Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I, too, very much support all aspects of the Online Safety Bill, but in the time available today I want to focus particularly on the issues raised by Clause 7 in Part 3: “Definition of a foreign pornographic service”. The question is how to regulate websites that originate outside of the UK, which are currently unregulated. I was very disturbed by the statistics in the report published last year by the Authority for Television on Demand. I am sure that noble Lords agree that it is concerning that in December 2013, some 44,000 primary school-age children visited an adult website from a PC or laptop—and that does not include the figures for other types of device. If we look at children aged between six and 17, the report estimates that at least 473,000 have accessed an adult internet service, mostly offshore. ATVOD also stated in its press release about the report:

“Most of the major offshore adult services are unregulated and allow free, unrestricted access to hardcore porn to visitors of any age—this includes 23 of the 25 adult websites most commonly accessed from the UK”.

This situation surely must be a concern to policymakers. ATVOD recommended in its report:

“One option would be to mirror the licensing requirements being introduced for foreign online gambling services. It may be possible to establish a similar licensing regime for foreign porn services whose services are being used in the UK”.

Other noble Lords have referred to this, and I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for bringing such a proposal to the House today.

A similar scheme was debated last year when the House considered amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on the second day of Committee on the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. The noble Baroness reminded the Committee that technically, foreign-owned websites could be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, but reported that no such prosecutions had taken place since 2005. No other regulation of foreign-based websites exists, which means that they have no obligation to provide any of the age verification requirements that parents hope for—yet parents expect that sort of age verification to be available on our high streets when a young person buys a DVD. I am pleased to support the proposal in this Bill that ATVOD should also be ensuring that age verification is in place for 18-rated material as set out in Clause 6, and that it extends into the licensing scheme proposed in Part 3.

From a logical point of view, it seems unsustainable that the same situation does not apply online as it does offline when the material originates outside the EU. How can that be right? A young person may not be able to buy a DVD, but could in theory access the same content or stronger in a coffee shop with unfiltered wi-fi on the same high street. Indeed, when asked recently about the need for age verification of such websites, 74% of those questioned said that age verification should apply to websites based both in the UK and outside it.

One element that was not debated last year with a similar licensing scheme was the option of blocking payments to websites. I am pleased to see that the Gambling Commission is successfully using this approach with unlicensed gambling websites. In this regard, the publication on Monday of its 2014-15 annual report is exceptionally timely for the purposes of today’s debate. It states:

“Of the small number of illegal operators identified, some responded immediately to our request to stop operating, while others have been cut off from accessing the British market by the main payment providers and advertising platforms.

“Arrangements with payment service providers, platforms such as Google and Facebook and with advertisers are working well and we have received a great deal of support in disrupting the activities of the unlicensed operators. We have used these arrangements successfully, specifically with payment providers, on five occasions between 1 November 2014 and 1 April 2015 to prevent unregulated access to the British market”.

It is very encouraging to know that this approach works and I hope that noble Lords will support such an approach to foreign pornographic websites.

ATVOD, in its report from which I have already quoted extensively, states that it has been working with the UK payments industry, which has made it clear that without clear case law they cannot prevent payments for fear of legal challenge. Part 3 would give legal certainty. There is much more that I would like to say but I must have regard and respect for the time limit, so I will stop.