Baroness Bertin:

Moved by Baroness Bertin

290: After Clause 82, insert the following new Clause—“Amendment of Protection of Children Act 1978(1) The Protection of Children Act 1978 is amended as follows.(2) In section 1(1)(a) (indecent photographs of children) after “child” insert “or a person who appears to be or is implied to be a child”.(3) After section 1 insert—“1ZA Offence of encouragement to sexual activity with a child or family member(1) It is an offence to produce or distribute any written material, visual representation or audio recording that glorifies, advocates or counsels sexual activity that would be an offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 either with—(a) a person under the age of eighteen years, or(b) a family member, where “family member” has the meaning set out in section 27 (family relationships) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.(2) After section 7(9) (interpretation) insert—“(10) When determining under section 1 whether an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph is of a person who appears to be or is implied to be a child, reference may be had to—(a) how the image is or was described (whether the description is part of the image itself or otherwise);(b) any sounds accompanying the image;(c) where the image forms an integral part of a narrative constituted by a series of images—(i) any sounds accompanying the series of images;(ii) the context provided by that narrative;(d) the overall context in which the image appears, including but not limited to, the setting, the conduct and appearance of the depicted person or persons, and any other relevant factors.”.”.”Member’s explanatory statementThis amendment makes a series of amendments to the Protection of Children Act 1978 to extend the offence of making an indecent photograph of a child to cases where the child depicted is an adult and creation of a new offence of producing or sharing content that advocates and celebrates child sexual abuse including text shared on internet forums and pornography websites.

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 291, 292, 298 and 314 in my name and supported by my friends the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy, Lady Kidron and Lady Benjamin, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. These amendments have the support of many charities, including Barnardo’s, the Internet Watch Foundation, End Violence Against Women and Girls and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, as well as, very importantly, the Children’s Commissioner.

The central mission of this group of amendments is to close the gap between the law governing offline and online pornography and to bring long overdue scrutiny to an industry that has operated with impunity for far too long. The review I led for the Government showed me corners of this world that you simply cannot unsee. Online pornography is now so extreme and pervasive that it does not just reflect sexual tastes; it shapes them. It normalises violence, distorts intimacy, grooms men and boys to perpetrate sexual violence and has driven child sexual abuse as well as child-on-child sexual abuse. Content titles regularly use words such as “brutal”, “attack”, “kidnap” and “torture”. Incest is fast becoming the most frequent form of this violence.

With 40% of young women reporting being strangled during sex, the link between online violence and offline harm is undeniable. According to the Children’s Commissioner, a 13 year-old boy is likely to have viewed incest, rape and strangulation porn before his first kiss. Adding to this, sexual dysfunction is rising among young men, who find real intimacy less stimulating than online extremes. Many now speak of addiction that has ruined their lives and prevents them forming real, lasting relationships.

Last week, Lady Elish was unequivocal in part 2 of her inquiry into Sarah Everard’s death about

“the need for a united response to online, public and private … violence against women”.

She has also made it clear that the Government must read her recommendations in tandem with the online pornography review, and that she is deeply concerned that harmful content that would be illegal offline remains unrestrained online. Wayne Couzens openly paraded violent, degrading porn to police colleagues. Free-to-view content was found on all his devices when he was arrested. A casual acceptance of violence and unchecked, dangerous predatory behaviour led to Sarah Everard’s murder. There is no doubt in my mind that porn played its part. When I met Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, she was certain that extreme online pornography had emboldened her father and his accomplices to carry out their hideous crimes.

The review I wrote for the Government is an oven-ready plan to address many of these issues. They have still not formally responded to it and have committed to only one of the 32 recommendations. It is suboptimal that we have to use amendments to this Bill to push through some of those proposals. It would be far better to have some central leadership and a co-ordinated strategy that works across government, bringing together departments such as DSIT and the Home Office on these issues. It strikes me that they are still completely siloed on this. I am determined to not look back in 10 years and wish we had done more. I hope this Government will now be driven by this same determination. I thank the Minister for the meeting last week; I know that she feels strongly about this issue.

Amendment 290 addresses a fundamental legal loophole that the law currently allows: it is to allow an adult to mimic a child in pornographic content and for that content to remain lawful online. The amendment would strengthen the Protection of Children Act 1978, extending the offence of making an indecent photograph of a child to include pornographic material depicting a child, where the role is played by an adult performer.

When my review team and I met the British Board of Film Classification, we were shown videos legally available on major sites—content that no reasonable person could argue did not depict child sexual abuse scenarios. I am not talking about a 40 year-old woman dressing in a school uniform, but about a tiny little girl in a child’s bedroom, surrounded by dolls, assaulted by someone explicitly described as her father—on mainstream porn sites. The title made the storyline unmistakable: “Daddy breaks into his daughter’s bedroom”. The actor was over 18 and because she mimicked a child, the content remained legal online. The current law applies to pseudo-images, which include AI-generated images. We are therefore in the strange situation of, quite rightly, prohibiting an AI-generated video depicting sexual activity with young-looking girls on the basis that it normalises and promotes sexual abuse, but a very similar video of real actors who look like young girls is allowed. This loophole should be closed.

To be clear, this is not niche content on the dark web. As a team, we looked for further evidence of this kind of content. It was everywhere, including on the home pages of mainstream sites, searchable in seconds, with titles such as “Daddy makes his daughter happy before school”. Vast amounts are marketed as teen porn or incest porn, using performers who look prepubescent or are styled to look underage, with lollipops and dolls.

