Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-10
Topic: Technology
Maurice Morrow (Democratic Unionist Party, Right): My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of Amendment 177A. Along with other speakers, I was not at all reassured by the Minister’s letter in which she confirmed the central concern that many noble Lords set out on Second Reading; namely, that unlike Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, which equally engaged user-generated and non-user-generated content on pornographic websites, the online safety Bill will narrow its concern to user-generated content. I also thought the Government’s response rather missed the point that I and other noble Lords sought to make on Second Reading. What the Minister wrote was couched in the terms of the original Digital Economy Bill debate. Those concerns are of course important, but are not the presiding context of this debate. The point made at Second Reading and, indeed, today is very much about the fact that much online pornography depicts sexual violence, including the rough sex practice that is the subject of Clause 65. In this context, the key point is that if Part 3 is not implemented, under-18s will be exposed to pornographic material on pornographic websites, including depictions of rough sex, and this will foster the thought that sexual violence is just part of the norm of sexual relationships. Moreover, and crucially, this will not only impact on under-18s as under-18s, but shape their thoughts and attitudes as they move into adulthood, making sexual violence and domestic abuse more likely In this context, the key problem with the Government saying that we should abandon Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act in favour of an online safety Bill that will target only user-generated content is the fact that depictions of sexual violence occur in non-user-generated pornography as well as in user-generated pornography. We must target, as Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act does, both user-generated and non-user-generated content on pornographic websites In this regard, it is interesting to note that Savanta ComRes polling from last September showed that 81.5% of people in Northern Ireland thought that the Government should implement Part 3 immediately and simply add additional protections in relation to other online harms when the online safety Bill is passed. The UK figure was 74% if the "don’t knows" were removed. It is not hard to imagine what would happen if that polling was repeated today, presenting people with the fact that the Government are seeking not only needlessly to delay the provision of protection for children from pornographic websites, but to narrow that protection down to pornographic websites with user-generated content My concern at the Government’s failure to engage with Part 3 from the perspective of the presenting issue in this Bill is greatly compounded by the fact that the letter inexplicably makes no reference to the two reports that the Government published on 15 January that highlight the connection between pornography consumption and behaviour, including male sexual violence. I very much hope that when the Minister responds to this debate she engages with Amendment 177A and Part 3 from the perspective of the domestic violence concern that informs our discussions today There are two other things about the Minister’s letter that cause me real concern. First, it contains the statement: "Under our proposals, we expect companies to use age assurance or age verification technologies to prevent children from accessing services which pose the highest risk of harm to children, such as online pornography." This is a very clear shift from the previous language "we will require", which is the essence of legal compulsion. Why the change Secondly, the letter’s final paragraph states that the online harms Bill will be more robust than the DEA because it will cover not only extreme pornography. Part 3 of the DEA was never just about protecting under-18s from extreme pornography or pornographic websites. It was about protecting them from all pornography on pornographic websites, that which is legal as well as that which, like extreme pornography, is illegal. If I have misunderstood what the Minister means by the final paragraph of the letter dealing with pornography, will she please explain when she responds to the debate One of the other concerns that I have about the idea that the online safety Bill would be better than Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act at protecting children from material that normalises sexual violence relates to enforcement. When the Digital Economy Bill was introduced, the primary means of enforcement was through fines. However, Parliament pointed out that of the 50 most popular pornographic websites in the UK, none was based in the UK and that enforcing fines in other jurisdictions would be impractical.