Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 2nd March 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Kidron]

209: Clause 65, page 84, line 42, at end insert—
“46D Child sexual abuse image-generation risk assessment(1) A provider of an online service, including but not limited to a generative AI large language model, must risk assess the likelihood of their service being used to create or facilitate the creation of a CSA image or images as defined by section 46A. (2) If a risk is identified in a CSA image-generation risk assessment—(a) where the provider is regulated by the Online Safety Act 2023, a provider must report the risk within two working days to OFCOM, and agree to steps to reduce, mitigate and manage the risks within 14 days;(b) where the provider is not regulated by the Online Safety Act 2023, a provider must notify the National Crime Agency within two working days and agree to steps to reduce, mitigate and manage the risks of the online service being used to create or facilitate the creation of CSA images within 14 days.(3) Where a provider regulated by the Online Safety Act 2023 fails to agree to or implement steps to reduce, mitigate and manage the risks with OFCOM (see subsection (2)(a)), they can be subjected to OFCOM’s enforcement powers as set out in Part 7, Chapter 6 (enforcement powers) of that Act.(4) Where a provider not regulated by the Online Safety Act 2023 fails to agree to or implement steps to reduce, mitigate and manage the risks with the National Crime Agency (see subsection (2)(b)), they commit an offence.(5) A provider that commits an offence under this section is liable to be issued with a penalty notice by the National Crime Agency.(6) In this section a “penalty notice” means a notice requiring its recipient to pay a penalty of an amount not exceeding whichever is the greater of—(a) £18 million, or(b) 10% of a provider’s qualifying worldwide revenue for the most recent complete accounting period.(7) A penalty notice may be reissued where a provider continues to commit an offence under this section.(8) In carrying out its duties set out in this section, the National Crime Agency may consult with OFCOM.”Member’s explanatory statement
The Bill includes amendments which prohibit the creation of Gen-AI models specifically designed to create CSA images, but it is still possible for general-purpose models to be used to create CSA images. The Government has committed to allow providers of other Gen-AI services to risk assess how their services could be used for this purpose. This amendment makes that a requirement.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Clement-Jones, for adding their names. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for trying to add her name. Such was the enthusiasm that there was no space.

As already discussed, the Government have brought in new Clauses 92 and 93 to allow companies and responsible third parties to risk-assess the creation of CSA by gen AI models. That is an important detail. If the company is red teaming, or the regulator needs to test, it must not be guilty of an offence for doing so. But this new measure is permission, not obligation—and permission is not enough.

Amendment 209 seeks to do three things: to make risk assessment mandatory; to require mitigation within 14 days; and to hold companies not covered by the Online Safety Act to the same standard via the National Crime Agency.

A report from UNICEF last month referenced an Interpol study across 11 countries which found that at least 1.2 million children have disclosed having their images manipulated into sexually explicit images in the past year. In some countries that is equivalent to one child in every classroom being subjected to this new form of child sexual abuse. The report recommended the introduction of guardrails for AI developers at the design stage. In a meeting earlier in your Lordships’ House, we were told repeatedly and reminded graphically that AI CSAM creates appetite in offenders and that what happens online does not stay online.

We have consulted, and Ofcom has consulted—Parliament has debated this for years—and now we are consulting again. I argue that there are three reasons for accepting the amendment right now.

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I am happy to confirm to noble Lords that this will allow us to impose duties on these services that correspond to, or are similar to, the Act’s duties on tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse content. Chatbot providers will have a legal duty to protect all users from illegal content, including non-consensual sexual deepfakes, and where chatbots continue to generate such content, the providers should expect to face the consequences of breaking the law that we hope that this House will pass.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

If I was in the same meeting as the Minister, officials were unable to say that LLMs and generative models would be covered by that amendment. Indeed, they said that the policy of the Government was chatbots only. Chatbots are the subject of another amendment that I have tabled, which we will come to later. We have to be clear that the amendment in front of us remains only because I was told this afternoon that the new government amendment would not cover the same territory.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The government amendment has been tabled. I am asking the noble Baroness—whether she does this is self-evidently a matter for her—to withdraw her amendment and look at the amendment that we have tabled today on a cross-party basis and on behalf of DSIT and the Home Office, the department that I represent. That amendment will be debated around 18 March, and she can make comments on it at that stage. I am trying to meet the needs of the House and the Government to respond to what are complex and difficult challenges. All I will say is that, by bringing more AI services into the scope of the Online Safety Act, we will ensure that there is a clear and consistent regulatory framework that will allow us to hold companies to account.

In Clause 93, we have introduced the technology testing defence that will enable persons authorised by the Secretary of State to test technology for these harms. The defence will give providers reassurance to test the robustness of their models’ safeguards, identify weaknesses and design out harmful inputs. This, in turn, will reduce the risk of their models being criminally misused, particularly to abuse women and children. This further supports all AI companies in scope of the Online Safety Act with their risk-assessment obligations.