This material sexualises children, normalises them as objects of gratification and fosters a sexual interest in children. Often, these videos have had millions of views and clicks, thus drip-feeding the idea that it is acceptable and normal. Evidence from law enforcement shows that repeated exposure to such content can escalate to viewing illegal child sexual abuse material, and, in some cases, to offending online or offline. The BBFC is categorical: this material will be refused classification offline. Yet online it persists. The fact that 2024 was the worst year ever on record for cases of child sexual abuse images makes this change even more urgent. Other jurisdictions—New South Wales, Ireland and Canada—already criminalise this harm, and we should align with those international standards.

Amendment 290 would create a new offence of producing or sharing material that advocates or glorifies child sexual abuse, including text on forums and pornography sites. This again draws on Canadian law and parallels our domestic prohibition on glorifying terrorism. We rightly outlaw the glorification of terrorism; we must also outlaw the glorification of child sexual abuse, as the law as it stands is not clear.

Let me add a human context. I spoke recently to a brave young woman whose world was turned upside-down when police uncovered her father’s posts on a well-known chat site describing and inviting others to describe what he claimed he had done to his daughter since she was six. The police intervened and arrested him, protecting the family, but on further investigation they found no physical abuse and did not charge him for fantasising and glamorising imagined abuse. This is unquestionably abusive behaviour. The law in this area is unclear and we need unambiguous law that makes it easier for the police and the CPS to charge and, ultimately, for prosecutions to happen. By closing this loophole, we could give the police more preventive powers and, importantly, place obligations on platforms and chat sites to stop this content and dialogue at source. Again, it was a very easy to access chat site encouraging this.

Amendment 291 would extend the definition of extreme illegal pornographic images to include depictions of incest, as proscribed by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Incest pornography is now particularly prevalent online, often stylised as violent scenes between father and daughter. That would be refused classification offline. We have a clear precedent for this. The Government have already acted to capture depictions of strangulation in pornography, which I am delighted about and which we will come to shortly, recognising that the original drafting allowed this material to proliferate unchecked. This logic applies here. Research shows that incest-themed content is among the most recommended to new users on popular platforms—another stark example of an algorithm encouraging harmful content.

This amendment also captures titles and dialogue, recognising that words can advertise, normalise and accelerate harm. Pornography titles accompanying content matter a great deal. They are the main route by which this material is found and can be as violent as the content itself. Amended law must capture titles and searchable text, obliging search engines to bar such content. At present, too many are falling short. How can it be right that my team can easily find titles on Google such as “Stoned girl sexually abused” and “Good little girl allows abusive father to pee on her” on the first search page?

Amendment 314 seeks to bring wider parity to how online and offline pornography are regulated. Since 1984, legislation has existed to regulate offline content and media. This legislation specifically prohibits offline content that the British Board of Film Classification would find unsuitable for classification—even for the R18 category —on video, DVD and Blu-ray. The prohibited material, as set out in Section 368E of the Communications Act, includes: material that is in breach of criminal law or created through a criminal offence; non-consensual sexual activity, including rape or sexual violence, particularly when presented as appealing or inviting viewer complicity; real or simulated acts in a sexual context likely to cause serious physical harm, including penetration by foreign objects or dangerous sado- masochistic activities, outside a clearly consensual role play; and material likely to encourage interest in sexually abusive activity.

These prohibitions reflect the long-standing principles of harm reduction and public protection. They were strengthened and upgraded following the horrific murder of Jamie Bulger, yet these safeguards apply only to physical media. Online platforms, which now dominate the pornography market, operate outside this framework. As a result, content that would be refused classification online—depictions of torture, incest pornography, highly abusive misogynistic content, and material sexualising children, as previously described—is freely available online. This disparity is indefensible. Amendment 314 would therefore do four things: import the BBFC’s prohibited content standards into online law; create a criminal offence for publishing such material online; empower enforcement through fines of up to £18 million, or 10% of global revenue, ensuring compliance even without prosecution; and mandate regulatory oversight, requiring the Secretary of State to appoint enforcement bodies within six months with powers to impose service and access restriction orders.

The last point is crucial. We need a provision in the Bill for a body separate from ofcom but which works closely with it to proactively conduct spot checks and audits on pornography platforms and social media. Search engines must also be held accountable. Furthermore, there needs to be some kind of additional public reporting mechanism that can accelerate actions against these sites. My noble friend Lady Kidron spoke brilliantly on this last week.

I recently found a porn site with no age verification barriers at all, dedicated to rape porn. Who do I report this to? I cannot. It may be inconvenient for the Government, and indeed Ofcom, to acknowledge this, but, without a deeper infrastructure in place to ensure enforcement and implementation, real change will be hard to achieve. Mastercard and Visa stopped payments overnight when Pornhub was found to have millions of child sexual abuse images freely available. Within 24 hours, the images were gone. They will be obliged to do the same with other types of harmful pornography if the Government make these changes. Better law and regulation will give the ancillary services—payment providers, advertisers and investors—propping up this industry a proper road map to follow. Once the money starts getting affected, change often miraculously occurs.

This amendment is about closing a glaring loophole and ensuring that the same protections we have enforced for decades offline apply in the digital age. It is about saying that material that is too harmful to sell in a shop should not be freely available on a smartphone.

Amendment 292 introduces essential safeguards around consent, age verification and accountability in the online pornography industry. First, it requires that no pornographic material is published unless every individual featured has given explicit consent and is a verified adult. For existing material, platforms must confirm that all individuals are adults. This will be highly inconvenient for the industry and may well disrupt the user-generated model of porn, but this feels like a very long overdue requirement.

Secondly, it recognises the right to withdraw consent. If a person revokes consent in writing, platforms must remove that material within 24 hours. Consent as a vulnerable 18 year-old can be very different from when you are 30, and there should be a mechanism to withdraw that image. With hashtagging technology, this is all completely doable.

