Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Friday 9th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for introducing the Bill, which is both principled and practical and has an elegant simplicity that is not characteristic of all proposed legislation. The revelations concerning Jimmy Savile have shocked the nation and it is right that we are shocked. We are much less tolerant, as a society, of inappropriate sexual contact between adults and children than seems to have been the case a generation or more ago. We are very protective of the bodies of the young with, it seems, an exception for the eyes.

Why is it that we are not more outraged by the way in which internet pornography, often of an extreme and degrading kind, can assault the eyes, the minds and the imaginations of children and young people who may not even have reached the age of puberty? Is it because we are unconvinced that the visual has power to shape our thinking and our responses? That cannot be the case; otherwise we would not do so much to encourage our children and young people to see great art, to appreciate sculpture, to have their imaginations enlivened, to be thrilled by what they see as the creative expression of human beings in relationship with each other and with the world in which they live. So our carelessness in relation to online access to pornography by children and young people ought to be a major scandal in itself.

There is, after all, a growing body of academic research which suggests that pornographic images can remain in the minds of young children and disturb their psychological and sexual development. We should hardly be surprised at this, since for generations we have classified films so that those with the most disturbing images would not be seen by those under 12, 15 or 18. Somehow we have allowed online pornography and violence to be treated differently, as if we are entirely helpless to control it. Of course, as many of us have read, the issue is more pressing in the United Kingdom because of the independent access so many children and young people have to the internet, whether in the privacy of their bedroom or on a mobile phone. It is not always recognised that our children are more likely to be online independently than is the average elsewhere in Europe, or that half of all teenagers in the UK now have a smart phone and can access the internet at any time.

The fact that less than a third of all parents use the present parental controls on those phones, where they exist, to block unsuitable content is probably not an indicator that parents do not care, but that they are uncertain what to do and are given too little advice by internet service providers and mobile phone operators. After all, it is the parents who most often seek advice from their children about access to the internet and how to operate tablets, iPhones and all the rest. In your Lordships’ House, the Communications Select Committee, on which I sit, has recently gone paperless. We have been provided with iPads and access all our material online. It would be fair to say that most of the teenagers in the UK might have adapted rather more quickly than noble Lords have to this modest evolution in our process. All this suggests that there is a need to ensure that any parental controls are sufficiently robust so that attempts to change settings inappropriately are quickly identified.

I support the opting-in procedure, and the age verification system already in use for online gambling, and will not repeat what other noble Lords have said so well. I am very surprised that the recent government consultation made no mention of this and look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on that matter. I am also glad to see the Bill making provision for additional filtering of content so that parents can make informed judgments about what their children should see at different stages of their development. Overprotected children can sometimes be ill equipped for the world at the age of 18, and it is not the intention of this Bill to shield young people from that which is educative; only from that which is deeply harmful.

However, I have a question about the definition of pornography itself. I understand, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, pointed out, that the reference to “pornographic images” is being used in the same way as in Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, where the possession of extreme pornographic images was made an offence. Is relying on the definition of pornography in that Act fully sufficient for the purposes of this one? If I have understood it correctly, it is the possession of extreme and degrading images that is made illegal, but perhaps not everything that might properly be regarded as highly sexualised images, such as those that objectify women or scenes of graphic violence, which may not be pornographic but which are deeply disturbing. We cannot catch everything in a definition but I still wonder how robust this definition is.

My other concern relates to the grooming of young people online, on which I share some of the convictions of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. I have been told that children and young people who have accessed pornography are more open to grooming in chat rooms, but I doubt whether the two are necessarily connected. Should something on the lines of this Bill become law, it would not remove all the dangers of the internet for children and young people, nor is it claimed that it would. The sexual grooming of young people can be very hard to identify and is not easily blocked, if at all. Even with the passage of this Bill, parents, teachers and carers would need to ensure their children were internet savvy, not just technically, but in interpreting the content they access and the contacts they make. Almost three years ago, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety produced the “Zip it, Block it, Flag it” strategy to help children and young people stay safe online. It would still need to be used.

Although teaching our children and young people to be vigilant online remains a priority, the provisions in this Bill would be very welcome indeed. It would achieve a healthier and safer internet culture, which is why I so warmly support it.