Media Bill

Debate between Miriam Cates and Jackie Doyle-Price

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the Media Bill. I wish to focus narrowly on part 4, which sets out the provisions on public service broadcasting and gives Ofcom powers to draft and enforce a video-on-demand code. The Bill proposes to do that by extending audience protection measures, for example, age ratings and content warnings, that are currently enforced for broadcast media and BBC iPlayer-only to all on-demand programme services.

A number of colleagues have mentioned how the media landscape has evolved rapidly in our lifetimes. I remember the black-and-white telly in my parent’s lounge, with the choice of just three or four channels. I remember traditional linear TV, where we would all sit around to watch a programme and we would not answer the phone or the doorbell, because if we missed something, that was it. I remember my grandparents getting a VHS player before we did in the 1980s and my grandma would record “Thomas the Tank Engine” and “Postman Pat” for us, and we would binge watch it when we went to stay with her. Of course, so much has changed since then, and when my children were young, they did not even understand the concept of linear TV. I remember going to stay with a family member who did not have a smart TV at the time and my children did not understand how they could not watch “Octonauts” right that minute.

So much has changed in our lifetime. Of course, there are many wonderful aspects of media programming in this country—we have some fantastic content that is the envy of the world—but there are also some not-so-wonderful aspects, and there is lots of material out there that may be entertaining for adults but we definitely do not want children to see. That is the point of the Ofcom broadcasting code, which says for broadcast TV:

“1.1: Material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of people under eighteen must not be broadcast.

1.2: In the provision of services, broadcasters must take all reasonable steps to protect people under eighteen.

1.3: Children must also be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them.”

A healthy family media environment relies on parents being able to keep children safe by making sure they do not accidentally come upon content that is not suitable, and on parents having control over what is suitable for their own children. It goes without saying that young children should not be watching violence, sex, extreme language and all those kinds of things. We accept that as a society, and that is why we have rules and systems in place to help parents and to stop children seeing unsuitable content.

Our traditional on-demand media—cinema, DVD and VHS—is regulated by the British Board of Film Classification, which is a highly respected organisation that has been going for over 100 years. We are all familiar with the littles triangles telling us that a film is a U, PG, 12 and so on. Our TV scheduling is regulated by the broadcasting code, which mainly relies on the watershed so that broadcasters do not put out programmes before 9 pm that children should not see. On demand presents a new challenge for our broadcasters, because the watershed does not apply. By definition, all the content is available all the time, and therefore parents cannot rely on the fact that it is before 9 o’clock to know that a particular programme is safe.

Some commercial streaming services have voluntarily adopted the BBFC’s ratings. Netflix is a good example. It has adopted the U, PG, 12 and so on ratings. That is really important, because the BBFC ratings are some of the clearest, most transparent and most respected in the whole world. The BBFC even has an app now where parents can look for any programme or film, and it will tell them the rating and exactly why that rating is given, so that parents can be fully informed about what children are going to watch.

I visited the BBFC a couple of weeks ago—I highly recommend that to Members; it is more than willing to give briefings—to see how it rates films, trailers and programmes. It is a hugely impressive organisation, with enormous levels of trust from not just the content creators but the public. It surveys 10,000 members of the public every four years to ask them about their attitudes to violence, swearing, sex, drugs and so on, to feed into its ratings, so that there is buy-in from the public.

Some services have not opted into the BBFC ratings or produced a suitable rating system of their own. The most significant player in this category is Disney+, which has an opaque system of age rating that cannot be trusted by parents. For example, the film “Avatar”, which I think most people would say is suitable for children, has a rating of 16+, and yet a quite sinister adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” that involves nudity, horror, child molestation, forced prostitution and a depiction of child drowning has a rating of 9+.

The problem is that when parents see that kind of discrepancy, and when the ratings are opaque and there is no transparency about why things are rated in the way they are, parents just remove the passwords, because they think, “I want my child to be able to see ‘Avatar’”. But in removing the passwords or changing the settings on their account, they inadvertently enable children to watch a lot of material that is not suitable for them.