This amendment is about preventing exploitation and abuse. Some platforms claim they have made age checks, but we have to take their word for it. Can you imagine a world where a multibillion-pound business just said to the auditors, “Trust us, the accounts are fine”? Why should this industry enjoy such light-touch self-regulation and no paper trail, especially when its commodity is real people?

Finally, Amendment 298 addresses the possession and use of software designed to create new digital images. These deepfake generators are fuelling a rapid rise in image-based sexual abuse. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for leading the way on criminalising the making and taking of deepfake images. That work is vital, but we must go further, because the tools themselves are the accelerant. This amendment makes it an offence to intentionally possess, obtain or store software the primary purpose of which is to create or alter sexually explicit or nude images. I am open to working with Ministers on drafting to achieve the right balance, but the principle must be clear: the technology itself must be outlawed.

In conclusion, these amendments do not police private sexual behaviour, nor do they seek to ban porn. Instead, they aim to regulate an industry that has evaded scrutiny and is causing demonstrable harm: normalising violence, sexualising children and enabling abuse. The law must evolve to meet these challenges and put proportionate guardrails back in place. I beg to move.

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 290, 291 and 314. I also support Amendments 292 and 298 in this group, all in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, whom I hold in high esteem.

Before I set out some remarks in support of these amendments, it is difficult to comprehend why we are back here again in this House, eight years after debating the issue raised in the amendments in this group by me and other noble Lords. It feels like déjà vu.

However, there is one crucial difference: we now have the insight and recommendations of the comprehensive review of pornography regulations which I was promised by the previous Government and which has been undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I commend the noble Baroness for her review, which sets out clearly why these amendments are needed.

I will speak first to Amendment 314, which seeks to ensure that pornographic content hosted online is subject to the same regulation that applies to content distributed offline. This is by no means a new concept. In 2017, following the debate on the Digital Economy Act, the then Government published the internet safety strategy green paper, which stated:

“What is unacceptable offline should be unacceptable online”.

During the passage of the Online Safety Act, I pointed out that, despite the Government’s commitment in 2017 to address the disparity in the regulation of online and offline pornography, material that is extreme and prohibited offline was still widely available online. I and others tabled amendments that were similar to Amendment 314 before the House today, yet we find ourselves debating this issue once again.

Barnardo’s—I declare an interest as vice-president—and CEASE have long called for online pornography to be regulated to the same standard as it is offline. Content involving strangulation, incest and adults dressed as children, as well as that involving trafficking and torture, is rightly illegal offline, yet these images and videos remain widely accessible online. This inconsistency is indefensible; it is a stain on our society. Amendment 314 would make it a criminal offence to publish, or to facilitate the publishing of, prohibited pornographic material online, bringing digital distribution in line with the strict safeguards we already apply offline. This is common sense and should be accepted by the Government.

The depressing fact is that the internet is still full of material that would not get a certificate for sale or distribution in the offline world. Any platform that fails to comply with this proposed new law would be subject to financial sanction and/or business disruption measures. The Communications Act 2003 gives statutory powers to ofcom to regulate offline content on the basis of the British Board of Film Classification guidelines. Over many years of operating this law, the BBFC has established clear standards and guidance: the guidelines are well established and easily understood. This amendment seeks to ensure that online platforms are subject to the same standards and guidelines for what they publish and host online. This would ensure that online platforms prevent material that depicts rape, incest or non-consensual sexual activity being published on their platform, and that any material published by a user of that platform that meets the criteria for prohibited material is removed.

The harm of violent online pornography is not abstract or without consequence: men who watch violent online pornography are more likely to be violent towards women and girls. If the Government want significantly to reduce violence against women and girls—which they claim is a priority—a starting point would be to regulate online material to ensure that all violent material is removed and that Laws online and offline are regulated in the same way.

The other amendments in the name of the noble Baroness are also critical to reducing violence against women and girls. This is why I support Amendments 290 and 291, which seek to ban pornographic content that depicts incest or objectifies children through adults dressing or behaving as minors. Evidence from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation shows that consuming such content can lead users to seek out illegal child sexual abuse material and potentially offend against children, online and offline.

This is not just harmful fantasy; it is a dangerous distortion which sends the message that child sexual abuse is acceptable, or even desirable, and often acts as a gateway to illegal activity. The law must make it clear that there is no place for content that sexualises children and normalises abuse.

I support Amendment 292, as it seeks to ensure that platforms undertake age and consent checks for performers. Again, this is a critical amendment in protecting women and girls. User-generated content dominates pornography platforms, yet this content is often uploaded with little or no verification. The amendment would ensure that every individual featured in any content is an adult and has given consent, and that, crucially, women are given the right to withdraw that consent at any time and have the content removed.

I also support Amendment 298, which seeks to ban nudification apps. These AI-powered tools are being used to create non-consensual sexual images, targeting women and girls. The Internet Watch Foundation reported a 380% increase in AI-generated child exploitation imagery between 2023 and 2024. If we do not act now, the technology will continue to outpace regulation, leaving victims unprotected. The Minister in the other place said that the Government are “actively considering” what action is needed to ensure that any Intervention in this area is “effective”, and will “provide an update” in due course. I hope that the Minister here today will be able to give us that update.

In conclusion, how many more times will we debate these issues? These amendments are not radical; they are reasonable, evidence-based and urgently needed. We cannot allow the increase in harmful online content to continue. This must stop. I urge the Government to support these amendments, which are the foundation of a safer digital world. If we fail to act, we risk legitimising a culture in which abuse is normalised and young people grow up with a distorted understanding of healthy relationships. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us act now to ensure that every childhood is free from abuse and victimisation. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I share much of her frustration about us being here discussing this again and hearing that litany of powerful images—that I would rather unhear—from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I do not propose to add to them, except to say that what the noble Baroness has said on the record, in Hansard, is not an exaggeration or cherry-picking; it is normal, and the House must consider whether that is the “normal” we would like to live in.

