Children’s Privacy

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

This applies to everybody equally, and those with disabilities should come forward. Those guilty of abuse should be prosecuted. There is a straight line between what we are talking about, which may be general intrusion such as the publication of a photograph, and, of course, the publication of sexualised images of children, on which the full weight of the criminal law needs rightly to come down.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, surely the examples that the Minister gave are very different. If there is a general crowd scene, and an individual child is not identified by name, that is distinct from circumstances where a child is identifiable and where consent has not been given. Under what circumstances does the public interest require that a child’s face should not be pixilated? Is there any case at all, in terms of journalistic integrity or the freedom of investigative journalism, that requires an identifiable child’s face to be published without consent?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I acknowledge the work which the noble Baroness has done and her personal experience in this area, which I am aware of and which, obviously, we all understand. In the case of the protection of privacy, everybody—certainly every parent—understands the lengths to which we are all prepared to go to protect our children and our children’s safety. The question is about weighing the balance between that right to privacy and the right and privilege of free speech and freedom of the press, which is an underscored part of our democracy.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the Minister has said that free speech is somehow undermined by publishing an identifiable child’s image. How is it undermined?

[Lord Bates]

I did not say that it was undermined. With respect to the noble Lord, what I actually said was that there is a balance, in a free society, between being able to produce and publish images and identifying those images—in other words between the human rights aspects of Article 6, which deal with protection and privacy, and of Article 8, which deals with free speech. The courts deal with that and the self-regulators deal with that. We can deal with it in a common-sense way without the need to criminalise everyone who produces an image of a child.