Online Safety Bill

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

Thousands of children over the years have been let down. We know the harm that is caused by pornography. We legislated in 2017 to stop that harm, yet if the Ofcom road map is accurate it could be two or three more years before pornography is regulated. That is unacceptable. We must ensure that we do all we can to bring in age verification as quickly as possible.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I too add my support to Amendments 123A, 142, 161, 183, 184, 185, 297, 300 and 306. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bethell and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for putting before us such a comprehensive list of amendments seeking to protect children from a host of online harms, including online pornography. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, who, through her Amendment 185, draws our attention to the horrifying material that is prohibited in the offline world though is inexplicably legal in the online world. I also lend my support to Amendment 306 in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, in relation to the swift implementation of age verification for pornography. I am sorry to have jumped the queue.

I spoke at Second Reading on the harms of pornography to children, but so much more evidence has come to my notice since then. I recently wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph about age verification, which resulted in my inbox being absolutely flooded by parents saying, “Please keep going”. There are probably noble Lords here who feel that we have spoken enough about pornography over the last few weeks, but anybody who has watched any of this would, I am afraid, beg to differ. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for quoting from another email I received in response to that article, which is relevant to today’s debate. A young man wrote:

“When I first visited online porn, I was about 12”.


Incidentally, that is the average age at the first exposure. He said:

“I can remember feeling that this was ‘wrong’ but also that it was something that all boys do. I had no idea about masturbation, but that soon followed, and I was able to shake off the incredibly depressive sensation of having done something wrong after finishing by finding many online resources informing me that the practice was not bad, and actually quite healthy. Only over the past 3 years have I been able to tackle this addiction and I am now 31.


I will try and keep this letter as succinct as possible, but I believe the issue of pornography is at the root of so many issues in society that nobody, no man at least, seems willing to speak about it openly. If you research what happens in the brain of a person viewing pornography”,


especially when so young,

“you see that the dopamine receptors get so fried it’s almost as bad as a heroin experience and far more addictive. Far more addictive, in that I can just log on to my phone and open Pandora’s box at any time, anywhere, and it’s all free.

I’ll tell you that I became alienated from women, in that I became afraid of them. Perhaps out of guilt for looking at pornography. Instead of having the confidence to ask a girl out and experience an innocent teenage romance, I would be in my room looking at all sorts of images.


The human brain requires novelty, mine does at least, so soon you find yourself veering off from the boring vanilla porn into much darker territories.


The internet gives you access to literally everything you could possibly imagine, and the more you get sucked down the rabbit hole, the more alienated you become from your peers. You are like an addict searching for your next hit, your whole world revolves around your libido and you can’t actually look at a woman without fantasising about sex.


Then if you do manage to enter into a relationship, the damage this causes is beyond comprehension. Instead of living each moment with your partner, you end up in a dual relationship with your phone, masturbating behind their back. In fact, your partner can’t keep up with the porn, and you end up with issues with your erections and finding her attractive.


Whenever you would watch information about porn on TV or the internet, you would be told that it should be encouraged and is healthy. You end up trying to watch porn with your partner, and all the weird psychological ramifications that has. You go further down the rabbit-hole, but for some reason nothing feels right and you have this massive crippling depression following you wherever you go in life”.


I hope noble Lords will forgive me for reading that fairly fully. It is a tiny illustration, and it is typical of how pornography steals men’s childhoods and their lives. I discussed this with young men recently, and one told me that, because he had been in Dubai—where there is no access to it—for a month, he feels much better and plans to keep away from this addictive habit. When young men reach out to Peers because they have nowhere else to go, we must surely concede that we have failed them. We have failed generations of boys and girls—girls who are afraid to become women because of what they see—and, if we do not do something now, we will fail future generations.