Independent Pornography Review

Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. We are absolutely determined to keep children safe online and to use the Online Safety Act to provide protection across all the categories under its jurisdiction. Ofcom’s draft guidance lays out which technologies could constitute, for example, highly effective age assurance to protect children, and it will have a full range of enforcement powers to take action against companies that do not follow the duties, including substantial fines. I absolutely agree with my noble friend that robustness is key here. I think some people are frustrated that some of the duties in the Online Safety Act are taking time to be rolled out, but it was a feature of the Act that it would be done on that basis. We are very keen, as everybody in the House is, to see it enacted in full as soon as it can be.

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, the Revenge Porn Helpline has a removal rate of 90% of non-consensually shared intimate content, including deepfake. However, in 10% of cases, the host site will not comply with its removal, even where there has been a successful conviction. These sites are often hosted in Russia and Latin America, and are unlikely to come under Ofcom’s scope, even with the changes that make sharing a priority offence. Can the Minister inform the House what action the Government are taking to address non-compliance, and does she agree that it would be better adopt a rapid and wide-ranging approach—favoured by victims—to deem NCII content illegal, thus giving internet service providers the power to block it?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her continuing interest in this issue and her campaigning work. The Government have already put forward secondary legislation to ensure that the new intimate image abuse offence is made a priority under the Online Safety Act, and all other acts of deepfake portrayal will come under the Act if they are illegal. Going back to the earlier question about robustness, we absolutely expect Ofcom to implement those protections in a robust way.