Given those measures—the noble Baroness will have to make a judgment on this—but the Government consider that Amendment 209 is therefore unnecessary as it cuts across the approach that I have outlined to date both in the Bill, in Clause 93 and the clauses I outlined earlier, and the proposed amendment that I shared with her as best I could prior to this debate. The House has a chance to look at that now that it is published. This cuts across that duty and imposes a broad statutory duty on online services, duplicating regulatory mechanisms, and it could create legal uncertainty. The noble Lord, Clement-Jones, challenged me on that, but that is the view of Ministers, officials and our legal departments. We are worried about the similar enforcement routes outside the Online Safety Act framework.

We take this seriously. The points that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, made are extremely important. I was not able to attend the briefing earlier, but I know how much that has impacted Members who have spoken today. The National Crime Agency and police will play a key role in protecting children from UK child abuse. It is warned that the scale and complexity of online child sexual abuse are resulting in tens of millions of annual referrals of suspected online sexual abuse. Policing resources are best spent on protecting children and arresting offenders, so it is appropriate that Ofcom continues to play a critical regulatory role in preventing and tackling the AI generation of child sexual abuse material.

I have tried to persuade the noble Baroness but, if I have not succeeded, there will have to be a Division. I do not want there to be one because I think this House should speak with one voice on tackling this issue. The laudable objectives of the amendment are, we believe, better addressed through both the existing legislative framework and the targeted government amendment we have tabled today to expand the scope of the Online Safety Act to bring illegal content duties in line for chatbots. This will mean that providers need to mitigate potential risks to prevent children facing such abuse.

I hope I have convinced the noble Baroness. Again, I apologise to the House for the lateness of the tabling of the amendment. We are trying to work across government on this, and that amendment will be debated on 18 March. In light of that, I hope the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, as a point of information, I feel it would be useful to say that Clauses 64 and 65, to which the Minister refers, are in fact a narrowing of an original amendment, laid by me and other noble Lords, that the Government deliberately narrowed so that it deals only with electronic files that have been deliberately and exclusively created to create child sexual abuse. I very much welcome those clauses. However, if the Government had not narrowed that amendment, I would not be standing here today with this amendment.

I am grateful for the Minister’s time, and I am happy with the chatbot amendment as far as it goes—and inasmuch as I have seen it an hour before everyone else—but it does not deal with this issue. I rang the Minister this morning and asked for a meeting to say, “If you can tell me that this is covered by the chatbot amendment or that it’s already covered in another way, I will back down”. But I am afraid that nobody could tell me that, because it is not. That is just how it is.

I say to the noble Lord speaking for the Official Opposition, no, no, no. It is not okay to say, “We must work out how to do this”. This is an opportunity to work out how. We always do it this way. We pass an amendment; we get a power; and Ofcom and the Government do the guidance. I say to the whole House, and particularly to my friends on the Labour Benches who may be considering voting against this, have any of you seen child sexual abuse made out of your image? I have. It is not funny; it is serious and it is easily done. I think it is unacceptable to vote against an amendment that says only, “Risk assess”. It is not okay to put a product out in the world if you do not have any responsibility for the harm it causes. So, I do not expect to win, because the Government are whipping against and the Opposition are sitting on their hands, but I think it is important to say to the people who are in a vortex of this kind of abuse that at least some of us in this House have their backs.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

When the noble Baroness says that some of us in this House are concerned about this issue, I want to say to her that all of us in this House are concerned about this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and myself have many differences in this House, but we are at one in trying to improve the position of the regulations to tackle this issue. The amendment that I have tabled is a very important step forward on behalf of the Government, on a DSIT and Home Office basis, and I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord. I do not want to have a Division in this House. The Government and the Opposition may well win that vote, but I do not want that Division to happen; I want us to go forward in a constructive way, to look at the amendments that are tabled and to make a change that really benefits people.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I say to the noble Lord that there is only one way to prevent a Division on this issue, which is either to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that it is covered, or that we will keep it alive until Third Reading so that we can make sure that it is covered. If I have insulted anyone by suggesting that only some of us are willing to walk through the Lobby to protect children from child sexual abuse, forgive me, but unless the Minister has something to say, then as a matter of principle I shall divide the House.

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[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, this group covers a range of human conduct, from the objectionable to the disgusting. I thank the Minister for tabling a series of amendments which will benefit women and society at large. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for all the work that she has done, which has led us to this position, and for the amendments that she has tabled. I am sure that the whole House is very grateful to her.

I will speak specifically to Amendment 273, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, to which I have added my name. I understand that the noble Baroness may, if the Minister does not accept the amendment, wish to test the opinion of the House. This amendment simply seeks to impose a duty on a court to make a deprivation and deletion order where a person is convicted of an offence involving sharing or threatening to share intimate images without the consent of the victim.

The argument in favour of this amendment is very simple. It is necessary to give comfort to the victim who knows that the perpetrator has created or distributed the intimate images without consent. Unless there is a duty to destroy this content, the victim is inevitably going to remain extremely concerned that the content will remain in circulation and in existence.

