Online Pornography: Digital Economy Act 2017

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

On that particular piece of research, I will have to check with the department and write to the noble Baroness. We are quite clear that, when we bring back the Online Safety Bill, the focus will mostly be on the protection of children from harm. We can have a debate on some of the other issues—the tension between freedom of speech and what adults should have access to—sensibly and calmly, as noble Lords usually do, but we want to get this right for the protection of children.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the evidence that Barnardo’s gave to the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill? It said that the failure to enact the original age-verification legislation over three years ago has meant that thousands of children have continued to easily access pornography sites. Does the Minister agree with that? Given his comments today, will he undertake to tell Ofcom that its road map needs changing and that this needs to be a major priority, in that road map, for implementation?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Indeed. One of the issues my department has been discussing with Ofcom is age verification and age assurance. We have to remember that age verification is one form of age assurance. The other thing we have to be aware of is how technology changes very quickly, so we must make sure that we can be as flexible as possible so that Ofcom can update its guidelines or advice on tackling this. We are clear that we do not want to be technology-specific. We want to make sure that it is future-proofed when it comes to age verification and age assurance.