Online Safety Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, if a child goes to the Windmill club, the most famous strip club in Soho, the bouncers will rightly turn them away, no ifs, no buts: no entry, full stop. If a child tries to buy a knife on Amazon or to place a bet on Bet365.com, it will be the same story: you need proof of age. But every day, millions of children in this country watch pornography in their homes, at schools, on the bus, on devices of all kinds, without any hindrance at all. The Children’s Commissioner makes it really clear that this is not just raunchy pornography like in the old days of Razzle magazine. These are depictions of degradation, sexual coercion, aggression and exploitation, disproportionately targeted at teenage girls. As Dame Rachel de Souza said:

“Most of it is just plain abuse”.


The effects of this failed experiment are absolutely disastrous. The British Board of Film Classification says that half of 11 year-olds have seen porn, and according to the NSPCC, a third of child abuse offences are now committed by children. The answer is straight- forward in principle: we need to apply the rules on age verification for porn that exist in the real world to the online world. We need to address this harm immediately, before any more damage is done—before there is any metaverse or any more technology to spread it further.

I know that the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister all broadly agree with this sentiment, and that is why the Bill has:

“A duty to ensure that children are not normally able to encounter content that is regulated provider pornographic content in relation to the service (for example, by using age verification).”


But this vague power simply starts a long process of negotiation with the porn industry and with tech. At a very minimum, it will require a children protection consultation, a child’s access assessment, a guidance statement, an agreement on child protection guidance and codes, secondary legislation, parliamentary approval of the Ofcom child protection code, monitoring and engagement, engagement on the enforcement regime, test cases in the courts—and so on.

I appreciate that we are creating laws flexible enough to cope with technological evolution and I totally support that principle, but we should not reinvent the wheel. We tried that 30 years ago when the online porn industry started, and it failed. We need one regime for the real world and for the online world. This is an opportunity to send a message to the tech industries and to the British people that we mean business about protecting children, and to put Britain at the vanguard of child protection regulation.

I want to see this Bill on the statute book, and I am very grateful for engagement with the Minister, the Bill team and all those supporting the Bill. I look forward to suggestions on how we can close this gap. But if we cannot, I will table amendments that replace Part 5 of the Online Safety Bill with Part 3 of the Digital Economy Bill—a measure that has considerable support in another place.