Independent Pornography Review

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Benjamin

Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what stage the Independent Pornography Review has reached and what are its findings to date.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, the work of the independent pornography review is an important area of interest to this Government. The review, commissioned in December 2023, will assess the effectiveness of current pornography legislation, regulation and enforcement. I met with the leader of the review, the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to express our support for this work to tackle issues that I know are important to everybody in this Chamber, particularly that of tackling violence against women. The Government are looking forward to seeing the review’s final report later this year. Given its independence, I am unable to share the review’s findings so far.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that positive response. The rules on how pornographic content is regulated are different online compared with offline. Because of the impact this harmful and violent content is having on women and children, I, along with other noble Lords, called during the passage of the Online Safety Act for it to be regulated online the same as it is offline. Does the Minister agree that regulating online pornography would aid the Government’s mission to dramatically reduce violence against women and girls within the next decade? What plans do they have to ensure that online pornography is regulated the same way as offline?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the review is looking at this important area of work within its terms of reference, and obviously, we are very interested in its recommendations. I say to the noble Baroness, though, that alignment between the online and offline world is not as straightforward as it might seem, given the volume and spread of content online. Nevertheless, it is an important aspiration and we look forward to hearing what the review will say in guiding us forward on this issue.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Benjamin

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, this amendment is of crucial importance because, unlike the age verification provisions that we have considered in Part 3, which provide protection for children only from 18-rated pornographic material, the filtering provisions engaged by this amendment help to protect adult content in the round, including gambling, violence, self-harm and so on.

We should be in no doubt about the importance of adult content filters. However, I have a question for the Minister. This amendment effectively says to an ISP that if it wants to provide adult content filters it can do so legally in the UK. This is helpful for the 88% of the market that is covered by the agreement between the big four ISPs to provide unavoidable choice or default-on adult content options. So what is the Government's policy in relation to the remaining 12%? If it is really important that the big four provide unavoidable choice or default-on adult content options during the set-up, why is it not equally important that the smaller ISPs do the same?

I am not interested in whether or not it is strictly necessary under EU law. I am simply concerned that we should have the best protections in place for all children—those whose parents use one of the four largest ISPs and those whose parents do not.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these two amendments. As the noble Lord knows, they have been the subject of considerable discussion and debate in the past. We all share the objective of allowing family-friendly filters to remain on internet services and mobile networks in the UK. As the noble Lord set out, the arrangements we currently have in the UK were brought into question by the EU net neutrality rules introduced last year, which appeared to ban individual countries from restricting access in this way. Since then, there have been a number of different interpretations of how the EU rules would affect the UK—perhaps complicated by the fact the Ministers themselves were not able to clarify the situation with their usual adeptness. Indeed, it still appears that the EU open access regulations and our commitment to family friendly filters are in some ways in contradiction.

The Minister will know that many of the internet companies have taken the view that the less said about this issue the better. Their argument is that if attention is not drawn to the contradiction, they can carry on with the previous practice—under the wire, so to speak. Of course, for a lot of reasons this is not a very attractive proposition, and we accept that it would make the status of family-friendly filters more vulnerable as time went on.

So, instead we have the amendments tabled by the Minister today. When I asked at a previous meeting with the Minister whether the amendments had been checked out legally, I was assured that this was the case. We have not seen that legal advice and therefore have to take it on trust that what is before us today is legally watertight and does not contravene EU rules.

To some extent we are taking all of this on trust. While it would be easy to demand more evidence, I accept that it would not help the case of those committed to family-friendly filters—I suspect that the more we probe, the more the robustness of the proposals before us could unravel. We support the intent behind these amendments and it is certainly not our intention to bring them into question in any way. I hope that they achieve the outcome to which we are all committed. I hope therefore that noble Lords will support the amendment.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Benjamin

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support the amendment and congratulate the noble Earl on all the hard work he has done. Six months ago I told him to get on with it, and he certainly has. We had a presentation, and I was so impressed by the progress that has been made in this area. Congratulations, and I thank him very much for all that he and his colleagues are doing to make sure that our children are safe, and that people feel that their data are protected if they go online for age verification.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I support the comments that have been made by a number of noble Lords. I think we all understand the need for particular care to protect the identity of those who are over 18 and legitimately want to access pornographic sites. Apart from anything else, as has been said, we must protect those individuals from blackmail threats.

In this respect, the age verification process has to be more rigorous in providing anonymity than other regulations where proof of credit card details may have sufficed, but may also have made identification of the individual all too easy. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is not in her place, but I understand that the site that does the gambling checks does it on the basis of credit card details. Clearly, that would not be appropriate in the context of the issues we are grappling with here.

