Debates between Lord Farmer and Baroness Kidron during the 2015-2017 Parliament

Mon 20th Mar 2017
Digital Economy Bill
Lords Chamber

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Kidron
Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th March 2017

(7 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
Read Full debate Digital Economy Act 2017 View all Digital Economy Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 102-III Third marshalled list for Report (PDF, 182KB) - (20 Mar 2017)
Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

It certainly would. I beg the Minister’s pardon.

Lord Farmer Portrait Lord Farmer (Con)
- Hansard - -

My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment 25YD, tabled in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It would have the effect of requiring a review of the use of the term “extreme pornography” after two years and provide the opportunity to replace it after three years with a broader standard of protection enforced offline. I shall also speak against the Government’s amendments to Clauses 22 and 23. They would water down the Bill by deeming only the narrow category of “extreme pornographic material” unacceptable and not the wider category of prohibited material.

I understand that Part 3 of the Bill is primarily about protecting children and that the Opposition Front Benches do not want to provoke a discussion about adult access to porn. However, by asserting that adults should have online access to what is prohibited offline, it is they who have opened up this debate.

I also understand that the Government have legally founded reasons for their amendments. As we have heard, they are concerned, for example, about the mismatch between the Crown Prosecution Service guidance and what is actually prosecutable following developments in case law. Amendment 25YD would create a window of time in which to deal with this.

Standing back for a minute, it seems incomprehensible to a non-lawyer like myself that juries can determine that henceforth something is now acceptable that would, until fairly recently, have been considered obscene under law, and yet they bear no responsibility for meeting the societal costs that accrue when such lines of acceptability are moved.