That is the first argument. The second argument is that I can think of no justification whatever why the culprit should retain such intimate images when they have been convicted of being a wrongdoer in this respect. Those two points make this amendment unanswerable, and I strongly support it.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group—the government amendments, those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, and the other amendment that was tabled. It was such an excellent speech, with such detail, that I do not want to go over the specifics, except to say that the noble Baroness is our leader and we will follow her through the Lobby.

I want to make one point, regarding the fantastic list of what is in the gap between what Ofcom can do and what Parliament can do. We should hesitate on that thought. Having looked a little this afternoon at the Government’s consultation, I see that there is almost nothing about what Ofcom cannot do, almost nothing about enforcement and, as I explained earlier, almost nothing about risk assessment. What happens beforehand, to prevent all this? What happens after it has all happened and we start to get enforcement? We cannot keep playing around in the middle. We have to go upstream, to the beginning, and we have to come to the end and get these things categorically dealt with in a way that interferes with business and makes it unacceptable to do it. With that, I will be supporting the noble Baroness.

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I urge the Government to support these amendments. They are the foundation of a safer online world. If we fail to act, we risk legitimising a culture where abuse is normalised, and we cannot allow the increase of harmful online content to continue. It must be stopped because it causes harm and poisons minds, especially those of children and very young people and distorts the concept of a healthy, loving relationship. I will say it again and again and again: childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us act now to ensure that every childhood is free from abuse, victimisation and exploitation. Let us act now, sooner rather than later, to help those victims who are being victimised right at this very moment. Let us focus our minds on those young people and those children.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. It has been a very grim afternoon, I have to say, repeatedly hearing some of the most horrendous things that can happen to women and children. I say to the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect and who spoke passionately—a word normally associated with me—that this is still too little, too late and too long across a number of these issues. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, is relatively new in the House, but we have been debating these things for eight years and I remember having this exact discussion during the Online Safety Bill. We have to just move on. We cannot keep on saying that it moves quickly and then allowing ourselves to move this slowly.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, made a really strong case that online porn affects real life. It is real-life violence and there is this unbelievably vast overlap with child sexual abuse. It is that mess that we have to see as one and, in that sense, the noble Baroness made the case for all of her amendments. I want to quickly mention government Amendment 272, which establishes an offence if a person makes or adapts, or

“supplies or offers to supply a thing, for use as a generator of … intimate images”.

What has happened to that amendment is exactly the same as what happened to the child sexual abuse amendment that has the same form. It deals with intentionality and says: “If you absolutely intend to do this, it will be illegal. But if it happens in general, on any old piece of software that somebody hasn’t bothered to train properly or put protections in, then you’re not caught”. I believe that is what the noble Baroness has in her broader amendment about software.

I really want to make the point that there seems to be a reluctance to catch general- purpose technology in these issues of child abuse, violence against women, intimate image abuse and pornography, and I hope that the Government are listening. We cannot avoid general-purpose technology if that is what is spreading, creating and making this situation available across communities. It is in that space that so many children first see porn. It is in that space that so many women are abused and that so much child sexual abuse is present.

I urge the Minister to think about the breadth and not just the intentionality, because in my view it does not really matter whether it is accidental on the part of the company. I finish by saying that I had the privilege of meeting Yoshua Bengio last week, who is absolutely central to the development of AI and neural networks, and so on. He said, and I paraphrase: show me the incentive and I will show you the design.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, partly as a male of the species, since we are largely responsible for the situation we are describing. We are behind these business models, we are the sex that is making all the money out of it, and, in most cases, we are the abusers. It behoves us to acknowledge that and speak up about it.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. As a mother of young children, she has, on our behalf, subsumed herself for over two years in a world that most of us can barely imagine. That must have been an extraordinarily unpleasant and difficult experience. I pay tribute to her for doing it, because I am not sure many of us would have taken that on or lasted the course.

With that in mind, given the time and thought that she has given to this, the number of experts she has spoken to, the number of international parameters and comparators she has taken into account in looking at this, and the detailed way in which she has analysed the business models that underline this highly profitable business, it behoves all of us, and particularly the Government, to listen very carefully. The amendments that she has brought forth are not something that she dreamed up overnight; they are based on her detailed and painful knowledge of exactly how this business operates. She is identifying some gaps in the laudable approach the Government are taking to try to do something about this.

With my business experience hat on, I say that a major fault that businesses make is overpromising and underdelivering. His Majesty’s Government are in grave danger of doing exactly that in many of these areas to do with violence against women and girls. It is wonderful to have the headlines and to say, “We are taking this seriously and we are doing something about it”, but the devil is in the detail, and the detail is effective implementation. To effectively implement, you have to understand the business model, and, as people have said previously, you have to be prepared to disrupt it.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

These are exactly the conversations that we wish to carry on having, on how to best go about this to make sure that we achieve the aim that we are all trying to get to: getting rid of these horrible things. I would like to continue the conversation with the noble Baroness in due course.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, stressed that there was undue emphasis on intention and states of mind. Again, this is the problem with criminal offences: we do not create criminal offences where people who have done something accidentally end up being criminalised. That is why, on occasions, we say that regulation may be a better tool. The noble Baroness is looking outraged.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

No, I dare not tackle the noble Baroness on legal matters—what we do and do not do in the law—but, if you accidentally poison children’s food, you do not get a free pass. There are all sorts of places and spaces that have to—

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

We will continue this, but with the greatest of respect to the noble Baroness, the fact is that all criminal offences, pretty much, apart from those that are strict liability offences, which are pretty unpopular in the criminal law—[Interruption.] We will discuss this later, but take it from me that it is very rare to criminalise something that is done accidentally.

