Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill [HL]

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests in this area, particularly as adviser to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford and chair of the 5Rights Foundation.

The argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, is wonderfully put and unimpeachable. We have a patchwork of laws in the UK that are intended to prevent intimate image abuse, but new formats for abuse and the failure to tackle each element in the abuse cycle creates gaps. When dealing with digital systems, it is necessary to tackle harm as far upstream as possible and then consider each stage of creation, spread, current and future use, and deletion, which is what this Bill does.

In 2022, the Law Society wrote that,

“making intimate images is a violation of the subject’s sexual autonomy. We were less sure whether the level of harm was serious enough to criminalise simple making.”

That is wrong, wrong, wrong. I know children and women who live with the threat, or knowledge, that such images exist. If they exist, they are more likely to find a shared use, but the mere threat or their presence can be enough to lead someone to take their own life.

Labour has made a commitment on sexually explicit deepfakes, amid a broader promise to halve the violence against women and girls, yet government sources suggest that the Government have issues with the drafting of the Bill in front of us and that another Bill may be a better vehicle. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, would be happy to accept changes to the drafting, so long as the aims of the Bill are fully realised. We hear murmurs of the Government replacing the idea of consent with that of intent, but intent has proven unenforceable and is therefore unacceptable. Similarly, failing to future-proof the offence by taking out definitions carefully honed to fill gaps would rightly concern the noble Baroness, but drafting issues that do not change the purpose of the Bill can surely be quickly agreed.

As for waiting for another Bill—why? The horrors that the noble Baroness set out are not problems of the future; they are here and now. Every week brings more victims and allows AI to learn from the images that it already has. It feeds a system that normalises the consumption of sexual humiliation, violence and the abuse of women and children. Tidy government business is a small virtue compared to the thousands of images that delay would allow. The world has changed immeasurably since 2003, when the Sexual Offences Act was passed, but the likely victims have not. They are women and they are girls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I absolutely heard what the noble Baroness said about strict liability offences. The Government’s position is as I just said. However, I listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness said.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

For those of us who have been dealing with sexual offences for some time, the one thing we know is that if you have to prove intent, it is worse than useless. I urge the Minister to take that away and to say to the House as a whole that intent will not be a satisfactory solution to the noble Baroness’s Private Member’s Bill.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I am afraid I will have to repeat the point I made previously: we understand very well the strength of feeling on this argument, and we are actively considering it.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my interests, particularly as chair of 5Rights Foundation and deputy chair of the APPG on Digital Regulation and Responsibility. Like others, I welcome the long anticipated online safety Bill and the provisions it will make for children. The change in the Bill’s name from “online harms” to “online safety” reflects the journey the Bill has been on, and the widespread acceptance that we must stop arguing over what is and is not acceptable after children have suffered harm, and instead seek to tackle risks inherent in the technology they are offered and make it safe from the get-go.

Less welcome is the change of language from the promised “duty of care” to a list of “duties of care”. It is the expectation of parents, teachers and children up and down the country that the Bill will introduce a duty that, both philosophically and legally, requires the tech sector to think first before it puts its products and services in the hands of children. While specific duties can improve the safety, transparency and fairness of digital products, it is dangerous to set a path in which each special interest or expert group fights to include or omit every potential risk. Risks are interconnected and cumulative; they impact on different users in different ways; and they can expand and contract across different services and across time. We have been promised an end to the “Move fast and break things” culture of the sector, and the Bill must introduce a duty to care as a matter of principle, not a laundry list of pre-circumscribed duties.

As drafted, the Bill spends the bulk of its pages on rules that pertain to content. This undermines the stated ambition to tackle risk at a systemic level, as it leaves only cursory mention of the algorithms, functionalities and operating practices that drive user experience. No doubt we will revisit this, but before we lose ourselves down the rabbit hole of how to police content and who owns the truth, we must first ask whether companies are responsible for recommendations that they monetise. What is the legal status of a company’s published terms and community rules? What oversight does the regulator need to identify manipulative nudges, dark patterns or unfair practices? Or—my own personal favourite—if a company can confidently identify a 14 year-old child to target them with a Home Office awareness campaign on child abuse, should they simultaneously be able to recommend to the same 14 year-old self-harm content or extreme diets, or enable adults to direct message them with pornographic material? If the Bill does not take a systemic approach to curbing what have become industry norms, then children will continue to suffer the lack of what in every other industry is simply the price of doing business.

We have many months to scrutinise every line of the Bill’s 145 pages, but some things cannot wait. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, I believe that the Government must ask regulators to bring forward minimum standards and codes of practice on urgent matters such as age assurance, safety by design, child impact assessments and algorithmic oversight, with the stated intention that they will be absorbed into the Bill, just as they are planning for guidance for video-sharing platforms. We need this Bill badly, but it is cruel to make children wait years for protections they could have now.

There are some startling omissions, some unwelcome exceptions and some shifts in emphasis that we must contest, but ultimately the biggest work of Parliament will be to ensure the Bill’s enforceability. The current matrix of duties and responsibilities of the regulator are neither fully independent nor properly enforceable, and this must change. I understand that there are pressures from all sides, but the UK delivering systemic change on behalf of UK children that will, over time, become the new normal for children the world over is a great prize, and it is my sincere wish that that is the prize Her Majesty’s Government have in their sights.

Digital Bill of Rights

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am happy to agree with the noble Lord that this is an appalling practice, and I deplore what has been said about those with a particular viewpoint. The internet being used in this way is the enemy of democracy. We should nevertheless be hesitant before we prevent access to the internet. Russia, China and some of the Arab states prevent access to the internet. Once you start doing so, you prevent some of the advantages, economic and otherwise, of this extraordinary phenomenon, now 25 years old.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, given the centrality of the internet and digital technologies to the lives of young people, can the Minister tell me what the Government are doing to make certain that young people can explore the creative potential of the online world knowledgably, fearlessly and with an understanding of the privacy issues?

[Lord Faulks]

The Government are certainly trying to protect children from access to parts of the internet to which it would be most ill advised for them to have access. We are trying to promote by a number of means responsible use of the internet but, once again, my answer is that, for the moment, we ought to hesitate before using legislation to do this. However, I entirely accept what the noble Baroness says about the importance of responsible access.