Online Abuse
Debate between Lord Dodds of Duncairn and Maria Miller
Mrs Miller
I thank the right hon. Lady for highlighting the work that is going on. I pay tribute to Reclaim the Internet, the cross-party campaign that she started to make sure that we can come together and find a solution to one of the biggest that the country faces. Online abuse, as she rightly says, does not simply affect one group of people. It goes across society, and it is wrecking the lives of adults, too. The Government must be applauded for being one of the first in the world to recognise online image-based sexual abuse in their revenge pornography laws. The Leader of the House, when he was Lord Chancellor, was instrumental in putting those laws into place.
That action has been vindicated, because there have been more than 3,000 calls to the revenge pornography helpline since the laws were enacted—laws that I was told were not needed because there was adequate law in place already. There were 1,000 reported incidents in just six months last year. There is much more to do to make the laws effective and to enable the police to prosecute effectively, but I think it shows that the Government are open to persuasion on the matter, and I hope it demonstrates an open-mindedness for the future. Now is the time for a very clear strategy to tackle these problems. Every person in the country, regardless of their age, should have an expectation that that they will be able to use social media platforms and mobile technology without being subject to criminal abuse.
The online world is part of everybody’s lives. The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who is sitting on the Front Bench, has a deep interest in and knowledge of these issues. I know the personal work that he has done behind the scenes to try to press forward on many of these issues, and he should be commended for that. I know that the proposals in the Digital Economy Bill on stopping under-age access to pornography will have been subject to a great deal of attention from him. Those proposals are very welcome, but reinforce, I feel, the piecemeal approach to the problem. Experts have already made it clear that children will be, frankly, more than well equipped to get around most barriers put up to stop them getting access to pornography.
The approach in the Bill may well help in stopping younger children inadvertently coming across pornography—an issue I know the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has highlighted in recent research—but if the Government’s policy is to be effective, it must be part of a much broader and clearer strategic plan, including mandatory sex and relationship education in all state-funded schools to give children the opportunity to understand how to make the right choices for them and put any pornography they may see into the proper perspective in their lives.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
I join others in commending the right hon. Lady on securing this debate. She mentioned a multifaceted approach. When I hear about cases in my constituency, one issue that concerns me is the irresponsibility—if we can call it that—of some parents, who give media and digital platform devices to their kids at a very young age and then leave them to it. Surely we need to do more to educate parents about their responsibilities and how they can teach their children to manage such devices responsibly.
Mrs Miller
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We find it easy to talk about putting responsibilities on schools to teach, but he is right that it starts with all of us as parents. If we give our children these devices—including gaming devices, as there are clear problems there with regard to the grooming of children—we have to take responsibility for ensuring that they are knowledgeable about the risks and can start to make informed choices from what, as he says, can be a very early age. That can be easily reinforced at school. In the past I have been very open about the fact that I felt that sex and relationship education should be determined by schools, but as we move into the online world the very real dangers and problems encountered by children have changed my view on the need to make that education compulsory.
Some of the best and brightest people work on the online world. It is an incredibly creative industry, and the response to the problems of child abuse images shows that, if we are clear about our terms of engagement, when pressure is applied the industry can react quite swiftly. This debate enables Parliament to send a clear message to the industry, social media and the online world that enough is enough; our constituents deserve better and we will fight—as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) says with her campaign—to reclaim the internet for them.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the importance of this debate and allowing me and my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) to co-sponsor it. I also thank the myriad organisations that have worked with us to prepare for the debate: Durham University, Professor Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics, Stonewall, Galop, the NSPCC, Victim Support, the Internet Watch Foundation—the list goes on, because so many organisations have a deep concern about the direction of travel.
Social media platforms and internet providers are facilitators. Like many other organisations in our country, they provide a service, whereby they are able to gather our personal details to sell them for advertising opportunities. It can be quite astonishing to view a pair of shoes on one website and then see them pop up on another website two hours later in an entirely different context. I really take my hat off to the people who are able to do that. It is a sophisticated industry with sensitive and well developed ways of gathering information, selling sales opportunities and so making successful businesses. Today, I call for some of that incredible talent and expertise to be focused on stopping online abuse.
There are four issues that need to be addressed. First, we need to make sure that we have laws that are fit for purpose. I pay tribute to the work done by Durham University, particularly by Professor Clare McGlynn, and Holly Dustin. We need to clarify what constitutes online abuse. We need better and clearer harassment laws that can be effectively applied online. We need an image-based sexual abuse law that clearly makes illegal all forms of image-based sexual abuse shared in a non-consensual manner. We need to end complete anonymity in the UK, and we need to insist that platforms have a legal duty to be able to identify the people who use their products in our country.
Secondly, we need to make it clear to those platforms and providers that they have to abide by a common standard for reporting mechanisms. They should provide accurate and transparent figures on the cases of reported abuse. When they are developing products, that needs to be done in a way that builds out abuse in the future, rather than building it in at the starting point.
Thirdly, we must be clear to online providers in our country that if they fail to take sensible measures to reduce online abuse, we as a Parliament will consider putting in place a levy to cover the costs of policing that are incurred purely as a result of online abuse crimes. That has been done in other areas—for example, the payments that are made by football teams for the policing of football stadiums. This is not a new idea, but it might concentrate minds when it comes to online abuse in the future.
Last but by no means least, we need to see a change in culture. Consent, respect and dignity should be at the heart of compulsorily delivered sex and relationship education in all our schools. Beyond that, campaigns should be run to make sure that people understand their own responsibilities to act sensibly and within the law while using the internet. That will be driven greatly by removing the veil of anonymity which currently cloaks so many inputs into social media.
Where there is a will, there is a way. I know that the Minister will want to show the House today that there is a clear will on the part of Government. More than four years ago the Prime Minister made it clear that there was no tolerance for child abuse online. At that point the industry had said that it could do little about it. Now, there is a clear strategy and clear protocols, and images are removed swiftly. With a worrying increase in online hate crime, perhaps even spilling out into the offline world already, we need to act swiftly. We need to make sure that cyberbullying and the newly formed concept of online baiting are shown short shrift.
Now is the time to act, and I call on the Minister to show us that he has an understanding of the need for a clear strategy to tackle online abuse in its totality. In the Digital Economy Bill which he published this week, he has just the legislative vehicle he needs to make any changes that such a strategy might call for. My hon. Friend is a good man. He knows that the online world needs a clear message from this House. I hope he listens intently to the debate today and takes back to his Department and to the industry the message that now is the time for change.