I turn now to incest. As I said earlier today, the Government have tabled a cluster of amendments that seek to go further than Amendment 299 by criminalising the possession and publication of pornography that depicts sexual activity between both adult and child family members. The reason for doing that is that it makes it more straightforward for law enforcement and regulators to tackle the harmful content, as pornography that portrays a family relationship will be criminalised and the prosecutor does not need to have to prove that the person concerned is under 18 or is a child. It can be very difficult to prove that the person is actually a child. We therefore consider government Amendment 297 to more robustly address the harm that the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, seeks to address.

I turn to the noble Baroness’s Amendments 297AA, 297B, 297C and 297D. Although I understand why she wishes to extend the Government’s amendment to a wider range of relationships, it is important that your Lordships understand that such an extension would criminalise sexual relationships that are lawful between adults in real life. With her Amendment 298, the noble Baroness has specifically sought to include that. It would go further than offline regulation, where some portrayals of step-relative relationships are classified, provided they are not in any way abusive in nature.

In addition, this change proposed by the noble Baroness’s amendment would significantly increase the complexity of the offence. For example, if the pornographic image depicted sex between step-siblings, operational partners would then also have to consider whether the persons live or have lived together, or whether one person is or has been regularly involved in caring for the other. It would be challenging for the police and the CPS to determine and ultimately prosecute. The intention behind the Government’s amendments is to make it as straightforward as possible to enforce and prosecute. That said, although I appreciate what the noble Baroness is trying to achieve, I urge her not to press her amendment.

Turning now to parity, I put on record that the Government accept the principle at the heart of Amendment 298 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. There is a clear and urgent need for greater parity between the treatment of harmful pornography online and offline. This Government, who have prioritised tackling all forms of violence against women and girls, will show the leadership necessary to deliver it. We have, with thanks to the noble Baroness, already taken steps in the Bill to criminalise some of the most egregious forms of content that are currently mainstream online. The strangulation pornography offence added in Committee and the further changes we are bringing forward today on incest pornography have been added because of the noble Baroness. These matters are now prohibited under offline regulation.

Acknowledging that the changing online world brings new challenges that must be tackled to address emerging harms, we will also be reviewing the criminal law relating to pornography to assess its effectiveness. We will ensure that our online regulatory framework keeps pace with these changes to the criminal law. Delivery of parity in regulatory treatment has already started. Once enforced, these offences will become priority offences under the Online Safety Act, requiring platforms to have proportionate systems and processes in place to prevent UK users encountering this content. This should stop this abhorrent content circulating unchecked on online platforms, where right now it is being recommended to unwitting users.

While these measures mark a significant step forward in protecting individuals online, we acknowledge that they do not address the totality of the complex question on parity. The current offline regime relies on checks on individual pieces of content, which can consider wider context and nuance in a way that does not easily translate to the scale and speed of online content. For this reason, we cannot accept the noble Baroness’s amendment, but because we completely agree with the need for greater parity, the Government are committing our joint pornography team, which was announced as part of the VAWG strategy, to produce a delivery plan within six months of Royal Assent.

Crucially, the delivery plan will set out how, not whether, the Government can most effectively close the gap. This will include consideration of how a new approach can address other potentially harmful content, such as pornography portraying step-incest relationships or adults role-playing as children. The delivery plan will thoroughly test which approach will be most effective by testing audit and reporting functions and considering how this can be done at scale to achieve the desired impact. The plan will also consider how and which regulatory frameworks can best address the issue, noting the interactions with the BBFC’s existing remit and that of Ofcom under the Online Safety Act, and how to ensure that there is effective enforcement in any future system. It will examine the case for tools, including fines and business disruption measures. We will keep up the pace. I can commit to including clear timelines for implementation in the plan, and we will keep them as short as possible, factoring in the possible need for legislation, subject to parliamentary timing. I know that my fellow Ministers will welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, joining us as we conduct this work.

Victims and Courts Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 61 in the name of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti.

When I left my home in Durham on Monday morning, I had a phone call. It was from an individual I had met five years earlier. He was the husband of a postmistress in Northumberland who had been prosecuted by the Post Office. She was prosecuted in 1998. He was ringing me to tell me that on the Saturday morning, she had received the letter overturning her conviction under the Horizon Post Office scandal.

I met the couple five years ago. They had a thriving business and were well respected in the community—a small village in Northumberland. They now live in a small council house in the same village. As they explained to me when I sat in their living room, everyone still thinks, “That is the woman who stole the money from the Post Office”.