I have been proud to add my name to the noble Baroness’s amendments. I commend her on her work on the pornography review, which I know was an enormous effort and, as I understand it, quite a catastrophic personal experience. I also want to take the opportunity to commend the Government on recognising the issue of strangulation. I know we will come to it, but I wanted to mention it in this group, because it is this relationship between what happens online and how that then impacts offline that we have to concentrate on. A few weeks ago, I was with a group of very senior medical professionals, and one consultant radiologist talked about how post-mortem guidance is being changed to check for strangulation as a cause of death among young women. That is chilling. The entire room was chilled. It is an indictment of how prevalent and serious the consequences of violent pornography are. We must not hide behind thinking this is happening in another space; this is the space in which people are now living.

On the same theme, some time ago I was contacted by a lawyer who told me that she dreaded freshers’ week. Each year, an increasingly long line of barely adult young men would come through her door facing charges of acts of sexual violence which mimicked behaviour they had seen online. A wealth of talented young women are now traumatised at a crucial point in their life, and a litany of young men, probably equally talented, are now sex offenders. These lives are being ruined.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness are sensible—I believe that was the word the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, used. I do not know whether they are radical; I hope they are, and I hope they solve the problem, but they are sensible solutions. They seek to close the gaps, and have taken learnings from other jurisdictions, which is crucial. The whole world is tackling this, and we must learn from what other people understand. We do not need to make it all up ourselves. “Not made here” is about the worst thing that we keep on seeing in politics, particularly in the online sphere.

I support all the amendments in this group, and I wanted briefly to mention just two of them. First, Amendment 298 would prohibit ownership of software which we often call “nudification” apps. A Teacher Tapp survey last week found that one in 10 teachers were aware of pupils creating “deepfake, sexually explicit videos”, and the safeguarding lead who was quoted warned that deepfakes and nudifiers

“feel like the next train coming down the track”.

I know a lot of safeguarding staff, and this is what they are saying. Can we, as a Parliament and as a House, be ahead of the train coming down the track rather than waiting for it to come and ruin our schools?

The Children’s Commissioner points out in her briefing, which supports these amendments wholeheartedly, that nudification technology is harming girls. Even if they have not been directly targeted by the tools, girls report withdrawing from the online world—for example, not posting pictures of their full faces to reduce the chances of their being transplanted on to a naked body. Can we not, as a House, stand up for women in the public sphere? This is not okay. It is so regressive to look at a technology that silences young girls’ participation in this new world.

Rightly, this amendment does not create an offence for under-18s, so I have another request of the Government: that they accept the amendment but also commit to adopting a broader strategy to tackle the deepfake crisis in schools before it is too late.

Last week, we had a debate in which the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, said that this issue sits with DSIT and not the Home Office. My understanding is that the issue I am addressing could sit with DSIT and the DfE. However, the Government as a whole have a commitment to children, and as a whole they have committed to halving violence against women and girls. I will do a shout-out here and say that men do experience violence, but it is primarily experienced by women and girls. So, unless the Government start to act more swiftly on our concerns about technology-facilitated sexual abuse, they will be failing in both their responsibility to children and their commitment to women and girls.

Amendment 314 seeks to create parity between Laws that regulate pornography online and offline. It is a perennial cause of harm that the tech sector lacks accountability. This lack of accountability, the lack of parity, seen through the lens of pornography, is the very definition of tech exceptionalism. The laws that apply to the rest of our lives in society do not apply in the technological sphere, protected by tens of millions of lobbying dollars. This is at the heart of the problem that we are discussing. Pornography has been a major engine of the tech sector. It is worth billions of dollars, responsible for millions of downloads and a significant driver of online traffic.

There is a reason why OpenAI recently announced that ChatGPT would permit erotic content for verified adults: it is a money-spinner. Tech-delivered online pornography has changed the sexual appetites of men. I attended one meeting in which a survivor of sexual violence said that what he saw online “gave my abuser the idea and tacit permission to hurt me”. We need parity. Parity is what the amendment demands.

Finally, I want to say something to the Government. The amendments that we debated in the previous group in my name about children; the amendments that we will shortly get to in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, about intimate image abuse; and this set of amendments should be seen as one. This is the commitment that the Government made to women and girls. I hope that the Government Benches, having given us so much support in the past, will not vote against these amendments en masse on Report—because we will be back unless the Minister has something fabulous to say today.

My Lords, when I became a practitioner at the Bar as a young woman in the late 1970s, freedom of expression was regularly used as the excuse to justify sometimes horrific porn. When there were discussions about this among lawyers, it was almost invariably said that women were being prudish and did not understand that erotica—that was always the word used, rather than pornography—was rather benign and had no effect on behaviour.

It has taken decades for that viewpoint to be challenged and research to be done to show the links between behaviours and exposure to extreme pornography—not that it has to be that extreme. Young women at the Bar tell me now that almost invariably when the computers of people who are brought to court for allegations of rape and sexual violations of all kinds are examined, they are full of pornography. The link between pornography and serious violation of women is now well established.

It is not about benign erotica. We are talking about the ways in which we have added to the menu of possibilities, often giving guidance to young men on how to perform sexually—in a way that does not involve any kind of tenderness and intimacy but is about objectifying women’s bodies and dealing with them in ways that are abusive, not hearing resistance or “no”, and never finding out whether something is acceptable.