Thankfully, as we have heard, the technology is catching up with the need and there are now new age verification provider sites that can carry out the age checks. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for explaining in some detail how that works; it is all very reassuring. I do not think I have anything else to add: we have a consensus that some such measure needs to be built into the legislation, and I hope the Minister will agree with us.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Benjamin

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the case of a young man I know who was brought up in care for many years. For the first 49 years of his life he kept wondering who he was and where he came from. This affected his relationship with his children—when he eventually had children—and with his wife, who had to deal with his depression. He had a loss of confidence, did not believe in himself and did not feel worthy. After much searching he eventually found out who he was and it completely changed his outlook on life. It changed his mental well-being. He got a better understanding of who he was and started to accept his situation in life. That is why I believe that it is an abuse if we deny any young person information which can help them come to terms with their identity, culture and background if they wish to do so.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a good debate and I do not intend to talk at any length. However, I wish to make a few quick points.

First, obviously, I welcome and endorse the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. She made an eloquent speech last week about the importance of identity and she has raised the issue in a helpful way today in a different but complementary context. It is no doubt important for children as they are growing up and becoming fully rounded adults to know about their history. It is their history and it is their right to have access to it. We all accept that point.

The second point to make is that we have talked about children and young people leaving care but very often adults can be well into middle age before they really begin to question their identity and want to search for that information. That provides a particular challenge for the people who keep the data because we are talking about keeping it for a very long time. Nevertheless, it is still people’s right to have access to it.

To pick up on a point made last week by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about people in care who had been bereaved, having lost their parents, one would have hoped that somehow or other we could have lined up all these rights to information and brought them together. We are talking here about the same sorts of issues coming up in a number of different contexts. I would have hoped that somewhere in the midst of all that would be a universal right to that information and that we could address it in that way rather than in a piecemeal way.

Thirdly, I was alarmed to hear noble Lords today talking about data being lost, or indeed being dumped on a doorstep. There is a real issue here concerning the security of the information. It is rather alarming, and I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. What has happened to all those accurate expectations of privacy and security and of records being kept properly? You cannot help but wonder whether there is going to be a scandal at some point with all this stuff coming to light, having been left on a rubbish dump somewhere. I do not think that anybody here has a sense of reassurance that this information is being kept securely in a proper place. Perhaps the noble Lord could address that and say what the requirements are for keeping the information secure.

I should just like to add my support for the amendment. The noble Baroness has raised a very important point, as have the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. In particular, I hope that we will get a chance to debate the whole question of staying in foster care until the age of 21. I know that my noble friend Lady Hughes will respond in more detail on that but I want to pick up one point which the noble Baroness touched on concerning the distinction between foster care and residential care. Clearly, there is a distinction and we have to be careful not just to lump the two issues together. There is a difference for young people leaving residential care, which is, after all, still formally an institutional provision. What those young people really need is a phased transition to independence, rather than just the requirement to stay on until they are 21. They need help over a period of time to find their feet and to find independence. Therefore, while the noble Baroness raised absolutely valid points, I think that we need to separate them out and make slightly separate provision for them. I know that we will debate this in more detail when we come to Amendment 38. Apart from that, we have had a very good debate and I thank noble Lords.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Benjamin

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, at a seminar in Birmingham recently, many parents from the black community were in favour of an alternative system of education, because they felt that schools were failing their children. They favoured free schools because, as I said, they felt that the present system was failing their children. They wanted education to strengthen their children’s identity, and found that sometimes that comes from individuals who can assist the teachers in the classroom by giving them support. So unless the teaching curriculum changes and reflects the needs of these children, we might need to have unqualified teachers in the classroom.

I know of one particular unqualified teacher who already helps to teach in the classroom. She says that she has made a great difference to the children’s lives, giving them confidence and self-esteem, especially young black Caribbean boys. She says that she has had all the checks and has had everything done in terms of training and child protection. So in some cases like these we need to consider having unqualified teachers in the free schools, because there are lots of black communities out there begging for this to happen, for we feel that we are failing our children.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I am interested in the noble Lord’s response because, like my noble friend Lady Morris, I felt that he was almost trying to have it both ways. To be honest, I do not think he addressed a number of the key points I originally raised because the quote I gave from Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, and the signals he has sent out are about more than just fraying the edges. This is not about doing things on the margins. The signal the Secretary of State has sent out is that he thinks that there is a model in the independent sector that we should embrace wholeheartedly in the maintained sector because there are all sorts of lessons we should learn.