That woman was traumatised. That is the only word I can use. She had blanks in her mind. It was very difficult for me to get the information from her, so traumatised she was. That woman has suffered for nearly 30 years. She has now got that letter saying that she did nothing wrong and can now hold her head up high in her community. As I said to her husband, that must be an unbelievable feeling.

That couple are going to get compensation—quite rightly—but, as the husband said, that is not important. The important thing was that woman’s and their family’s good name. That was ruined, because computer evidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, just said, was used to persecute a decent, hard-working woman.

Over the last 15 or 16 years that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I have been campaigning on this, I have met many victims of this scandal. They are decent, ordinary people whom you pass in the street. If you were their friend, you would consider it a privilege. Their lives have been completely ruined. That is because the presumption was that the computer had to be right. It was classed as a mechanical machine and that this could not be infallible.

The judiciary needs to take some blame in the Post Office scandal, because I have read many court transcripts of the cases. I think of one. There was a postmistress from County Durham called June Tooby, who was not involved in the Horizon case but the pre-Horizon scheme—Capture. She was an absolutely marvellous woman and she defended herself in court. She said to the judge that her argument was that the computer was wrong and gave the reasons why. He dismissed her completely out of hand and would not listen to her that somehow this was a possibility.

That is not the only case that I have seen where judges have taken the approach of completely dismissing that. I am not one for attacking our judiciary, but I get annoyed when judges get on their high horse and say that somehow they cannot be criticised. The judiciary played a part in this scandal and must take responsibility for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said that this is urgent. It is urgent. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said that the consultation started on 21 January 2025. Sarah Sackman, the then Minister, said at the opening of that consultation:

“We must learn the lessons of the Post Office scandal … Ensuring people are protected from miscarriages of justice is … one part of the government’s Plan for Change”.


That was over a year ago. I know that things move very slowly in this Government and that things sometimes have gestation periods longer than that of an African elephant, but this cannot wait. I urge the Minister. We do not want any more reviews or need any more consultations. That seems to be the in word these days—if you do not want to make a decision, have a consultation or say, “We are considering it”. This is now urgent.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti on tabling this amendment. It must be done in this Bill. It cannot wait. Speaking for myself—and, I think, on behalf of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot —we will not let this rest. This is the opportunity for the Government to put this right. I would love to know what the Ministry of Justice has been doing for the last year because it is a very simple thing; nor is it controversial. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, has just said, people will still be found guilty. There will be more victims if we do not change this. This would also send a clear signal to those victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal that this Government are taking this seriously.

I say, very gently, to the Minister, not to come back with, “We’re going to review it” or that there is some next stage to go through. Frankly, I am getting sick of this. My heart drops when I hear of another review or consultation. It seems to be a great “Yes Minister” way of kicking things into the long grass. This cannot be kicked into the long grass. I am determined that it will not be.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 61, to which I have added my name, and associate myself with the noble Baroness’s words on Amendment 62. I was sitting here thinking that if I was guilty of the total creative expression that I have consumed, I would have to be locked up for life. It was moving to hear how one small fraction of the population is being discriminated against on this count, so I add my support on that issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lords, Lord Beamish and Lord Arbuthnot, have laid out the case comprehensively and persuasively. There is indeed a great deal of history to it. I thought it might be useful for me to concentrate on the justification of successive Governments for resisting it. This centres primarily around the idea that computers now permeate every aspect of life and that altering the presumption in law, in the words of the former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, would bring into scope

“evidence presented in every type of court proceeding and would have a detrimental effect on the courts and prosecution—potentially leading to unnecessary delays”.—[Official Report, 18/12/24; col. GC 160.]

It is important to hear that, because it was almost identical to the words spoken by the previous Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who said:

“Almost all criminal cases rely on computer evidence to some extent, so any change to the burden of proof would or could impede the work of the Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecutors”,—[Official Report, 24/4/24; col. GC 580.]


leading to great delays. In other words, they had exactly the same rebuttal to a suggestion that we made, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, explained, in not one but two previous Bills. My worry is that the argument appears to be that computer evidence is so pervasive that we cannot change the law. But the reverse must also be true: if it is going to be so pervasive, how can we allow it to remain above the law?

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is competing with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I would never compete with the noble and learned Lord.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

The Government have had nine months. Normally, if you went to a competent lawyer and said, “This is the evidence. We need a solution”, you would be horrified if you had to wait nine months. Why is there not an answer? Can we have one when this comes back on Report? There is no excuse for delay.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I will answer the noble and learned Lord and then I will give way to the noble Baroness, because, as she knows, we do not permit interventions on interventions.