The last time I wrote a book about the law was very interesting. This was 2018, and it was then republished a few years later after the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The book was being put on to audio, as nowadays happens, and I was doing the reading myself. A young woman was the technician in the sound lab where this was being done. There was a piece of the book about pornography, the way in which it was impacting on sexual offending and the serious influence that it brings to bear on the behaviour of many of the men who were coming before the courts.

She said to me, “I watch pornography every single day”, and I asked why. She said, “Because I wanted to know how to do sex—I wanted to know how it was done—but I’ve now become addicted to it”. It had replaced for her the possibility of having real sexual relationships. It was her confiding, in a sort of confessional box way, and saying, “What can I do about it to change my life? I find that it’s the only thing that can give me relief”. It was quite a shock to me as someone who thinks they know most things that happen under the human condition’s spread of behaviours. Here was this young woman, probably only about 18, describing how she was now addicted and how she had come to do it because boys felt that she was no good when it came to sexual behaviour.

I just want to say why I readily support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to whom I pay tribute. Over the years I have been exposed to pornography because it was part of the evidence in cases that I was doing. In war crimes, increasingly, there is on the phones of young soldiers all across the world a high level of pornography, and it leads to really vile and terrible abuses of women in conflict. For looking at the stuff that she has had to look at and the experience that she has had to bear, I really feel that we owe the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. People do not realise the toll that can take on somebody.

I was in chambers with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the famous writer Sir John Mortimer, who wrote the Rumpole series. John Mortimer was a great believer in freedom of expression, and he had done a number of cases around literature and freedom of expression in rather explicit novels. He then was pursued by the porn industry and offered great sums of money if he would act in porn cases, which on occasions he did. He said he used to take his glasses off because it was the only way he could live with looking at the stuff he was having to watch.

We were all offered the opportunity of inheriting his porn practice when he left the Bar, and I have to tell noble Lords that none of us was very interested in doing it because of the toll it takes on the human imagination. You want a mind that is not contaminated by this stuff in your expressions of love and intimacy, and men at the Bar who are doing this stuff say that there are times when they cannot dismiss it. We have to learn from the reality of this. This is poison; it poisons our children, and it is probably poisoning many of the menfolk who sit in this House. We have to find ways of dealing with it—it is going to be difficult.

I have supported the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, including the one on the mimicking of children. I can tell noble Lords very clearly that that is a real problem that we have currently. There is the business of depicting incest and the poison that it brings into households and so on. We discussed it only last week, and it disturbed so many people when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, described bots now doing that and the seeming inability to prosecute because it is not a human who is at the other end of it. Then there is business of not verifying age adequately. These are serious problems that we have.

One of the things that is inhibiting the response of jurisdictions, and I think ours might be one of them, is that we are concerned not to lose the confidence of the tech bros who are the billionaires making so much money out of many of the ways in which new technology exploits this and makes an incredible amount of money out of it.

One of the great Trumpian boasts is that our world should not be inhibited by regulation, but there are some areas where we need regulation and this is most definitely one of them. All of us need to come together and not feel that we should be obeisant to the American way.

I urge the Government, as sometimes happens with Governments of all complexions, not to make this an example of resistance to amendments that have been promoted largely by the other side. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has the support of women from around this Committee and from men. I ask the Government please to listen to these submissions; they are made because of the real detriment to our society and quality of life that is created by virtue of this stuff.

Not very long ago, I did a report for Scotland on sexual harassment in the street and the public square. It was very clear that disinhibition online leads to disinhibition in other places and in the public square. It is why young women out for an evening are suddenly abused by men coming out of pubs, asking to have sex with them and talking about the size of their breasts or their behinds, and speaking to women in the most revolting way. The women were saying, “I go home feeling degraded. I feel that I do not have the equality and dignity that are promised to me in this new world in which we like to imagine that men and women will be treated as well as each other”.

I urge the Committee to go with Amendment 314 on the parity of pornography online and offline, because we have to start regulating this stuff. If we do not do it soon, we will pay an incredible price.

My Lords, I heartily support Amendment 314 and the others in this group. It is shocking that there is a disparity in the ways that online pornography and offline pornography are regulated. It rather makes a mockery of regulation in the offline sector, since anyone can circumvent it by watching material online that is banned offline.

As we have heard, material that is prohibited offline is prolific online. This includes content that depicts and/or promotes child sexual abuse, incest and harmful sexual acts such as sexual strangulation. The fact that the existing offline system of regulation has not been applied to the online world is a symptom of legislation not keeping pace with technological advances in the online world. Now is a golden opportunity to put that right.

Mainstream pornography sites host a vast amount of harmful content. Not only is that an inducement to participate in serious criminal activity but young people—boys and young men in particular—who access it are growing up with a totally warped view of what constitutes a normal, loving relationship. This surely risks seriously damaging their prospects of forming long and meaningful relationships in the future. We owe it to our younger generation to put this right and protect them from this horrific material.

Why on earth is access to such material not regulated effectively when exactly the same content offline is? It shows a naivety about the content and extent of damaging online material and the ease with which young and easily influenced minds can access it. It is shameful that there is no effective regulation of the age at which such material can be accessed. It needs to be put right urgently, and I urge the Government to seize this opportunity and accept Amendments 292 and 314 and the others in this group. Is there anything that we debate in this Chamber that is more important than protecting our children?

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, so well put forward by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin, Lady Kidron, Lady Kennedy and Lady Benjamin, but I particularly want to say a few words about Amendment 298 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin.

I have been really alarmed by this. I was first alerted by my friend Laura Bates talking in her book about the “nudify” apps and how young children can be when they can get targeted—as young as eight or nine—and how this can happen to them in school, where they can be completely unaware and, suddenly, there is a picture of them naked circulating around, and a lot of girls want to drop out of school because of it.

