Protecting Children Online

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

While we are all patting ourselves on the back and saying that there is widespread agreement—and there clearly is widespread agreement—we should also bear it in mind that there is a considerable campaign against the taking of steps in this direction. It has not really been represented in the House today, but it is clear from earlier debates, and from communications that we have all received, that there is another point of view which is very different. There are people who want a degree of freedom in society that can actually be damaging, and we must be prepared to have a proper debate about that as well.

The issue of freedom is very important in the history of events such as the women’s movement, but there has often been a confusion between freedom in a fairly abstract sense—for instance, the sexual liberation of the 1960s—and the effect that some material can have on, in particular, those who are vulnerable. Much of what appears on the internet and elsewhere is damaging because of the way in which it portrays women, the way in which it portrays relationships between men and women, and the way in which it allows people to see a version of human relations that is deeply damaging.

People sometimes say that such material will not be harmful to many people, but it probably will be. It is interesting that the same argument is never advanced about advertising. People do not advertise because they think that advertising does not work; they advertise because they think that advertisements influence us, and indeed we are all clearly influenced by them. We have all found ourselves going into a shop and buying something that we may not have meant to buy because we saw or heard an advertisement for it, and thought “That sounds like a good idea.” I am not suggesting that someone who stumbles across pornography, online or anywhere else, is bound to turn into a violent person, but there will be some people whose attitudes, particularly their attitudes to what is acceptable between men and women, will be affected by it.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the availability of images on the internet. There are more child abuse images circulating on the internet now than ever before. As a result of freedom of information requests by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, about 26 million images were seized in two years by five local forces. Does my hon. Friend agree that the availability of such material is leading to a potential normalisation of it, and that that is one of the most important problems that we must tackle in the interests of our children today?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree that we should take that problem very seriously, and should take action to deal with it.

This is not only about protecting children, although that is extremely important. It is also about protecting older young people, and about protecting adults and, hopefully, changing their views. I think that if certain types of behaviour are normalised and become commonplace, they will eventually be seen as broadly acceptable, and the relationships that are portrayed between men and women will be considered not unacceptable, but something that women themselves are almost expected to accept.

I think that it is important to deal with this. I thought that it was important many years ago when groups were campaigning about, for example, pornography in magazines, but this type of pornography is pervasive in a way that even that was not. Going to buy a magazine in a shop was a more difficult transaction for many people than what we now see happening in our homes.