The answer to his question is that this is not the only thing we are doing. Your Lordships know how much legislation is passing through this House. It is a question of bandwidth and having time to do things. I am trying to assure the Committee that our intentions are good ones and that we are listening.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

The words that the Minister used, which I believe her to believe, are exactly the same words that we have heard from several other Ministers. The only words that would give succour to members of the Committee are, “We will have something on Report”. While I take her point about broad and narrow, that is not an excuse that can last for years. That consultation was not the first consultation, so we have been waiting for years.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I entirely understand the point that the noble Baroness is making, and I pay great tribute to her expertise. She can imagine just how popular I would be if I gave that undertaking from the Dispatch Box right now. All I can say is: leave it with me.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, how many more times will we debate these issues? These amendments are not radical; they are reasonable, evidence-based and urgently needed. We cannot allow the increase in harmful online content to continue. This must stop. I urge the Government to support these amendments, which are the foundation of a safer digital world. If we fail to act, we risk legitimising a culture in which abuse is normalised and young people grow up with a distorted understanding of healthy relationships. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us act now to ensure that every childhood is free from abuse and victimisation. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I share much of her frustration about us being here discussing this again and hearing that litany of powerful images—that I would rather unhear—from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I do not propose to add to them, except to say that what the noble Baroness has said on the record, in Hansard, is not an exaggeration or cherry-picking; it is normal, and the House must consider whether that is the “normal” we would like to live in.

I have been proud to add my name to the noble Baroness’s amendments. I commend her on her work on the pornography review, which I know was an enormous effort and, as I understand it, quite a catastrophic personal experience. I also want to take the opportunity to commend the Government on recognising the issue of strangulation. I know we will come to it, but I wanted to mention it in this group, because it is this relationship between what happens online and how that then impacts offline that we have to concentrate on. A few weeks ago, I was with a group of very senior medical professionals, and one consultant radiologist talked about how post-mortem guidance is being changed to check for strangulation as a cause of death among young women. That is chilling. The entire room was chilled. It is an indictment of how prevalent and serious the consequences of violent pornography are. We must not hide behind thinking this is happening in another space; this is the space in which people are now living.

On the same theme, some time ago I was contacted by a lawyer who told me that she dreaded freshers’ week. Each year, an increasingly long line of barely adult young men would come through her door facing charges of acts of sexual violence which mimicked behaviour they had seen online. A wealth of talented young women are now traumatised at a crucial point in their life, and a litany of young men, probably equally talented, are now sex offenders. These lives are being ruined.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness are sensible—I believe that was the word the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, used. I do not know whether they are radical; I hope they are, and I hope they solve the problem, but they are sensible solutions. They seek to close the gaps, and have taken learnings from other jurisdictions, which is crucial. The whole world is tackling this, and we must learn from what other people understand. We do not need to make it all up ourselves. “Not made here” is about the worst thing that we keep on seeing in politics, particularly in the online sphere.

I support all the amendments in this group, and I wanted briefly to mention just two of them. First, Amendment 298 would prohibit ownership of software which we often call “nudification” apps. A Teacher Tapp survey last week found that one in 10 teachers were aware of pupils creating “deepfake, sexually explicit videos”, and the safeguarding lead who was quoted warned that deepfakes and nudifiers

“feel like the next train coming down the track”.

I know a lot of safeguarding staff, and this is what they are saying. Can we, as a Parliament and as a House, be ahead of the train coming down the track rather than waiting for it to come and ruin our schools?

The Children’s Commissioner points out in her briefing, which supports these amendments wholeheartedly, that nudification technology is harming girls. Even if they have not been directly targeted by the tools, girls report withdrawing from the online world—for example, not posting pictures of their full faces to reduce the chances of their being transplanted on to a naked body. Can we not, as a House, stand up for women in the public sphere? This is not okay. It is so regressive to look at a technology that silences young girls’ participation in this new world.

Rightly, this amendment does not create an offence for under-18s, so I have another request of the Government: that they accept the amendment but also commit to adopting a broader strategy to tackle the deepfake crisis in schools before it is too late.

Last week, we had a debate in which the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, said that this issue sits with DSIT and not the Home Office. My understanding is that the issue I am addressing could sit with DSIT and the DfE. However, the Government as a whole have a commitment to children, and as a whole they have committed to halving violence against women and girls. I will do a shout-out here and say that men do experience violence, but it is primarily experienced by women and girls. So, unless the Government start to act more swiftly on our concerns about technology-facilitated sexual abuse, they will be failing in both their responsibility to children and their commitment to women and girls.

Amendment 314 seeks to create parity between laws that regulate pornography online and offline. It is a perennial cause of harm that the tech sector lacks accountability. This lack of accountability, the lack of parity, seen through the lens of pornography, is the very definition of tech exceptionalism. The laws that apply to the rest of our lives in society do not apply in the technological sphere, protected by tens of millions of lobbying dollars. This is at the heart of the problem that we are discussing. Pornography has been a major engine of the tech sector. It is worth billions of dollars, responsible for millions of downloads and a significant driver of online traffic.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, it would not be right to begin the Government’s response to this group of amendments without first thanking unequivocally the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. The whole Chamber will join me in saying that we have a great deal to thank her for. She has worked tirelessly on the independent pornography review and has long campaigned to raise awareness of the ways pornography shapes sexual behaviour. This Government share her determination to ensure that the online world is a safer place for everyone, and we are immensely grateful to her for her insights.

