Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of sentencing policy in tackling the problem of violent and extreme online pornography.

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

Offenders convicted of possession of extreme pornographic images, including violent pornographic images, face a custodial sentence of up to three years. Sentencing in individual cases is at the discretion of the courts. Although there are only a small number of convictions for that offence each year, I believe that it is effective in tackling the proliferation of these images.

[Diana Johnson]

Is not the problem that existing legislation on violent pornography has been too narrowly interpreted, with only 310 prosecutions in the past three years? Rape Crisis South London has said that there is evidence of the easy availability of serious sexual violence on rape porn sites. I know that the Government are about to ban realistic rape porn online, but not staged child rape scenes. Why not, as the Prime Minister promised, bring online and offline in line?

[Damian Green]

We agree with the hon. Lady’s underlying point that the current offence is too narrow. That is why we are legislating to extend the terms of the existing offence to criminalise the possession of images depicting rape and other non-consensual penetrative sexual activity. As she knows, we introduced provisions in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill to criminalise the possession of such images, and those provisions received broad cross-party support at the Commons Committee stage. I hope that she and those on the Opposition Front Bench will continue to welcome that.