Clearly, Disney+ and other streaming services need to be subject to the same standards as broadcast media. If material is unsuitable for children, it is unsuitable whatever the platform on which it is viewed, and it is the intention of the Bill to remedy that. Clause 38 will require Ofcom to review audience protection measures used by providers of all on-demand tier 1 programme services, including those that do not have their headquarters in the UK. In other words, the Bill seeks to ensure that what we might call the new media—streamed content—is subject to the same audience protection measures, such as age ratings, content warnings, parental control and age assurance measures, as traditional and linear material such as cinema, DVD and broadcast TV.

So far, so good—that is a laudable and much-needed aim—but my question to the Government is, why reinvent the wheel? Why task Ofcom with another review and developing another new code, when we already have a world-leading regulatory framework in the BBFC? Why not instead extend the remit of the BBFC—an internationally trusted organisation—and an age-rating system understood by millions who already use streaming media, so that those familiar ratings logos of U, PG, 15 and so on are visible on each and every programme on every streaming platform?

Indeed, 88% of parents find the BBFC ratings on Netflix extremely helpful, so it would make sense to standardise these ratings across all the major streaming platforms. The platforms would pay the cost—that is how the BBFC is funded, so it would not require a massive expansion of the BBFC. For example, the BBFC gives the code and the transparent materials for rating to Netflix; Netflix polices itself, and every so often, the BBFC will check that it is fully compliant with the way it regulates itself. There would be a clear advantage to extending that universal rating system across all streaming services: it would not be reinventing the wheel, and there are also serious question marks about Ofcom’s capacity to deliver on both the requirements in this Bill and the significantly increased requirements placed on it by the passage of the Online Safety Act 2023. I urge the Minister to consider amending the Bill to use the BBFC and its code, rather than Ofcom, to achieve the aims of clause 38.

I also urge the Minister to consider extending the remit of the Bill’s audience protection provisions beyond broadcast and streaming to all UK-accessible video content, including online. I appreciate that that would be a very significant expansion of the Bill, but if its purpose is to bring audience protection regulation up to date with the current and future media landscape, we are just skirting around the issue if we do not include online content. Indeed, the principle of part 4 of the Bill is to create that parity between online and offline. Nowhere is that more needed than in the much less regulated online space.

I say that principally because of the proliferation of unregulated hardcore pornography on the internet—pornography that would be completely illegal in the offline world, on DVDs or on streaming services—that is now being viewed by millions, including children, and causing immense societal damage. We are not talking about erotic magazines passed by teenage boys around the bike sheds, but extreme, violent, hardcore, repulsive and completely illegal material: violent rapes, violent assaults and incest. It is the most unimaginable, degrading material—material that is illegal offline on traditional platforms, and always has been. If we are rightly convinced that it matters what people watch—that it matters that children are protected from strong content, whether they are watching it on TV, streaming it on demand or seeing it on their phones—we have to apply the same principle to pornography.

A third of the internet is pornography; Pornhub has more users than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, Zoom and LinkedIn put together. It is a $100 million industry, and algorithms draw users into more and more extreme material. The Government’s own research makes the link between viewing violent pornography and violence against women and girls, yet the average age of first viewing in this country is 11. We will never turn the tide on violence against women and girls unless we recognise the role of pornography in conditioning men and boys to link violence with sexual pleasure. That is why I urge the Minister to bring online pornography content within the scope of the audience protection measures in the Bill.

The Online Safety Act will go some way towards helping in this space: its age verification provisions will make it harder for under-18s to access that content. I very much commend the Government on accepting those amendments, which had cross-party support. But that Act missed an opportunity to crack down on online porn that would be completely illegal in the offline world—material that still proliferates online and, even with the new protections, will of course be accessed by some children. Again, the BBFC can have a role here, because it is the BBFC’s role to regulate offline porn, such as DVDs, and certain adult websites. It has a very effective working relationship with the adult industry and with payment providers, so if the BBFC establishes that a particular adult platform has on it a video that is illegal and should be taken down, it can contact the payment providers and ask them to deny payment to that website until the video is taken down.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the BBFC is also a very established brand that is trusted and understood by the public, so the public would themselves have confidence if the BBFC was given the ability to act in this space?