It is not an accident that this is happening. It is driven by money, commerce and capitalism. It is not in any way inevitable that it happens. Something that is made by man—probably by a man, in this case, but maybe by a woman—can certainly be put right by government and by all of us. It is the result of a design choice, a market choice and a policy choice, and we can change it.

These apps are designed to strip girls’ photos and create sexualised images of them, often in seconds. They are incredibly easy to use, quite terrifyingly. I challenge anyone in this House who has not done it just to type in, “Can I have a nudify app?” You will get it in a minute. My great niece, who I work with, did it to herself, and the super weird thing about it is that it does not give you the body of Claudia Schiffer or Kate Moss or something that you are obviously not; it gives you the kind of body that you have.

The reality of it is very stark and horrible. Girls are harassed, threatened, coerced and manipulated before they even really understand what is happening. There is one major app that produces 200,000 fake nude images every day, and we are on track for 8 million of these deepfake images every year. They are an entire industry, which is functioning somewhere, taking money and doing this to our children. The police cannot act until after the harm has occurred, and schools cannot act pre-emptively. The platforms claim that they are not responsible because this is a tool, and it is not them. It is passing off the responsibility. They exist just to facilitate sexual abuse—for which, at the moment, very few people have to pay a price.

I would also like to speak about something that has happened but has not been mentioned very much in this debate. I am an ambassador and patron of a group called The Vavengers, which seeks to stop vaginal mutilation. The person who runs it is Turkish, and she has noticed now that the primary form of cosmetic surgery in Turkey is young women—though not all of them young—going there to have their vaginas reconstructed to look like the vaginas that you see in pornography, which look like those of 13 year-old girls. They are going to Turkey to have their labia cut off. Sema, who is the child of a slave and an extraordinary woman, says you can always tell when you are on the return plane from Istanbul because there are a lot of young women fidgeting because they are in pain. It seems to me that this is an extension of the world that we have arrived in and allowed to happen. It is shocking.

My granddaughter is three. I look at her and think that, in four or five years’ time, she could be the victim of this. As those in this House know, I got into this 55 years ago. If anyone had told me then that the day would come when I would have to ask for someone not to be able to have an app that would take my granddaughter’s clothes off and make her a neurotic, unhappy young woman because she is sexually not like the things she sees in pornography, and with my grandson, who is also three, going through the kind of things that I think young men do, I would say that we should be damned ashamed of ourselves. All of us women in this House, of different ages, have fought long and hard through the years to get where we are, and we and this Government owe it back to the next generation of children. I am very grateful to all the younger women such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin and Lady Owen, for the work they have done. I can only say that I wish that I was not on this journey with them and that it did not exist.

My Lords, I too support my noble friend Lady Bertin’s amendments and I will particularly talk about Amendment 314. There is no debate about whether certain pornography is harmful. Parliament settled that question decades ago. There is no debate about whether it is right for our Parliament to ban harmful pornography. We already do. We are merely debating whether we have the determination to apply our existing Laws to the latest distribution channels.

In the early 1980s, we saw a dramatic increase in video cassette recorders in the home and the subsequent emergence of video nasties. In that era, Parliament was quick to catch up to the latest technological innovation and, as we have heard, the Video Recordings Act 1984 was passed with cross-party support. As a result, pornography released on physical formats is and has always been strictly regulated in the UK. In 2003, Parliament extended those protections through the Communications Act to ensure that UK-based video-on-demand services, including those that specialised in pornography, could not distribute content that the British Board of Film Classification would refuse to classify. Amendment 314 simply takes the definition of harmful content in the Communications Act 2003 and seeks to apply it to online pornography, with a proper framework for enforcement. Some 41 years ago, we said that harmful content could not be distributed on video cassettes, 22 years ago we said it could not be distributed through video-on-demand services, and now it is time to close the gap in the law which allows it to be legally distributed on the internet.

Amendments 291 and 290 would ensure that incest material and depictions of child sexual abuse in online pornography are made illegal. My noble friend Lady Bertin and others have already outlined the immense damage that this content does. I welcome the Government’s commitment to end the depiction of strangulation in online pornography, not least because it demonstrates their conviction that such material can be banned. All it requires is political will. I hope that the Committee will find that same political will to make pornography that mimics child sex abuse or portrays incest illegal.

I support Amendment 292, which would introduce a statutory duty for platforms to verify the age and consent of individuals who feature in pornography. It is the bare minimum we need to start tackling the rampant exploitation in the porn industry.

I conclude by returning to my starting point. In previous generations, when the technology advanced, from cinema to video and from video to streaming, Parliament acted. Today is no different. We have acted because, as the sponsor of the Video Recordings Act said 40 years ago, incredibly presciently:

“Producers and suppliers of this base and debasing material have only one aim—to supply the worst elements of human nature for profit”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/1983; col. 522.]

We have acted because we have long known that violent porn—the type of pornography that depicts acts that are illegal in real life—is damaging. At no point have we as a Parliament or a society proactively debated and agreed to accept the type of abusive pornography that is now mainstream and widespread on the internet. No Minister from any Government has stood at the Dispatch Box and argued that the public have a right to watch scenes depicting incest or child sex abuse—I doubt any Minister would. No Minister has made the case that this material is harmless, and no Minister could, given the evidence we have heard today. We allow this material to proliferate not because we think it is harmless, not because we think it is a matter of free speech, but because we think it is hard to stop. It is hard, but I am hopeful. Today, we have a regulator which is beginning to make great strides in tackling illegal material online. We have a regulator with 40 years’ experience of video classification, and we have a Government who, to echo the words of the Minister, are profoundly committed to halving violence against women and girls. Today, we have an opportunity to close this unconscionable gap in the law. I very much hope that we will do so.

I too support all the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, but I shall speak particularly to Amendment 298.

