Online Safety Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

The measures in this group are not meant to stifle innovation or to hold back the industry—quite the opposite. My noble friend Lady Harding alluded to the Industrial Revolution; taking children out of the pits led to a great investment in, and the growth of, the coal mining industry. Setting clear tracks for progress and putting in place humane provisions create the conditions under which industries can flourish. I fear that, if we do not get this one right, we will be tripping over ourselves; the pornographic industry will become grit in the gears of industry for years to come. By being clearer and more emphatic in these measures, the Bill can be an agent for innovation and encourage a great flourishing of these very important industries.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I support everything that was said by the intrepid noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. I will speak to Amendment 185, which is in my name and is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. My amendment seeks to bring the regime for online pornography content in line with what exists offline.

The Video Recordings Act 1984 makes it a criminal offence to have prohibited content offline or to supply any unclassified work. Under this regulation, the BBFC will not classify any pornographic content that is illegal or material that is potentially harmful. That includes material that depicts or promotes child sex abuse, incest, trafficking, torture and harmful sexual acts. This content would not be considered R18, and so would be prohibited for DVD and Blu-ray. This also applies, under the Communications Act 2003, to a wide range of services that are regulated by Ofcom, from large providers such as ITVX or Disney+, to smaller providers including those that produce or provide pornographic content.

However, in the wild west of the online world, there is no equivalent regulation. Online pornography so far has been left to evolve without boundaries or limitations. Devastatingly, this has had a disastrous impact on child protection. Content that would be prohibited offline is widely available on mainstream pornographic websites. This includes material that promotes violent sexual activity, including strangulation; pornography that depicts incest, including that between father and daughters or brothers and sisters; and content that depicts sexual activity with adult actors made to look like children. This content uses petite, young-looking adult performers, who are made to look underage through props such as stuffed toys, lollipops and children’s clothing. This blurring of the depiction of sexual activity with adult actors who are pretending to be underage makes it so much harder to spot illegal child sex abuse material.

According to research by Dr Vera-Gray and Professor McGlynn, incest pornography is rife. Online, all of this can be accessed at the click of a button; offline, it would not be sold in sex shops. Surely this Bill should bring an end to such disparities. This content is extremely harmful: promoting violence against girls and women, sexualising children and driving the demand for real child sex abuse material, which of course is illegal.

Depictions of sexual activity with the title “teen” are particularly violent. A study analysing the content of the three most accessed pornographic websites in the UK found that the three most common words in videos containing exploitation were “schoolgirl”, “girl” and “teen”. It is clear that underage sexual activity is implied. How have we as a society arrived at a point where one of the most commonly consumed pornographic genres is sexual violence directed at children?

Our security services can confirm this too. Retired Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the former child protection lead at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse that the availability of pornography was

“creating a group of men who will look at pornography”

so much that they reach

“the point where they are simply getting no sexual stimulation from it … so the next click is child abuse imagery”.

We know that the way pornography affects the brain means that users need more and more extreme content to fulfil themselves. It is like a drug. Pornography sites know this and exploit it. They design their sites to keep users for as long as possible, so as to increase exposure to adverts and therefore their revenue. They do this by presenting a user with ever-more extreme content. In 2021, Dr Vera-Gray and Professor McGlynn found that one in every eight titles advertised to a new user described acts of sexual violence.

I recently hosted a screening of the harrowing documentary “Barely Legal” here in the House of Lords. The documentary demonstrated just how far the pornography industry will go to make a profit, using extremely young-looking adult actors in content that suggests sexual activity with underage girls. Believe it or not, the pornography industry is worth much more than Hollywood; it makes thousands and thousands of dollars per second. Its quest for money comes at the expense of child protection and of society as a whole. This cannot be allowed to continue without regulation. Enough is enough.

Interviews with offenders who view illegal child sex abuse material in the UK indicate that most had not intentionally sought out child sex abuse materials. Nine out of 10 offenders said that they first encountered child sex abuse material through online pop-ups and linked material while looking at pornography sites.

I visited Rye Hill prison in Rugby, which houses over 600 sex offenders. Many said that they were affected by viewing porn, with devastating, life-changing outcomes. The largest ever survey of offenders who watch child sex abuse material online found significant evidence that those who watch illegal material are at high risk of going on to contact or abuse a child directly. Almost half said that they sought direct contact with children through online platforms after viewing child sexual abuse material.

This is an urgent and immediate child protection issue affecting our children. These concerns were shared earlier this year by the Children’s Commissioner for England, whose research found that 79% of children had encountered violent pornography

“depicting … degrading or pain-inducing sex acts”

before they reached the age of 18. The impact that this is having on our children is immeasurable.