Online Safety Bill

Debate between Jeremy Wright and John Nicolson

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I follow that point. I will channel, with some effort, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who I suspect would say that these things are already up for debate and discussed in other contexts—the ability to distinguish between art and pornography is something that we have wrestled with in other media. Actually, in relation to the Bill, I think that one of our guiding principles ought to be that we do not reinvent the wheel where we do not have to, and that we seek to apply to the online world the principles and approaches that we would expect in all other environments. That is probably the answer to my hon. Friend’s point.

I think it is very important that we recognise the need for platforms to do all they can to ensure that the wrong type of material does not reach vulnerable users, even if that material is a brief part of a fairly long piece. Those, of course, are exactly the principles that we apply to the classification of films and television. It may well be that a small portion of a programme constitutes material that is unsuitable for a child, but we would still seek to put it the wrong side of the 9 o’clock watershed or use whatever methods we think the regulator ought to adopt to ensure that children do not see it.

Good points are being made. The practicalities are important; it may be that because of a lack of available time and effort in this place, we have to resolve those elsewhere.

[John Nicolson]

I wish to speak to new clause 33, my proposed new schedule 1 and amendments 201 to 203. I notice that the Secretary of State is off again. I place on record my thanks to Naomi Miles of CEASE—the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation—and Ceri Finnegan of Barnardos for their support.

The UK Government have taken some steps to strengthen protections on pornography and I welcome the fact that young teenagers will no longer be able to access pornography online. However, huge quantities of extreme and harmful pornography remain online, and we need to address the damage that it does. New clause 33 would seek to create parity between online and offline content—consistent legal standards for pornography. It includes a comprehensive definition of pornography and puts a duty on websites not to host content that would fail to attain the British Board of Film Classification standard for R18 classification.

The point of the Bill, as the Minister has repeatedly said, is to make the online world a safer place, by doing what we all agree must be done—making what is illegal offline, illegal online. That is why so many Members think that the lack of regulation around pornography is a major omission in the Bill.

The new clause stipulates age and consent checks for anyone featured in pornographic content. It addresses the proliferation of pornographic content that is both illegal and harmful, protecting women, children and minorities on both sides of the camera.

The Bill presents an opportunity to end the proliferation of illegal and harmful content on the internet. Representations of sexual violence, animal abuse, incest, rape, coercion, abuse and exploitation—particularly directed towards women and children—are rife. Such content can normalise dangerous and abusive acts and attitudes, leading to real-world harm. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said in her eloquent speech earlier, we are seeing an epidemic of violence against women and girls online. When bile and hatred is so prolific online, it bleeds into the offline space. There are real-world harms that flow from that.

The Minister has said how much of a priority tackling violence against women and girls is for him. Knowing that, and knowing him, he will understand that pornography is always harmful to children, and certain kinds of pornographic content are also potentially harmful to adults. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, the BBFC has responsibility for classifying pornographic content to ensure that it is not illegal, and that it does not promote an interest in abusive relationships, such as incest. Nor can it promote acts likely to cause serious physical harm, such as breath restriction or strangulation. In the United Kingdom, it is against the law to supply pornographic material that does not meet this established BBFC classification standard, but there is no equivalent standard in the online world because the internet evolved without equivalent regulatory oversight.

I know too that the Minister is determined to tackle some of the abusive and dangerous pornographic content online. The Bill does include a definition of pornography, in clause 66(2), but that definition is inadequate; it is too brief and narrow in scope. In my amendment, I propose a tighter and more comprehensive definition, based on that in part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, which was debated in this place and passed into law. The amendment will remove ambiguity and prevent confusion, ensuring that all websites know where they stand with regard to the law.

The new duty on pornographic websites aligns with the UK Government’s 2020 legislation regulating UK-established video-sharing platforms and video-on-demand services, both of which appeal to the BBFC’s R18 classification standards. The same “high standard of rules in place to protect audiences”, as the 2020 legislation put it, and “certain content standards” should apply equally to online pornography and offline pornography, UK-established video-sharing platforms and video-on-demand services.

Let me give some examples sent to me by Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, which, with CEASE, has done incredibly important work in this area. The names have been changed in these examples, for obvious reasons.

“There are also children who view pornography to try to understand their own sexual abuse. Unfortunately, what these children find is content that normalises the most abhorrent and illegal behaviours, such as 15-year-old Elizabeth, who has been sexually abused by a much older relative for a number of years. The content she found on pornography sites depicted older relatives having sex with young girls and the girls enjoying it. It wasn’t until she disclosed her abuse that she realised that it was not normal.

Carrie is a 16-year-old who was being sexually abused by her stepfather. She thought this was not unusual due to the significant amount of content she had seen on pornography sites showing sexual relationships within stepfamilies.”

That is deeply disturbing evidence from Barnardo’s.

Although in theory the Bill will prevent under-18s from accessing such content, the Minister knows that under-18s will be able to bypass regulation through technology like VPNs, as the DCMS Committee and the Bill Committee—I served on both—were told by experts in various evidence sessions. The amendment does not create a new law; it merely moves existing laws into the online space. There is good cause to regulate and sometimes prohibit certain damaging offline content; I believe it is now our duty to provide consistency with legislation in the online world.