As other noble Lords have pointed out, these nudification apps are horrific and bring untold harm to the women and men who are victims of them. They are so prevalent in schools that they are effectively normalised, shocking and shaming thousands of children on a daily basis, as my noble friend Lady Boycott has just pointed out. This week, ofcom fined the app Nudify for failing to implement the mandatory age-verification measures under the OSA. Amendment 298, if accepted, would increase the pressure on Ofcom and the Government to close down all nudification apps, for children and adults alike.

As with the AI companion amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Kidron, which was debated last week, this is yet another new technology that was not foreseen in the Online Safety Act. Despite your Lordships’ best efforts to future-proof protections for users, new functionalities and technologies will always be created that will need your Lordships’ attention. Nudification apps are just the latest in what will be a long line of new tech harms.

The problem is that, at the moment, there is a voluntary agreement for the big app stores not to sell nudification apps, but they are still being downloaded and are freely available on smaller app stores. Unfortunately, I do not believe voluntary protections by the tech companies work. Your Lordships have to look only at the Bletchley summit agreement in which tech companies signed up voluntarily to publishing the safety testing of new AI models prior to their release. Unfortunately, this has not happened in many instances, and in some egregious cases there is a failure to comply with this commitment.

Some AI models appear to have mundane uses but can subsequently be adapted for the purpose of nudification. These need to be safety tested to ensure that they cannot create harms—in this case, nudification—and, as has just been explained, the present voluntary agreement is not creating adequate protection. This amendment would go a long way to remedy this lacuna in the law and make the digital space safer for millions of people. I hope that it will be the first step in the Government bringing forward far-reaching AI safety legislation. I hope that the Minister listens to the voices from across the Committee and responds favourably to the proposal in the amendment for the creation of an offence of possession of nudification software.

My Lords, I support all these amendments for the reasons which have been given, and do not propose therefore to go through them. I want to give one extreme example of what happens when people watch a pornographic film and go on and carry out what the film did. I happen to have dealt with the case of one of the Bulger killers. I was told that they had watched a pornographic film belonging to the father of one of the two boys and then went out immediately and did exactly what the film did. That is why they killed the Bulger child. They followed the pornographic film. It did not, of course, stop them being convicted of murder. If that can happen to 10 year-olds then a large number of people are absolutely vulnerable to doing exactly what they watch. That is yet another reason why we should support these amendments. We have on the front bench, among the Ministers, those who are really caring. I hope, therefore, that they will not only listen to us but do something.

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Bertin, Lady Kidron, Lady Benjamin, Lady Kennedy, Lady Boycott and Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, all of whom who have made significant contributions. I do not wish to reiterate what has been said too much, but I want to speak today in support of Amendments 290, 291, 292, 298 and 314 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, concerning sexualising children, pornography that mimics abuse and nudification. I put on record my thanks to the noble Baroness for her important and vital work in this area, and recognise the toll it must have taken.

The consumption of violent pornography is having a devastating effect on adults and on the children being exposed to it. We have heard the research from the Children’s Commissioner that indicates the average age at which children in the UK first see pornography to be around 13, but a substantial minority are encountering it significantly earlier, including in our primary schools. I should declare an interest: I have two primary-aged children. I have a daughter who is eight and a son who is six, and I am terrified at the prospect of either of them being exposed to this type of material. We know that this material is having an adverse effect on the physical, sexual and mental health of hundreds of thousands of people in our country. I want to touch on a couple of particularly concerning areas: pornography that mimics abuse and nudification.

We know that, for too long, companies hosting pornographic content have been allowed to host whatever material they like online, regardless of its harm. I echo some of the comments that have been made; it is extraordinary that we have a situation where it is not allowed offline, but it is allowed online and anyone can reach it from the phone that they hold in their pocket.

Amendment 290 would make it an offence to glorify or advocate for child sexual abuse. I do not know how anyone can question the aims of that amendment; it is critical. We heard about this on the previous day in Committee. It is both repulsive and shameful, but it is worth reiterating, that the UK is the third-largest consumer of child sexual abuse videos that are streamed from the Philippines. We rightly have Laws on hate speech in this country. We must equally have laws that deal with this type of heinous advocation of child sexual abuse. This is not something over there; it is happening every single day in our country, and we have to take responsibility for it.

Amendment 291 would similarly deal with the sexualisation of children by bringing depictions of incest into the law on extreme pornography. It is unfathomable that content depicting incest is so easily and readily available online. I believe that Amendment 291 is vital. It is a very straightforward amendment that would simply expand the definition of extreme pornography to include incest.

I support Amendment 292, which would ensure that no actual child is featured in pornography by making it a legal requirement for pornography platforms to ensure that everyone who appears in images and videos is over the age of 18. That seems like common sense to me. We know that research shows us that child sexual abuse materials are easily found on mainstream pornography sites. Pornography users themselves have said that they have come across child sexual abuse materials easily on some of the biggest and most well-known pornography sites in the world. This amendment seeks to stop the proliferation of CSAM on those sites.

The amendment would also ensure that anyone who appears in pornographic content has given their consent for the content to be uploaded online. It is horrific to learn that it is all too common for videos of sexual violence and sexual assault to be uploaded on to pornography sites and sold as entertainment. There are many stories, but one story of a woman called Rose Kalemba really struck me and shows the urgent need for this amendment. Rose was just 14 when she was raped by two men at knifepoint, and she later found videos of that attack on Pornhub. Those videos had been viewed over 400,000 times, with grotesque and horrific titles. She repeatedly asked that website to take those videos down, but it refused. Instead, not only that site but others were making money off the horrific abuse that Rose suffered. There are many other cases; I point just to that one, but it reinforces why these amendments are so important.