[Miriam Cates]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is exactly why I am calling for the BBFC to have a much greater role in this Bill, but also for that role to be extended to the regulation of pornography. The BBFC has been going for over 100 years; other countries look to it and its ratings. It has buy-in from the public and from the content creators themselves, so it is perfectly placed to provide the kind of regulation and expertise we need. If we really want online and offline parity when it comes to audience safety—of course we do, because it does not matter where this content is viewed; it will have the same effect—we must look to include pornography in the scope of the Bill. I would go so far as to say that if the Government really want to leave a legacy of child protection and reducing violence against women and girls, nothing is more important than preventing access to hardcore pornography that is, and always has been, illegal in the offline world.

I welcome the Bill; it contains some excellent provisions. Obviously, I have focused narrowly on one aspect of it, but I ask Ministers to consider mandating that all streaming services use the BBFC’s age verification ratings, and extending audience protection measures to online content, especially violent pornography.

BACKBENCH BUSINESS

Debate between Miriam Cates and Jackie Doyle-Price

Thursday 30th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered relationship and sex education materials in schools.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) who have co-sponsored this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee, which has been so generous with the time allowed—we will try not to take it all up.

Let me start with a health warning: my speech is not suitable for children. That is sadly ironic, given that all of the extreme and inappropriate material I am about to share has already been shared with children in our schools. As a former biology teacher, I have delivered my fair share of sex education. Teaching the facts of life often comes with more than a little embarrassment for teachers and pupils alike. I remember teaching about reproduction when I was about 30 weeks pregnant with my first baby. One child asked me if my husband knew I was pregnant. Another, having watched a video on labour and birth, commented, “Miss, that’s really gonna hurt, you know.”

Just as children do not know about photosynthesis or the digestive system without being taught, neither do they know the facts of reproduction. Thus, it is important that children are taught clearly and truthfully about sex. Of course, there is a lot more to sexual relationships than just anatomy. Many people believe that parents should take the leading role in teaching children about relationships, since one of the main duties of parenting is to pass on wisdom and values to children. Nevertheless, in some families parents cannot or do not teach children about relationships, and it is also sadly the case that the internet now presents children with a vast array of false and damaging information about sex.

There is widespread consensus that schools do have a role to play in relationships and sex education. That is why the Government chose to make the teaching of relationships and sex education compulsory in all secondary schools from September 2020. According to the guidance, the aim was to help children

“manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.”

Less than two years later, my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary has written to the Children’s Commissioner asking her for help in supporting schools to teach RSE because we know that the quality of RSE is inconsistent.

The Education Secretary is right that the teaching of sex education is inconsistent. Unlike maths, science or history, there are no widely adopted schemes of work or examinations, so the subject matter and materials vary widely between schools. However, inconsistency should be the least of the Education Secretary’s concerns when we look at the reality of what is being taught. Despite its good intentions, the new RSE framework has opened the floodgates to a whole host of external providers who offer sex education materials to schools. Now, children across the country are being exposed to a plethora of deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit and damaging materials in the name of sex education. That is extremely concerning for a number of reasons.

First, if we fail to teach children clearly and factually about relationships, sex and the law they will be exposed to all sorts of risks. For example, if sex is defined as, “anything that makes you horny or aroused”—the definition offered by the sex education provider, School of Sexuality Education—how does a child understand the link between sex and pregnancy? Sex Education Forum tells children they fall into one of two groups: menstruators or non-menstruators. If a teenage girl’s periods do not start, what will she think? How does she know that is not normal? How does she know to consult a doctor? How will she know she is not pregnant? Will she just assume she is one of the non-menstruators?

