Lord Scriven
Main Page: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for securing this debate and I fully support his opening contribution to it.
I believe that the impact pornography is having on society is, almost bizarrely, something of a no-go area for polite conversation, yet it is imposing considerable harm, particularly on young people and particularly on their perception of how healthy relationships should look and feel. Unless there is some basic honesty in this area, we are in danger of sleep-walking our way through deeply concerning changes to norms of decency and acceptability in our society and neglecting the young on a massive scale.
Today’s young people are the parents of tomorrow. We must also look ahead, further up the age range, and not ignore what is already happening in older generations. Others may consider that the viewing habits of consenting adults belong beyond the bounds of public comment, but I believe this approach is ostrich-like and naive in the extreme, for reasons I hope I will make clear to your Lordships.
Yesterday, the Children’s Society published a report suggesting almost 10% of 16 and 17 year-old girls have been victims of a sexual offence, but fewer than one in 10 of those offences were reported. Half of those not reporting sexual abuse to the police feel it is not worth their while to do so, hinting at a pervasive acceptance that this just comes with the territory of growing up in Britain today.
Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson says:
“Pornography has changed the landscape of adolescence beyond all recognition”.
Research shows that more than four in 10 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 in England have been coerced into sex acts and a fifth of girls have suffered violence or intimidation from their teenage boyfriends, a high proportion of whom are on a steady diet of pornography.
There is a clear and strong link between viewing violent pornography and perpetrating sexual violence. Despite the high premium we place on equality in this country, one in five boys harbour extremely negative attitudes towards women.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, there have been a number of interruptions. I ask noble Lords to remember that this is a timed debate and we are very close to time, so please keep interruptions to a minimum.
Lord Scriven
I too thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for raising this issue. As one of the issues around pornography and its use is that we as a society do not talk about it a lot, this debate is part of the solution to addressing some of those issues. As pornography is ultimately a moral issue, discussion of it becomes very subjective. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, explained quite clearly why people’s interpretations of what is pornographic can differ. There is also more than one view on whether pornography is harmful. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the noble Baroness both addressed the point regarding confusion about the evidence.
There has been a lot of debate about children and safeguards but a common theme—that we have to protect those who are underage. In this technological sphere, however, a technological solution cannot be a solution in itself. Humans interact with technology, so both a human and a technological response will be needed to address technological issues affecting children. We should not assume that filtering generally or age filtering will be enough. Young people use Instagram and Snapchat on their smartphones, so filtering will not prevent their distributing porn and seeing sexual images. We need to be much more clever. Parents and other adults need to be involved in socialising young children, talking openly with them about sexuality and issues around pornography. We cannot assume that a blank filter will solve the problem because it will not. The latest research on web-camming, the Emerging Patterns and Trends Report, shows that in young people’s world, the use of smartphone apps, such as Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp, is far more prevalent than sitting at a laptop or using a mobile device simply to go on the web. We have to be clear that porn is here to stay; it will not go away. It is the same debate as we face in discussing drugs.
If it is a moral issue and here to stay, then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, we will need to prove the harm before setting out our exact response. If consenting adults decide to watch or make porn, and if there is no harm, what should be the role of legislators and government? Clearly, as we have talked about, there is harm when it involves a corpse or bestiality or issues to do with children, but if consenting adults decide to use porn to live out fantasies or even to spice up their own sex life, what role is there for legislators? I would say that it is very limited indeed.
As Clarissa Smith, Professor of Sexual Cultures at the University of Sunderland, has said, pornography is about fantasy, and in no other area is the use of the imagination regulated. That is what we are talking about in this debate—putting in place the safeguards we have described while dealing with something that, for most people, is fantasy. As has been suggested, the evidence is not one-sided or conclusive. I would suggest that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said, for most people who watch pornography, it is a matter of fantasy. Once the watching is done, they do not go out into the real world to try to live out their fantasy. A small proportion will because of personality issues—they are predisposed to violence—not because of the pornography itself. That is what we have to think about in this debate.
If we are to clamp down or take similar action we will need to prove harm beyond doubt, not simply use vague and self-selecting online surveys, as some noble Lords have done today. That is not evidence. Surveys are very different from evidence. Is harm being caused? I will cite two studies that might offer a different view from that offered earlier in the debate.
In 2010, the European Commission conducted a survey across a number of European countries which concluded that there is no evidence of a causal link between watching pornography and sexual violence or crime apart from in a small sample of males who were already disposed to violence. That exactly mirrors what the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said. In 2011, Milton Diamond conducted an interesting study of the Czech Republic, where pornography had been forbidden but then was allowed. The sexual habits, behaviours and interactions of adults were observed over a period of time. The report concluded that there was no change at all in the levels of sexual violence or relationship violence between individuals apart from in a small number of people who were predisposed to violence. So when we are talking about the impact of pornography on society, we have to talk about personality disorder rather than pornography itself. It would seem that some people are predisposed to do harm to others. We need to look at that a lot more rather than make blanket statements. Most people who watch porn use it as a fantasy but do not live it out. They live successful, useful and what would be seen as normal lives with their families.
Others see pornography as emancipating. About a month ago, there was a very interesting programme on Radio 4 called “Can Porn Be Ethical?” in which feminist pornographers said that they used pornography as a positive way of showing relationships. They talked about how it emancipates them and gives them power in an area where they were not seen as powerful. Not all porn is the same, as has already been said. Some feminists use pornography as a way of showing an alternative. As a feminist, Petra Joy, said, it is a “political thing” allowing her to change the model of sexuality and show it in a more realistic way. She said that she is able to develop the relationship as well as the sexual part of pornography and gives her some control as a woman.
I finish with a quote from Myles Jackman, a lawyer who specialises in this area. He said:
“Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die”.
I want noble Lords to think about that. Without proving harm and showing that it is pornography itself that is causing it, we are in an area of legislating unnecessarily. I accept, as everybody who has spoken in your Lordships’ House today has said, that there are certain laws about protecting minors and certain issues about technology that we must address. As humans, we also have to be clear that it is the human relationship with the technology that will solve the problem.
There is no justification to say that, outside this House, the fires of hell will be burning because society is degrading into a pornographic cauldron of disrepute. That is not the case. I believe that more research is needed and that we must understand that most humans who interact with pornography do so in fantasy and do not live it out. As there is such a paucity of evidence, I ask the Minister whether we could do here what we do or have started to do on drugs: to have an evidence-based solution rather than a kneejerk reaction to online surveys or one based on assumptions about what is happening in society.