it is my sincere hope—yes, I am an optimist—that the Government will study the speeches in this debate carefully over the next few days and review their position. I am very happy to meet the Minister, along with other interested Peers, to discuss this matter further. It is important that we do so, and if progress is not made over the next couple of weeks, I will certainly bring this amendment back on Report. With a heavy heart, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 177A withdrawn.