Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, these amendments do not police private sexual behaviour, nor do they seek to ban porn. Instead, they aim to regulate an industry that has evaded scrutiny and is causing demonstrable harm: normalising violence, sexualising children and enabling abuse. The law must evolve to meet these challenges and put proportionate guardrails back in place. I beg to move.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 290, 291 and 314. I also support Amendments 292 and 298 in this group, all in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, whom I hold in high esteem.

Before I set out some remarks in support of these amendments, it is difficult to comprehend why we are back here again in this House, eight years after debating the issue raised in the amendments in this group by me and other noble Lords. It feels like déjà vu.

However, there is one crucial difference: we now have the insight and recommendations of the comprehensive review of pornography regulations which I was promised by the previous Government and which has been undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I commend the noble Baroness for her review, which sets out clearly why these amendments are needed.