Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Paddick

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

I will try to say it again more clearly. It is the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service is not prosecuting people for possessing prohibited material. That brings the definition of prohibited material into disrepute, as far as the law is concerned. I am not quite sure what it is that the noble Lord does not understand about it being brought into disrepute in that respect.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Why cannot the CPS just change its guidance?

[Lord Paddick]

Indeed. What the Minister said backed up what the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, said about the criticism of there being no public consultation. There has been no public consultation about introducing adult pornography into the Bill, in the form of prohibited material. There needs to be a public debate on this to decide whether the British Board of Film Classification’s operation, where it does not issue certificates for prohibited material, is the right standard or whether the CPS standard is right. There has not been a public debate about that, and we need one.

Having said all that, I entirely agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about the impact that gratuitous violent pornography can have in terms of domestic violence and the impact that it then has on children in those families. That needs to be debated and addressed. However, that is not what the Bill was primarily intended to do. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, suggests, this is not some deal that has been done between the opposition parties and the Government over keeping age verification. A Conservative Back-Bench amendment was introduced in the other place at a late stage, which is why there has not been sufficient time to debate the subject in this place either, and certainly not enough public consultation on the issue. In accepting that amendment, the Government introduced this complication.

Many noble Lords around the Chamber today have said, although I do not know if they realised this, that the definition of prohibited material does not go far enough either. You can get the sort of things that they want banned from the internet on a DVD, albeit an R18, bought from a shop. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, gave examples of the sort of sexual activity that he disapproves of. I do not know whether he knows that some of the activity that he talks about is legal to buy in a shop on a DVD. We are getting into a mess here because there is no agreement generally about what should and should not be allowed to be seen.