Digital Economy

Maggie Throup Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I am sorry that I am taking a long time to answer my right hon. Friend’s point, but it is an important one. I will finish with the last intervention before I take more interventions.

The Government are keeping a weather eye on the availability of pornography on social media platforms. I shall talk more about that, but I reassure my right hon. Friend that we will introduce further measures. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who is in the Chamber, has a duty to report back on the impact of the regulations 12 to 18 months after their commencement and he will look at just the issues my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has raised. I will make a little progress before taking further interventions.

There is no doubt, going back to the work of the Women and Equalities Committee, that the large amount of pornography available on the internet in the UK, often for free and with no protections to ensure that those accessing it are old enough to do so, is leading to a change in the way that young people understand healthy relationships, sex and consent. I know that that is a major issue of concern to everybody across the House. A 2016 report commissioned by the Children’s Commissioner and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children made that absolutely clear. More than half of the children sampled had been exposed to online pornography by the age of 15, nearly half of the boys thought that the pornography they had seen was realistic, and just under half wished to emulate what they had seen.

The introduction of a requirement for age-verification controls is a necessary step in tackling those issues and it contributes towards our commitment to make the UK a safer place to be online, particularly for children and young people.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, when children have such experiences at a very young age, it can affect them for the whole of their life and have a big impact on their relationships as they grow up and get married? Indeed, it can affect not just their relationship with their partner, but their relationships with their children as well.

[Margot James]

I very much agree that, if children see hardcore pornography when they are too young to understand it, it can have long-lasting and very negative impacts on their development and future relationships. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The draft Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations set out the basis on which pornographic material is to be regarded as

“made available on a commercial basis”.

The regulations cover material on websites and applications that charge for access. They also cover circumstances where a person makes available pornographic material on the internet for free, but then receives payment or reward for doing so, for example, through advertising revenue.

It was clear from the debates in this House during the passage of the Digital Economy Act that it was not Parliament’s intention that social media sites on which pornography is only a small part of the overall content should be required to have age verification.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

I knew that parliamentarians on both sides of the Chamber agree that we have a duty to provide the framework to protect those who are unable to protect themselves. That is why I welcome the legislative steps to implement the age-verification controls that we are talking about tonight. That is especially the case since I have read some of the evidence, although that also made me question whether we are going far enough—a question on all our lips tonight.

The survey carried out on behalf of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s Childline service showed that one in five children aged between 11 and 17 said that they had seen pornographic images that had shocked or upset them. That is why this legislation is so important.

We have talked about technology and how fast-moving it is, and that can work both ways. It could perhaps help us to provide stronger controls if we grasp what may happen in the coming months and make sure that we use the technology to the fullest. However, we must also be aware that technology can advantage the online providers of the pornography that we are trying to prevent our young people from seeing. It is important that we keep up to date with what is happening in the technology world. As others have said, the measures should be the starting point, not the end point. I would really appreciate it if the Minister clarified what further steps were being taken to make sure that we moved forward with this over the coming months and years.

The key focus of what we are discussing is that children should be protected online in the same way as they are offline. We have other prohibitions for goods that are inappropriate for different ages, such as tobacco and alcohol—to me, this is an extension of those principles. It is right that we look at how to protect children and young people from inappropriate online images.

There has been a lot of talk tonight about social media and how the legislation does not cover that. Hopefully, some of the responsible providers of social media are watching and listening and, through the nudge effect, will be able to implement good practices based on the new regulations that we are introducing for online providers. We know that the nudge principle works in other areas, so perhaps we can keep an eye on that as well to make sure that we take every possible advantage from what we are discussing across all the different platforms.

It is also important that we do not forget about parental responsibility, because that is still a big way of stopping children seeing inappropriate images. When I was talking to a colleague earlier, she said that as parents she and her partner thought that they had done the right thing by putting the computer in the hallway so that they were walking past all the time, but such actions do not stop parents going out and leaving children at home as young adults. Whatever parents do, sometimes it is not enough, which is why I welcome these measures.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned that what we are doing might be misunderstood by parents, who may feel that they do not need to provide any parental guidance. We need to make sure that parents still understand that they have that responsibility and that the legislation and framework being put in are not a panacea, but the start of a long pathway to making sure that we protect our children from pornography and that they develop healthy, strong relationships and are not affected by what they see as children.