Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is not my intention to rehearse in detail the contents of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, whom we should all thank for both her concern and tenacity, has done that with her customary skill and clarity. There can be no doubt about what the Bill is seeking to achieve and how it plans to do it. I sincerely trust that we will give it a Second Reading today.

I start by saying that the two watchwords to deal with this appalling problem must be “need” and “speed”: to acknowledge the need and to act with the utmost speed. To our national shame, our country is awash with horrid details of sex abuse in all its nasty forms, and particularly of children. A judge is coming from New Zealand to spend a large chunk of her life revealing just how wide and deep the problem is in our country today. We can all remember events and images that made lasting and often unpleasant impressions on us when we were young—and that was in the days before this dreadful scourge had infected our world and our children’s lives.

There are lots of good things that the internet can do. We can gain information, book a holiday or even order food. Soon, its use will be compulsory for many day-to-day tasks, whether we like it or not. But there are many bad things that the internet has spawned, including networks for the spread of terrorism worldwide and a massive pornography industry. It is this adult pornography that our children are watching in ever-increasing numbers that is causing so much harm and distress. There is compelling evidence from cases in our courts, confirmed by the judges trying them, that some of the most brutal sexual acts, often by young boys on younger girls, result from their imitating acts that they have watched online.

When last we debated this problem, I quoted—it has been quoted again today—the horrifying statistic that in one month 44,000 primary school children had watched adult pornography. Since then I have realised that this is roughly one a minute. So in the course of this debate so far, 32 young children will have experienced adult pornography and had their minds permanently affected.

When it comes to the question of age verification, which is crucial in this matter, it might be thought by the layman or woman that the process would be complex and lengthy—but nothing could be further from the truth. A system has already been designed and successfully put into operation by the gambling industry that allows age verification to take place, as I understand it, in a matter of seconds. So this cannot be an excuse for delay.

I have already said that speed is of the essence in this matter. Of course there are other important matters facing us as parliamentarians: the problems facing Greece and the eurozone are immense but will take a long time to resolve; the grave situation in the Middle East will rumble on indefinitely; and English votes for English laws and all our constitutional issues are weighty matters that will take time to deal with properly. But this Bill represents something that we can do now for the sake of our vulnerable children, and we must press on without delay.

The Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, may not be perfect in every detail, but the Government must not use that as an excuse for procrastination. Since the general election, the Prime Minister has said on many occasions, “It is in our manifesto and we will do it”. For the purposes of this Bill, I quote directly from the Conservative manifesto, which states that,

“we will stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material”.

No ifs, no buts, no maybes—we will stop it.

I said at the beginning of my remarks that the watchwords for this problem were “need” and “speed”. Need is often associated with parliamentary legislation. Sadly, speed is less commonly associated with it. I urge the Minister and the Government, who have already acknowledged the need to act with all possible speed, to give this Bill a fair wind and to protect our children as soon as possible.