Online Safety Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell]

I wholeheartedly agree. Zach, if you are listening right now, you are an absolute hero—you have changed so much for so many people. Without your effort, this would not be happening today. In future, we can look back on this and say, “You know what? Democracy does work.”

I thank all hon. Members for their campaigning work to raise Zach’s law in the public consciousness. It even reached the US. I am sure many hon. Members dance along to Beyoncé of an evening or listen to her in the car when they are bopping home; a few months ago she changed one of her YouTube videos, which had flashing images in it, because the Epilepsy Society reached out to describe the dangers that it would cause. These campaigns work. They are about public awareness and about changing the law. We talk about the 15 minutes of shame that people face on social media, but ultimately the shame is on the platforms for forcing us to legislate to make them do the right thing.

I will end with one small point. The internet has evolved; the world wide web has evolved; social media is evolving; the metaverse, 3D virtual reality worlds and augmented reality are changing. I urge the Government or the House to look at creating a Committee specifically on the Bill. I know that there are lots of arguments that it should be a Sub-Committee of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, but the truth is that the online world is changing dramatically. We cannot take snapshots every six months, every year or every two years and assume that they will pick up on all the changes happening in the world.

As the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said, TikTok did not even exist when the Bill was first discussed. We now have an opportunity to ask what is coming next, keep pace with it and put ethics and morality at the heart of the Bill to ensure that it is fit for purpose for many decades to come. I thank the Minister for his fantastic work; my partner in crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge, for her incredible work; and all Members across the House. Please, please, let us get this through tonight.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) and so many hon. Members who have made thoughtful contributions. I will confine my comments to the intersection of new clauses 28 and 45 to 50 with the impact of online pornography on children in this country.

There has been no other time in the history of humanity when we have exposed children to the violent, abusive, sexually explicit material that they currently encounter online. In 2008, only 14% of children under 13 had seen pornography; three years later, that figure had risen to 49%, correlating with the rise in children owning smartphones. Online pornography has a uniquely pernicious impact on children. For very young children, there is an impact just from seeing the content. For older teenagers, there is an impact on their behaviour.

We are seeing more and more evidence of boys exhibiting sexually aggressive behaviour, with actions such as strangulation, which we have dealt with separately in this House, and misogynistic attitudes. Young girls are being conditioned into thinking that their value depends on being submissive or objectified. That is leading children down a pathway that leads to serious sexual offending by children against children. Overwhelmingly, the victims are young girls.

Hon. Members need not take my word for it: after Everyone’s Invited began documenting the nature and extent of the sexual experiences happening in our schools, an Ofsted review revealed that the most prevalent victims of serious sexual assaults among the under-25s are girls aged 15 to 17. In a recent publication in anticipation of the Bill, the Children’s Commissioner cited the example of a teenage boy arrested for his part in the gang rape of a 14-year old girl. In his witness statement to the police, the boy said that it felt just like a porn film.

Dr John Foubert, the former White House adviser on rape prevention, has said:

“It wasn’t until 10 years ago when I came to the realization that the secret ingredient in the recipe for rape was not secret at all…That ingredient…is today’s high speed Internet pornography.”

The same view has been expressed, in one form or another, by the chief medical officers for England and for Wales, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the Government Equalities Office, the Children’s Commissioner, Ofsted and successive Ministers.

New clause 28 requests an advocacy body to represent and protect the interests of child users. I welcome the principle behind the new clause. I anticipate that the Minister will say that he is already halfway there by making the Children’s Commissioner a statutory consultee to Ofcom, along with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and others who have been named in this debate. However, whatever the Government make of the Opposition’s new clause, they must surely agree that it alights on one important point: the online terrain in respect of child protection is evolving very fast.

By the time the Bill reaches the statute book, new providers will have popped up again. With them will come unforeseen problems. When the Bill was first introduced, TikTok did not exist, as my hon. Friend the Member for Watford said a moment ago, and neither did OnlyFans. That is precisely the kind of user-generated site that is likely to try and dodge its obligations to keep children safe from harm, partly because it probably does not even accept that it exposes them to harm: it relies on the fallacy that the user is in control, and operates an exploitative business model predicated on that false premise.

I think it important for someone to represent the issue of child protection on a regular basis because of the issue of age verification, which we have canvassed, quite lightly, during the debate. Members on both sides of the House have pointed out that the current system which allows children to self-certify their date of birth is hopelessly out of date. I know that Ministers envisage something much more ambitious with the Bill’s age assurance and age verification requirements, including facial recognition technology, but I think it is worth our having a constant voice reporting on the adequacy of whatever age assurance steps internet providers may take, because we know how skilful children can be in navigating the internet. We know that there are those who have the technological skills to IP shroud or to use VPN. I also think it important for there to be a voice to maintain the pressure on the Government—which is what I myself want to do tonight—for an official Government inquiry into pornography harms, akin to the one on gambling harms that was undertaken in 2019. That inquiry was extremely important in identifying all the harm that was caused by gambling. The conclusions of an equivalent inquiry into pornography would leave no wriggle room for user-generated services to deny the risk of harm.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) pointed out, very sensibly, that her new clauses 45 to 50 build on all the Law Commission’s recommendations. It elides with so much work that has already been done in the House. We have produced, for instance, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which dealt with revenge porn, whether threatened or actual and whether genuine or fake, and with coercive control. Many Members recognise what was achieved by all our work a couple of years ago. However, given the indication from Ministers that they are minded to accept the new clauses in one form or another, I should like them to explain to the House how they think the Bill will capture the issue of sexting, if, indeed, it will capture that issue at all.

As the Minister will know, sexting means the exchanging of intimate images by, typically, children, sometimes on a nominally consensual basis. Everything I have read about it seems to say, “Yes, prima facie this is an unlawful act, but no, we do not seek to criminalise children, because we recognise that they make errors of judgment.” However, while I agree that it may be proportionate not to criminalise children for doing this, it remains the case that when an image is sent with the nominal consent of the child—it is nearly always a girl—it is often a product of duress, the image is often circulated much more widely than the recipient, and that often has devastating personal consequences for the young girl involved. All the main internet providers now have technology that can identify a nude image. It would be possible to require them to prevent nude images from being shared when, because of extended age-verification abilities, they know that the user is a child. If the Government are indeed minded to accept new clauses 45 to 50, I should like them to address that specific issue of sexting rather than letting it fall by the wayside as something separate, or outside the ambit of the Bill.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The last Back-Bench speaker is Miriam Cates.