The motivation for these amendments is important and I make it absolutely clear that I take them seriously. I have not disagreed with a single word that has been said in the impassioned and sometimes angry contributions in this Chamber—I share that anger and outrage. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, is aware, following our meeting last week, of the reasons why the Government will resist her amendments at this stage. However, I look forward to continuing our discussions in greater detail over the coming weeks, including in meetings between my department, the Home Office and DSIT. I hope we will all work closely together to achieve our shared objectives.

I also take this opportunity to announce that the Government will accept, in part, one of the noble Baroness’s recommendations from her pornography review—namely, recommendation 24. The Government will review the criminal law relating to pornography, which will give us a chance to look at the law holistically and consider whether it is fit for purpose in an ever-developing online world. Importantly, the review I am announcing today will look into the effectiveness of the existing law in relation to criminalising, among other things, harmful depictions of incest and any forms of pornography that encourage child sexual abuse.

I know the noble Baroness is anxious that any review should not be used as a delaying tactic to avoid making any decisions. I hope she will take it from me that it is my wish to make sure that this takes place quickly. In addition, as I mentioned to her when we met, the Government are not completely opposed to considering swifter action where this is critically important, and I know we will discuss this further at our next meeting.

Given what I have just said, I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I address Amendments 290 to 292 briefly, in the light of the fact we are proposing a review. I am very grateful for the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin, Lady Kidron, Lady Sugg and Lady Owen, my noble friends Lady Kennedy and Lady Berger, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Cameron of Lochiel—I hope I have mentioned everybody.

I appreciate the motivation behind these amendments, and I reassure my noble friend Lady Kennedy that the Government and I are very much in listening mode. Of course images of actual child incest or actual child sexual abuse are extremely harmful. The same is also true for intimate photos or videos shared without consent, and I note the concerns about how effectively this law is being enforced and regulated. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, that I am committed to working with her on the issues raised by these amendments and I very much look forward to meeting again to discuss them in greater detail to see where we can go with them.

Amendment 298 would criminalise the possession of nudification tools by users. Once again, I accept the intention behind this amendment and recognise the harm caused; it is horrifying. My noble friend Lady Berger spoke movingly about its impact on young women, and other noble Lords spoke strongly about this as well.

Our concern is that this amendment would not target those who provide these unpleasant tools to users in the UK. Additionally, as drafted, it would criminalise the possession of legitimate tools which are designed to create intimate images, such as those used in a medical context. I reiterate that we have significant sympathy for the amendment’s underlying objective, so we are actively considering what action is needed to ensure that any intervention in this area is effective. I assure the noble Baroness that we will reflect carefully on what she and other noble Lords—including the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Boycott and Lady Owen, my noble friend Lady Berger, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, among others—have said in this debate. I also assure her that we aim to provide an update on this matter ahead of Report.

Finally, Amendment 314 seeks to bring regulatory parity between offline and online pornography. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for her continued advocacy on this topic over the years. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—for whom huge respect is due, in this House and elsewhere—the noble Lords, Lord Carter of Haslemere and Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, among others, all spoke powerfully about this.

I stress once again that I do not disagree with the motivation that underlies this amendment. No one could disagree with the general principle as a matter of common sense, but extensive further work with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, is needed to consider and define with sufficient certainty what currently legal online pornography should not be permitted. It is also important that we make a thorough exploration of the existing legislation and regulation to ensure any new offence is enforceable, protects users to the highest standard and works as intended.

Under the Video Recordings Act, the distribution of pornography on physical media formats is regulated by the BBFC, as we have heard. Obviously, the BBFC will not classify any content which breaches criminal law. Amendment 314 as drafted would create a criminal offence which would require a judgment to be made about whether the BBFC would classify content which has not been subject to the classification process. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, expressed concerns about the drafting of this amendment while supporting its underlying motivation. As I hope your Lordships will agree, creating this style of criminal offence requires a clearer and more certain definition of this pornographic content, as any individual would need to be able clearly to understand what they need to do to regulate their conduct, so as not to inadvertently commit a criminal offence.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, will appreciate the reasons I have set out for the Government not supporting these amendments today. That said, I hope the announcement of the review into the criminal law and the Government’s commitment to work with the noble Baroness over the coming weeks will leave her sufficiently reassured not to press her amendments at this stage.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I want to ask the Minister about the timing. Her tone is exceptionally welcome— I will leave the substance of her response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin—but I am watching facial recognition, edtech and AI being rolled out by the Government with impunity. Even earlier today, at Questions, the tool was put at a higher order than the safety. What is the timeframe for the reviews and in which we can expect these very urgent questions to be addressed? There is a Bill in front of us, but when will the next Bill come?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness imagine just how unpopular I would be if I committed to an absolute timeframe? What I can say is that I hope she will take it from me that I regard this as important. The meetings with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, have started. This matters but we need to get it right.

