Online Safety Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister will see the logic of a level playing field to deliver a policy with widespread support across all ages and political parties. Indeed, without addressing pornography separately—and, in turn, quickly —we will pass a Bill with no discernible impact before the next general election. While they are walking to the polling station, parents will still fear what their children are looking at online. This is a quick win and a popular move, and I hope the Government will amend the Bill accordingly so that this House does not need to do so when we revisit this important issue on Report.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a tremendous honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Browne, who put the case extremely well; I agree with every word he just said. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, for bringing forward this issue, which she has done extremely well. I thank Christian Action Research and Education, which has been fundamental in thinking through some of these issues and has written an extremely good brief on the subject. There is indeed an urgent need for consistent regulation of pornographic content wherever it occurs online, whether it is in Section 3, Section 4, Section 5 or wherever. That is why, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I have tabled amendments to address age verification on pornography and harms in the round.

Our amendments, which we will get to on Thursday and on later days in Committee, are different from those raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and others, but it is worth noting that many of the principles are the same. In particular, all pornographic content should be subject to the same duties, in the interests of consistency and transparency, wherever it is. Porn is porn, regardless of where it occurs online, and it carries the same risk of harm, particularly to children, whether it is accessed on social media or on a dedicated porn site.

We know from the Children’s Commissioner’s research that, for instance, Twitter was absolutely the online platform where young people were most likely to have seen pornography. Not Pornhub or one of the big tubes—on Twitter. We also know that children will consistently watch porn on dedicated porn sites. So why do we have inconsistent regulation of pornographic content in the Bill? This is the question I address to my noble friend the Minister. We can and we will get to the debate on how we will do this—indeed, I welcome further discussion with the Minister on how, and encourage him to have conversations across the House on this.

For today, we must look at why we have inconsistent regulation for pornographic content and what that means. As currently drafted, Part 3 services and Part 5 services are not subject to the same duties, as the noble Baroness rightly pointed out. Part 3 services, which include the biggest and most popular pornographic websites, such as Pornhub and Xvideos, as well as sites that host pornographic content, such as Twitter, will not be subject to regulation, including age verification, until secondary legislation is introduced, thereby delaying regulation of the biggest porn sites until at the very least 2025, if not 2026. This will create a massively unlevel playing field which, as others have said, will disincentivise compliance across the board, as well as leaving children with unfettered access to pornography on both social media sites and other user-to-user sites such as Pornhub.

Meanwhile, whichever commercially produced pornography websites are left in Part 5 will, as has already been suggested, simply change their functionality to become user-to-user and avoid regulation for another three years. I have a way in which this can be prevented and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, has her way, but for today I stand with her in asking why the Government think this lack of consistency and fragmentation in the regulation of an industry that destroys childhoods and has implications that reverberate across society are to be accepted.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. It is clear to me that there is a consensus across the Committee and at every stage of the Bill that pornography should be regulated in a way that is consistent, clear and implemented as quickly as possible following Royal Assent—I have suggested within six months. Therefore, I would welcome discussions with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, the Minister and others to ensure that this can be achieved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Could the noble Lord advise us on how he would categorise a site such as Twitter, on which it is estimated that 13% of the page deliveries are to do with pornography? Does it qualify as a pornography site? To me, it is ambiguous. Such a large amount of its financial revenue comes from pages connected with pornography that it seems it has a very big foot in the pornography industry. How would he stop sites gaming definitions to benefit from one schedule or another? Does he think that puts great pressure on the regulator to be constantly moving the goalposts in order to capture who it thinks might be gaming the system, instead of focusing on content definition, which has a 50-year pedigree, is very well defined in law and is an altogether easier status to analyse and be sure about?

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

The Twitter scenario, and other scenarios of mixed sites, are some of the most challenging that we have to deal with. But I would say, straightforwardly, “Look, 13% is a big chunk, but the primary purpose of Twitter is not the delivery of pornography”. I use Twitter on a daily basis and I have never seen pornography on it. I understand that it is there and that people can go for it, and that is an issue, but I think people out there would say that for most people, most of the time, the primary purpose of Twitter is not pornography.

What we want to do—in answer to the noble Lord’s second point—is create an incentive for people to be recategorised in the right direction. There is an assumption here that it is all going to be about gaming the system. I actually think that there is an opportunity here for genuine changes. There will be a conversation with Twitter. It will be interesting, given Twitter’s current management—apparently it is run by a dog, so there will be a conversation with the dog that runs Twitter. In that conversation, the regulator, Ofcom, on our behalf, will be saying, “You could change your terms of service and get rid of pornography”. Twitter will say yes or no. If it says no, Ofcom will say, “Well, here are all the things we expect you to do in order to wall off that part of the site”.

That is a really healthy and helpful conversation to have with Twitter. I expect it is listening now and already thinking about how it will respond. But it would expect that kind of treatment and conversation to be different; and I think the public would expect that conversation to be a different and better conversation than just saying “Twitter, you’re Pornhub. We’re just going to treat you like Pornhub”.

That is the distinction. As I say, we have an opportunity to get people to be more robust about either limiting or removing pornography, and I fear that the amendments we have in front of us would actually undermine rather than enhance that effort.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes, that is correct. I was trying to address the points raised by the noble Baroness, but the noble Lord is right. The point on whether people might try to be treated differently by allowing comments or reviews on their content is that they would be treated the same way. That is the motivation behind the noble Baroness’s amendment trying to narrow the definition. There is no risk that a publisher of pornographic content could evade their Part 5 duties by enabling comments or reviews on their content. That would be the case whether or not those reviews contained words, non-verbal indications that a user liked something, emojis or any other form of user-generated content.

That is because the Bill has been designed to confer duties on different types of content. Any service with provider pornographic content will need to comply with the Part 5 duties to ensure that children cannot normally encounter such content. If they add user-generated functionality—

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am sorry to come back to the same point, but let us take the Twitter example. As a publisher of pornography, does Twitter then inherit Part 5 responsibilities in as much as it is publishing pornography?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is covered in the Bill as Twitter. I am not quite sure what my noble friend is asking me. The harms that he is worried about are covered in different ways. Twitter or another social medium that hosts such content would be hosting it, not publishing it, so would be covered by Part 3 in that instance.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Maybe my noble friend the Minister could write to me to clarify that point, because it is quite a significant one.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Perhaps I will speak to the noble Lord afterwards and make sure I have his question right before I do so.

I hope that answers the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and that on that basis, she will be happy to withdraw her amendment.