Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Friday 9th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that I have the opportunity to speak today in this Second Reading debate on the Online Safety Bill introduced by my noble friend Lady Howe. I am very supportive of the Bill and I commend the noble Baroness for bringing the Bill before the House.

The statistics in this area, to my mind, are a matter of real concern. In 2008, a YouGov survey found that 27% of boys under the age of 18 access pornography each week, with 5% accessing pornography every day. According to Livingstone et al, in a 2005 London School of Economics publication, almost one in eight children have visited a pornographic website showing violent images. These statistics show that a significant proportion of children and young people in the UK today have been exposed to pornographic material at a young age.

We need to ask ourselves what the impact of consuming pornography is on children and young people who are growing to maturity. It seems to me that currently in the UK we are, as Jackie Kemp recently noted in the Scotsman,

“in the midst of a massive, not very well-organised social experiment”,

where we are effectively allowing children and young people easily to access pornography without thought of what the possible consequences might be of letting this happen.

Studies conducted in recent years have illustrated that accessing pornographic material can have a damaging impact on the well-being of children and young people. Michael Flood, in an article published in 2009 in the Child Abuse Review, found that for children and young people exposure to pornography can,

“lead to emotional disturbance, sexual knowledge and liberalised attitudes, shifts in sexual behaviour, and sexist and objectifying understandings. Particularly for boys and young men, the use of pornography may exacerbate violence-supportive social norms and encourage their participation in sexual abuse”.

The Witherspoon Institute, a US charity, published a report in 2010 entitled The Social Costs of Pornography. The report notes that pornography has now “infected modern childhood” and that this is having deeply detrimental effects. The report outlines that consumption of pornography gives children a “very bad model” of how to engage in healthy relationships and that in the US more and more teenagers are having to seek treatment for pornography addictions. I have been informed that this is also the case in the UK.

In 2010, Dr Linda Papadopoulos, in a Home Office report considering the sexualisation of children, stated:

“The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualized images, a tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm”.

The evidence is clear. It seems apparent to me that exposure to pornographic material can have serious consequences for children and young people. Consequently, I believe that we must take action to protect children and young people online, which is why I am here today speaking in support of this Bill.

I believe that the Online Safety Bill before us puts forward measures which could make a real difference to children and young people right across the UK. I believe that it would put in place a sensible and achievable regulatory framework which would protect children and young people from accessing pornography. I strongly reject the argument that this represents any form of private sector censorship.

I am especially supportive of the “opt-in” system which is outlined in the Bill. This system, as has already been outlined by a number of the previous speakers, would require internet service providers and mobile phone operators to provide a filtering service to ensure that pornographic material cannot be accessed on the internet unless the user has opted-in to view it. This system would ensure that children and young people could not stumble across such material online by accident and would protect them from the consequences of consuming such images.

In closing, I should like to reflect on comments made by the Portman Clinic psychotherapist John Woods in an article in Psychologies magazine in 2010. Dr Woods, like many experts working with children and young people affected by the consequences of exposure to pornography, believes that we need to regulate access to pornographic material online. He outlined the following:

“We still have this ideal of free speech and expression. We think there’s nothing wrong with sex, and we shouldn’t go back to moral hypocrisy. But the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Regulation is the only answer. And it can’t be difficult”.

As Dr Woods says, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. This Bill will redress the balance and provide the effective regulation that we need to protect our children and young people. I commend the Bill to the House.