The book for teachers, “Great Relationships and Sex Education”, suggests an activity for 15-year-olds in which children are given prompt cards and have to say whether they think certain types of sexual acts are good or bad. How do the children know what acts come with health risks, or the risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections? If we tell children that, “love has no age”—the slogan used in a Diversity Role Models resource—do we undermine their understanding of the legal age of consent? Sex education provider Bish Training informs children that:

“Most people would say that they had a penis and testicles or a clitoris and vagina, however many people are in the middle of this spectrum with how their bodies are configured.”

As a former biology teacher, I do not even know where to start with that one.

As adults, we often fail to remember what it is like to be a child and we make the mistake of assuming that children know more than they do. Children have all sorts of misconceptions. That is why it is our responsibility to teach them factually, truthfully and in age-appropriate ways, so that they can make informed decisions.

Another concern relates to the teaching of consent. Of course it is vital to teach about consent. The Everyone’s Invited revelations make that abundantly clear. But we must remember that, under the law, children cannot consent to sex. Sex education classes conducted by the group It Happens Education told boys of 13 and 14 that the law

“is not there to…punish young people for having consensual sex”

and said:

“It’s just two 14 year olds who want to have sex with each other who are consensually having sex.”

It is not hard to see the risks of this approach, which normalises and legitimises under-age sex. Not only are children legally not able to consent; they also do not have the developmental maturity or capacity to consent to sexual activity—that is the point of the age of consent.

The introduction of graphic or extreme sexual material in sex education lessons also reinforces the porn culture that is damaging our children in such a devastating way. Of course it is not the fault of schools that half of all 14-year-olds have seen pornography online—much of it violent and degrading—but some RSE lessons are actively contributing to the sexualisation and adultification of children. The Proud Trust has produced a dice game encouraging children to discuss explicit sexual acts, based on the roll of a dice. The six sides of the dice name different body parts—such as anus, vulva, penis and mouth—and objects. Two dice are thrown and children must name a pleasurable sexual act that can take place between the two body parts. The game is aimed at children of 13 and over.

Sexwise is a website run and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and recommended in the Department for Education’s RSE guidance. The website is promoted in schools and contains the following advice:

“Maybe you read a really hot bit of erotica while looking up Dominance and Submission…Remember, sharing is caring”.

Sex education materials produced by Bish Training involve discussion of a wide range of sexual practices—some of them violent. This includes rough sex, spanking, choking, BDSM and kink. Bish is aimed at young people of 14 and over and provides training materials for teachers.

Even when materials are not extreme, we must still be careful not to sexualise children prematurely. I spoke to a mother who told me how her 11-year-old son had been shown a PowerPoint presentation in a lesson on sexuality. It was setting out characteristics and behaviours and asking children to read through the lists and decide whether they were straight, gay or bisexual. Pre-pubescent 11-year-olds are not straight, gay or bisexual—they are children.

Even School Diversity Week, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ promoted by the Just Like Us group, leads to the sexualisation of children. Of course schools should celebrate diversity and promote tolerance, but why are we doing that by asking pre-sexual children to align themselves with adult sexual liberation campaigns? Let us not forget that the + includes kink, BDSM and fetish.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a very illuminating speech. The material that she is talking about talks about the detailed practice of sexual acts. She is a former biology teacher herself. Are there not proper boundaries that teachers have to respect in teaching sex education, so that it does not get into talk about behaviours that really strays into a relationship that teachers and children should not have?

[Miriam Cates]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. There is guidance, which I will come on to, but the problem is that the guidance is often very vague and open to interpretation. I will absolutely come on to that in my remarks.

Even primary schools are not immune from using inappropriate materials. An “All About Me” programme developed by Warwickshire County Council’s Respect Yourself team introduces six and seven-year-olds to “rules about touching yourself”. I recently spoke to a mother in my constituency who was distraught that her six-year-old had been taught in school about masturbation. Sexualising children and encouraging them to talk about intimate details with adults breaks down important boundaries and makes them more susceptible and available to sexual predators, both on and offline.

