Online Safety Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

I appreciate that the Minister and the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), have brought forward a significant number of amendments, although it is unfortunate that they have come at such short notice that we have not had enough time to look at them properly, and I appreciate that they will bring forward more, but there is still more they need to do. Even with all the amendments and all the commitments we have seen, I am still not comfortable enough that my children and my children’s children will be as safe on the internet as they should be.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to support new clauses 7 and 33 in particular. I support them sometimes from a different angle from my hon. Friends, but fundamentally from the same angle: consent. I am not afraid to say that I have a different perspective from some hon. Members in this House in that I view sex work as a legitimate form of work under regulated and protected conditions, and pornography as part of that. What I do have a problem with is the lack of consent that occurs far too often not only in the industry—that may be too broad a term—but in particular content that we see online at the moment.

That is true particularly for those sex workers who might have produced content with consent at the time, as adults, but who later in life realise that they do not wish that material to be available any more—not just because they may be embarrassed about it, but perhaps because they just do not want that material commercially available and people making profits off their bodies any more. They are struggling to get content taken down because they are told, “You gave consent at the time and that can’t now be removed. You have to allow your body to be used.” We would not allow any other form of worker or artist to suffer that. In any other form of music or production, if they wished to remove their consent for it to be played, it would be taken down, but in pornography there seems to be a free-for-all where, even if people remove their consent, it still proliferates in copies of copies that are put all over the internet. That is not even to mention people who never gave their consent at all and experience revenge porn or their phones being hacked and the devastation that that can cause.

I might come from a different position on some of this, but I think we can be united in saying that of course we need better action on under-18s, which is very important, but even for those who have supposedly given their consent at one point or another, the removal of consent must be put into the Bill and platforms must have a strict responsibility to remove that content. Without that being in the Bill, there is a danger that platforms will continue to play loophole after loophole and the content will still be there when it should not be.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I was not planning to speak, but we have a couple of minutes so I will abuse that position.

I just want to say that I do not want new clause 7 to be lost in this debate and become part of the flotsam and jetsam of the tide of opinion that goes back and forth in this place, because new clause 7 is about consent. We are trying very hard to teach young men all about consent, and if we cannot do it from this place, then when can we do it? We can work out the details of the technology in time, as we always do. It is out there. Other people are way ahead of us in this matter. In fact, the people who produce this pornography are way ahead of us in this matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins]

Well, the regulator is required, and has the power, to take enforcement action against companies for failing to do so. That is what the legislation sets out, and we will be in a very different place from where we are now. That is why the Bill constitutes a very significant reform.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Collins]

Very briefly, and then I want to wrap up.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Could the Minister give me a reassurance about when consent is withdrawn? The image may initially have been there “consensually”—I would put that in inverted commas—so the platform is okay to put it there. However, if someone contacts the platform saying that they now want to change their consent—they may want to take a role in public life, having previously had a different role; I am not saying that about my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips)—my understanding is that there is no ability legally to enforce that content coming down. Can the Minister correct me, and if not, why is he not supporting new clause 7?