Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th February 2021 Lords Chamber

This unhappy episode certainly does not build trust. It compounds the sense that, going forward, we need answers—and quickly. But there is a way forward. In order for me not to push my amendment, I ask the Minister, for whom I have great respect, to make two central commitments to doing what I strongly believe the Government need to do. First, I ask that the provision in the online harms Bill for addressing commercial pornographic websites be as robust as those in Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act. These provisions must fully engage pornographic websites showing both non-user-generated and user-generated pornography, and provide enforcement mechanisms through IP blocking that are as robust and accessible as those in Part 3. Secondly, given that the online harms Bill still has not been published and there is very little chance that it will protect children from exposure to online pornography —including pornography depicting rough sex acts—for at least another two years and probably more, I ask the Government now to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act as an interim measure to protect our children in the long term. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in returning to an issue that I raised at Second Reading, it is a particular pleasure to support Amendment 177A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I support what she said about the protection of children and young people and the harmful effects on their formative influences to which they are exposed. She said it so eloquently and powerfully; I think the whole House will be deeply appreciative of that.

In 1994, while a Member of another place, I tabled an amendment to the then criminal justice Bill. It set out to make it an offence to show gratuitously violent videos to children. At the time, against the opposition of the Home Office, it was supported by 80 Conservative Members of Parliament—including Sir Ivan Lawrence, then chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs—along with colleagues from all sides of the House and the Labour Front Bench; the shadow Home Secretary at the time was Tony Blair MP. After facing the prospect of defeat, the Government agreed to introduce an amendment in your Lordships’ House and the law was changed.

One of the things that united left, right and centre was the publication of a report by a group of 25 leading child psychologists who said that they had been, in their words, “naive” in denying a link between violent videos and violence by youngsters. The report was led by Professor Elizabeth Newson, an eminent psychologist and head of Nottingham University’s child development research unit, and was drawn up in the aftermath of James Bulger’s murder by two 10 year-old boys. At the boys’ trial, the judge said that their actions might have been encouraged by scenes in the horror film “Child’s Play 3”.

In two days’ time, on 12 February, it will be 28 years since the tragic death of James Bulger. Although I had raised the issue of the link between gratuitously violent material and behaviour prior to James’s death, what happened there in Liverpool, the city which included my parliamentary constituency when I served in another place, no doubt caused a proper, detailed examination of the factors which led to his appalling murder.

I last referred to those events in your Lordships’ House four years ago next month, on 20 March 2017, when I spoke in the debate on age verification of pornographic websites. It is with some sadness that, in intervening to support the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I still feel it necessary to argue the case for mitigating the effects and impact of graphic imagery on children and young people. I said:

“The evidence of the damage being done to children and young people through easy access to pornography is deeply disturbing and should give us all pause.”—[Official Report, 20/3/17; col. 21.]


More importantly, I quoted the then Justice Minister, who said that the internet was,

“driving greater access to more worrying imagery online. In the extreme, the sexualisation of youth is manifesting itself in younger conviction ages for rape”.

Given that statement, and the comments of the Joint Select Committee which considered the draft Domestic Abuse Bill about the distortion of relationships engendered by violent imagery—to which I referred at Second Reading —the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, should be accepted by the Government and the House. It is long overdue.

The Government argue for an evidence-based approach to making policy. Four years ago, the Government and Parliament were of the view that children and young people needed to be protected from graphic and distorting images. The links between such imagery and domestic violence were raised in the debate on 20 March 2017 by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, my noble friend Lord Listowel and the noble Lords, Lord Morrow and Lord Paddick. Yet the seminal legislation that we debated and passed then has not been implemented. As we have heard, during the past four years, notwithstanding the will of Parliament expressed in the Digital Economy Act 2017, a whole cohort of teenagers has been growing up without any requirement for the relevant websites to reduce access to those under 18.

In an article published online on 21 January 2021, the magazine Teen Vogue implied that:

“Porn that portrays nonconsensual sex, for instance, isn’t necessarily misogynist if it centers all characters’ pleasure and agency.”


I hope your Lordships will allow what is being said there to sink in. There was an outcry and the article now refers instead to:

“Porn that portrays fantasies about nonconsensual sex”.


We are having this debate just a few days after last week’s UK Sexual Abuse & Sexual Violence Awareness Week. I am not convinced that women who have suffered rape or other sexual violence will agree that changing the wording to refer to fantasies is sufficient to reduce the harm that those messages give.

Noble Lords will remember that at Second Reading, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, I asked the Government about research that they had commissioned on

“exploring legal pornography use and its influence on harmful behaviours and attitudes towards women and girls”.

It was due to have been published in autumn 2019, but was actually published on 15 January—last month. Of course I welcome this, but find myself extremely disappointed in three ways. First, when Mrs Fiona Bruce, the MP for Congleton, raised the publication of this research last summer, the Minister in the other place reassured her that the publication would be “soon”. In reality, it took another six months. Secondly, the published reports make it plain that the research was concluded in February 2020. It should have shed light on the Bill before us today, both when it was being debated in another place and during our own Second Reading. Thirdly, although I asked the Government Front Bench specifically about this research on Second Reading, the subsequent letter to Peers, dated 11 days after the publication of the research, did not mention it.

The truth is that the reports were published very quietly. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I know of them only by chance; in my case, a friend accidentally stumbled on them and sent them to me. Perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking that the Government, while recognising that they had to publish these taxpayer-funded reports, rather hoped that no one would notice them. There has certainly been zero media pick-up, although I hope that will change thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.