Baroness Boycott
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Violence Against Women and Girls
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(4 days, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises another pertinent issue. As she is aware, we have created a new offence in the Data (Use and Access) Bill to criminalise the creation of a purported intimate image, otherwise known as deepfake images, of an adult without their consent or a reasonable belief in their consent. That partly addresses the issue she raises, but it is a bigger issue of education and how we talk to our young people, and that starts in schools. It is essential that online misogyny and online pornography is tackled when they are at a young age and that we have the right messaging. That is part of cross-departmental approach to the strategy that is being written at the moment, where we involve all departments because we need to tackle the issue from a young age on.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
The case of Kyle Clifford, who was a follower of Andrew Tate, has been mirrored by many other crimes that have involved the actual killing or abuse of women. Is it not time that we start to consider this in the same way that we consider terrorism? Had Kyle Clifford been a member of ISIS, that would have been a huge story. Andrew Tate’s influence is now across 80% of all young boys at school, and yet nothing seems to happen about saying that this needs to come up to the level of Prevent, although the same sorts of crimes are resulting.
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
I think the noble Baroness’ comments reflect my comment, indeed my opening sentence, which is that this Government are treating this as a national emergency. On online safety, we are working with Ofcom to ensure that the Online Safety Act is implemented quickly, and Ofcom is already enforcing duties on publishers of pornography. Services within the scope of the Online Safety Act must take action to tackle illegal pornographic content, and the strategy we are working on will take into account all these issues and bring a holistic approach to them.