Pornography

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I have to admit that I am not an expert on pornography. I took the liberty of putting my name down for this debate because I am very deeply concerned about the extent to which disadvantage is being passed down from generation to generation in our society today.

Judging from two reports on pornography which I have read recently, pornography is a growing problem in our society. It can seriously damage families, sometimes making healthy sexual relationships difficult to sustain and sometimes damaging parents’ relationships to one another and to their children. In our society today, family breakdown is an ever-increasing problem. To give an idea of the importance of this problem, I shall give one statistic and not bother your Lordships with more. It is now generally agreed by experts that the cost to this nation of family breakdown and dysfunction exceeds £40 billion a year—more than the entire defence budget.

Pornography can stand in the way of healthy sexual relationships and interfere with parents’ ability to care for their child. I believe that parental commitment and support are so important that we should be doing much more than we are today to prepare our young people and teenagers as they move through school, secondary school and their teens for the responsibilities of parenthood when that comes along. In talking about preparation for parenthood, I am talking not about technical details about the care of a child, such as putting on a nappy and making the drink, but about helping prospective parents to grow up as confident individuals committed to doing their best for their child or children and believing that they can do so. I believe that pornography could be extremely damaging to that objective.

Why is it that today we teach our adolescent children in school about the importance of passing exams and getting a job—of course, that is very important—but scarcely a word is ever said by schools or government about preparing children in our secondary schools for the responsibilities and challenges of being good parents in the future? To this, again, pornography is relevant. Today we have a large and increasing number of chaotic families. Social services do their best to pick up the pieces, but better preparation for the responsibilities of parents could prevent so many of these problems.

I want to ask the Government to do two things for me. Would the Government consider the possibility of a clear statement in law that each parent is responsible for each of their children, as the law in Scotland provides? Will the Government legislate to prevent as far as possible these issues relating to pornography of which the noble Lords have been speaking this afternoon? That is all I plan to say this afternoon.