Children: Adult Material Online Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Harris of Haringey
Main Page: Lord Harris of Haringey (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Harris of Haringey's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberI agree entirely with the noble Baroness that schools have a big role to play, and I am aware of Tanya Byron’s work. Parents have a big role to play as well. It is quite clear that too many members of our modern generation are exposed to unacceptable sexual images, and they should be taught about the importance of relationships.
My Lords, the Government’s initiatives in this field are clearly welcome. The question is whether they go far enough. Why is so little effort being put into working with the industries to ensure that there is a robust system of age and identity verification available for those who try to access services of all sorts on the internet? Not only could those who use child pornography be identified, it would also protect children from seeing things that they should not see, and it would no doubt solve all sorts of other problems that we might have in respect of material which is available online.
The noble Lord is quite right. The Government want the industry to develop robust age verification systems to prevent children and young people being able to access these images. ISPs are bringing in closed loop e-mails so that when the filters are changed in a home, an e-mail is sent to the account holder and therefore to the adult. There is a major piece of work going on through UKCISS, but it is true that it will be difficult to ensure that all pornographic sites have robust age verification systems in place as many—indeed, most of them—are hosted outside the UK.