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[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically join my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti in praising the noble Baroness, Lady Owen. I was in the House—it was on a Friday—when she first moved her Private Member’s Bill. The Minister then was the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and he promised that the Government would review and come to the assistance of the noble Baroness. What she is doing now is quite amazing, with a number of very detailed amendments. I will hold myself here to await what my noble friend the Minister will say in reply, but I do hope she will be very positive.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to add my voice to the praise for the noble Baroness, Lady Owen—me too—and to put on record my support. I believe the noble Baroness did such a detailed, forensic laying out of her amendments. I would just like to make a couple of points.

During the passage of the Online Safety Act, we had a lot of discussion about an ombudsman. It was very much resisted. At the same time—in the same time- frame as that Bill took place—I was an adviser to the Irish Government, who put in an ombudsman. I think we are missing something. It was a very big part of the previous discussion about chatbots and so on in an earlier group. I very firmly agree with what the noble Baroness said as she laid out her amendments: we really need a way of alerting the regulator to what is going on, and it is not adequate for the regulator to have only an emerging harms unit that is waiting for us to fill in a form, which is the current state of play. I leave that with the Minister as a problem that needs solving.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I will now speak to the government amendment tabled in my name. The Government are firmly committed to protecting children’s personal data and ensuring that online services likely to be accessed by children are designed with their safety and privacy in mind. We have listened carefully to the concerns raised in this House during earlier debates and have worked quickly to bring forward this amendment, which reflects those discussions. During the debate on 21 January, I made clear that, while we could not accept Amendment 22 from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which would have placed new duties on all data controllers, the Government were open to a more targeted approach that addressed the areas of greatest concern.

This amendment delivers on that commitment. It amends Article 25 of the UK GDPR, which already requires data controllers to design appropriate organisational and technical measures to implement the data protection principles. The amendment strengthens these obligations for information society services providers, such as social media and the streaming sites likely to be accessed by children.

They will be required to give extra consideration when deciding which measures are appropriate for online services likely to be accessed by children. Specifically, information society services providers must consider

“the children’s higher protection matters”

set out in the clause when designing their processing activities. These are:

“how children can best be protected and supported when using the services, and … the fact that children … merit specific protection with regard to their personal data because they may be less aware of the risks and … their rights in relation to such processing, and … have different needs at different ages and at different stages of development”.

The new duty expressly applies to

“information society services which are likely to be accessed by children”.

They are the same organisations that should already be following the ICO’s age-appropriate design code. Organisations that are already complying with the code should not find it difficult to comply with the new duty, but organisations that have treated compliance with the code as optional will now be under a clear legal duty to design their services with children’s rights and interests in mind.

I also want to make it clear that other organisations that process children’s personal data may need to consider these matters on a case-by-case basis and depending on the context. Although this amendment creates an express duty on information society services providers, those matters may sometimes be relevant in other contexts. Proposed new subsection (4) makes that clear.

I take this opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and other noble Lords who have contributed to this important debate. I hope this amendment, together with the other steps we are taking in the Bill to protect children, including the new duty on the ICO to consider children’s interests when carrying out its regulatory functions, will be welcomed across the House. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the Minister, to which I have added my name, and welcome his words from the Dispatch Box. As he said, this new duty provides a direct and unequivocal legal duty on all information society services likely to be accessed by a child and acknowledges in the Bill that services outside the definition of ISS must also consider children—indeed, they must consider children’s specific protections when determining how to process their data.

For the last decade, I and others have fought to establish minimum standards to ensure the safety and privacy of children in the UK and, over time, we have learned that we cannot assume a trajectory of progress. Standards can go down as well as up, and we cannot be sure that the intentions of Parliament will always be interpreted as robustly as promised.

I am concerned about the impact of tech lobbying on this Bill, the regulator and the Government’s wider digital strategy. I hope that the companies represented by those lobbyists will take note of this amendment as a sign that, when it comes to children, they have absolute responsibilities under the law. The Bill team has persuaded me that the child-specific duties on the ICO in the Bill, in combination with its new reporting duties, mean that the ICO will report separately about steps it has taken and will take to uphold children’s heightened data rights. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that that is also the Government’s expectation.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I will do exactly the same. It is extremely important that magistrates should have the power to imprison as well as to fine.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I have spoken to these amendments at every stage of the Bill. One of the unfortunate outcomes of being a campaigner for online safety is the abuse that we get directly from people who do not want the online world to be safe. That abuse comes in all forms, including that which the noble Baroness is trying to criminalise. I say to the House that we must support the noble Baroness. I am so disappointed that the Government are not here with us. Support the noble Baroness.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I have a couple of quick things to say. First, there is no reason not to put this into the Bill here; it can be amended in the Commons quite happily. Secondly, without solicitation in the Bill, there is a massive loophole. One can work out exactly how to get round the whole thing by just inserting someone soliciting in the middle. The other thing is that this can happen to men and could be used for blackmail, so this could be used against that, which is very dangerous. We need imprisonment in the Bill, because if someone makes enough money out of whatever it is that they put out there, a fine is nugatory and they will not worry about it. We need to have imprisonment as well.

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.

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[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.