Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, on bringing forward this Bill, which seems to me to be very clear. It was good to witness her evident surprise at having to explain it to a bishop, but she need not have worried on that front.

I do not really understand why the Government, despite making it a manifesto commitment, are not prepared to support the Bill. I support it for three very simple reasons. It is written as seen through the eyes of victims and survivors, which is an essential orientation in framing it. It removes motivation as a test, because the fact that these images exist is enough, and motivation is always subjective and can be argued over for ever. It also restores power to the subject of the images rather than to the taker, which seems to me to be fairly essential.

I want to introduce another element that underlies all this, which might be picked up as this proceeds. Human beings are not commodities. I know that it sounds terribly Marxist to talk about the reification or commodification of people, but we are not commodities. It seems to me that women suffer commodification, whereby stuff can be traded without their consent, in any way that a producer desires. This is dehumanising.

We often hear that we need to better educate boys and men. As I observed to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, having read the minutes of the Wannsee Conference again recently, 12 out of 15 of the people who devised the final solution in Nazi Germany had earned doctorates. Education does not guarantee virtue. That is why we need legislation.

I wholeheartedly support the noble Baroness in this Bill, unless the Government can come up with a way of achieving the same goals in a different form—but it needs to be done quickly.