Another significant concern is the use of RSE to push extreme gender ideology. Gender ideology is a belief system that claims that we all have an innate gender, which may or may not align with our biological sex. Gender ideology claims that, rather than sex being determined at conception and observed at birth, it is assigned at birth, and that doctors sometimes get it wrong.

Gender theory sadly has sexist and homophobic undertones, pushing outdated gender stereotypes and suggesting to same-sex-attracted adolescents that, instead of being gay or lesbian, they may in fact be the opposite sex. Gender theory says that if someone feels like a woman, they are a woman, regardless of their chromosomes, their genitals, or, in fact, reality.

Gender ideology is highly contested. It does not have a basis in science, and no one had heard of it in this country just 10 years ago. Yet, it is being pushed on children in some schools under the guise of RSE, with what can only be described as a religious fervour. Department for Education guidance states that schools should

“not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender”,

and that:

“Resources used in teaching about this topic must…be…evidence based.”

Yet a video produced by AMAZE and used in schools suggests that boys who wear nail varnish or girls who like weight lifting might actually be the opposite sex. Resources by Brook claim:

“‘man’ and ‘woman’ are genders. They are social ideas about how people who have vulvas and vaginas, and people who have penises and testicles should behave”.

Split Banana offers workshops to schools where children learn ideas of how gender is socially constructed and explore links between the gender binary and colonialism. A Gendered Intelligence workshop tells children that:

“A woman is still a woman, even if she enjoys getting blow jobs.”

Just Like Us tells children that their biological sex can be changed. PSHE Association resources inform children that people whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth are described as cisgender.

Gender theory is even being taught to our very youngest children. Pop’n’Olly tells children that gender is male, female, both or neither. The Introducing Teddy book, aimed at primary school children, tells the story of Teddy, who changes sex, illustrated by the transformation of his bow tie into a hair bow. The Diversity Role Models primary training workshop uses the “Gender Unicorn”, a cartoon unicorn who explains that there is an additional biological sex category called “other”.

Numerous resources from numerous sex education providers present gender theory as fact, contrary to DFE guidance. However, it is not just factually incorrect resources that are making their ways into schools; visitors from external agencies are invited in to talk to children about sex and relationships, sometimes even without a teacher present in the room.

Guidance says that, when using external agencies, schools should check their material in advance and

“conduct a basic online search”.

However, a social media search of organisations such as Diversity Role Models reveals links to drag queens with highly sexualised, porn-inspired names, or in the case of Mermaids, the promotion of political activism, which breaches political impartiality guidelines.

In some cases, children are disadvantaged when they show signs of dissent from gender ideology, as we saw in the recent case, reported in the press, of a girl who was bullied out of school for questioning gender theory. I have spoken to parents of children who have been threatened with detention if they misgender a trans-identifying child or complain about a child of the opposite sex in their changing rooms. I have heard from parents whose child’s RSE homework was marked down for not adhering to this new creed. 

Children believe what adults tell them. They are biologically programmed to do so; how else does a child learn the knowledge and skills they need to grow, develop and be prepared for adult life? It is therefore the duty of those responsible for raising children—particularly parents and teachers—to tell them the truth. Those who teach a child that there are 64 different genders, that they may actually be a different gender to their birth sex, or that they may have been born in the wrong body, are not telling the truth. It is a tragedy that the RSE curriculum, which should help children to develop confidence and self-respect, is instead being used to undermine reality and ultimately put children in danger. 

Some may ask what harm is being done by presenting those ideas to children, and, of course, it is right to teach children to be tolerant, kind and accepting of others. However, it is not compassionate, wise, or legal to teach children that contested ideologies are facts. That is indoctrination, and it is becoming evident that that has some concerning consequences.