I also add my support to Amendment 298, which would make the possession of nudification software illegal. We know these apps, and we have heard already that the apps and websites are now ubiquitous. They are even being marketed to and accessed by children. They are using generative AI to allow users to create this material, which is deeply harmful. Although the Online Safety Act criminalises the sharing of explicit AI-generated images, the apps themselves remain legal and widely available.

If noble Lords have not had the opportunity, I encourage them to listen to a really affecting podcast hosted by the Guardian called “Black Box”. It charts the experience of women in a quiet town in southern Spain, Almendralejo. Girls right across the town, some as young as 14, discovered that their classmates had used a nudification app to generate fake nude images of them. It came to light when a local doctor revealed that her daughter had been targeted. These manipulated images were spread among their peers. It was causing harm, humiliation and emotional trauma; it was absolutely horrific.

We know that this technology can impact entire schools, colleges and communities, even geographic areas. From hearing women and girls speak about the trauma they experience when they are the subjects of deepfake pornography and nudification, this should be of serious concern to us all. The mental and emotional impact of this abuse on women and girls is so profound. The existence of these tools, and the constant threat of being a victim of nudification, is also having a chilling effect on women across this country. We know that the police have really struggled to prosecute users of apps such as ClothOff, which was one of these nudification apps, particularly as the technology spreads faster than regulations can keep up. I certainly believe we must do everything possible to make this type of technology illegal as a matter of urgency, and I support all the amendments in this group.

My Lords, like everyone else, I am in favour of all the amendments in this group. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, set out very powerfully and alarmingly the reality of what is happening online. I do not think that I need to go through all the amendments in detail—other noble Lords have done that very well—but I was very struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said about asking ourselves if this is the normal that we want to live in.

Do we want to allow content that makes child abuse appear acceptable? Surely not. Do we want to see websites trivialise and, indeed, promote incest as some form of entertainment? Surely not. Should we allow tools that enable the nudification of images, which are overwhelmingly used to target women and girls, and which, as we have heard, are being used in schools? Surely not. Instead, do we want to ensure that age and consent are clearly verified, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time? Yes, we do. Do we want to see a parity between what is prohibited offline and what is prohibited online? Surely yes.

That is what this group sets out to do. I hope that the Minister will accept all the amendments in this group to ensure that we have a new normal that we all want to see.

My Lords, I too support these amendments. I will make two points that are additional to the powerful factors that have been addressed so far. First, I am very concerned to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, that the Government have not yet responded in full to her review. Can the Minister tell us why that is, given the importance of the subject, and when there will be a full response?

Secondly, although I support the objective of Amendment 314 to apply the same principles to material online as to material offline, I am very doubtful that the way the amendment seeks to achieve this is sensible. The amendment seeks to incorporate into the Bill the definition of “harmful material” found in Section 368E(3)(a) and Section 368E(3)(b) of the Communications Act 2003. However, those provisions refer simply to the decisions and criteria of the British Board of Film Classification without specifying the criteria applied by that body. The criteria that that body applies, as set out in its guidelines, are helpful, but they are not categorical. For example, the guidelines say:

“Exceptions are most likely in the following areas”,

and the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, helpfully set out the factors that they have regard to.

This is perfectly appropriate in the context of the BBFC, from whose decisions appeals are possible, because the context is the licensing of an R18 video, which, of course, can only be sold in a licensed sex shop. However, we are concerned here with criminal law, which needs to be defined with precision so that people know exactly what cannot be published online. Therefore, we need a revised Amendment 314, which I hope the Government will accept in principle, to set out in specific terms what Parliament is prohibiting online, such as material that depicts conduct in breach of the criminal law and material that depicts or appears to suggest non-consensual sexual conduct. There may well be other categories; let us set them out so that everybody knows what is prohibited online.

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. It is shameful that we have not yet legislated for parity between the regulation of online and offline pornography and that we are so very late in playing catch-up. What people can view online at a couple of clicks—including children often diverted to this sort of stuff without asking for it—is horrifying. As the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, stated, over half of 11 to 13 year-olds have seen pornography, often accidentally, and many have seen appalling images of choking, strangulation or sex where one partner is asleep, which is of course a non-consensual act—rape.

Therapists and front-line practitioners often describe a growing number of clients stating that porn consumption led them to child sexual abuse material. In the late 1980s, the Home Office commissioned a study that showed that fewer than 10,000 child sexual abuse images were available online. Today, it is conservatively estimated that, worldwide, the number of child sexual abuse images is 70 million to 80 million.

The internet has become a place where you can search for and find absolutely anything. If you cannot find it, you can create it yourself using AI and LLMs that are on the market, with no guard-rails. For example, generative AI can be and has been used to create pictures of someone’s older self abusing their younger self, including, in one series of images, that self as an eight year-old abusing themself as a two year-old. This is not a problem of the dark web; this is available easily, at a few clicks, on popular social media sites. One social media site alone hosts and facilitates by far the greatest number of cases of sextortion and, in a number of cases, this has led to young people taking their own lives.

Bad actors are also exploiting generative AI to sexually extort. Com groups are driving abuse and exploitation behaviours that are unimaginable, including cutting competitions where the winner is the person who cuts the deepest. Other com groups are used by adults—bad actors—to groom the most vulnerable children and control them to engage in the most horrifying acts, including suicide. One survivor described watching multiple suicides in one group.

Children are using social media to create their own payment models for live sex shows, like the one the recent TV series “Wild Cherry” showed, but much worse. More than half of the 107,000 child sexual abuse and exploitation cases recorded in 2022—a figure that has quadrupled in the last 10 years—were committed by children. Pornography has to play a large part in this. The amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, have the support of the NSPCC, the Children’s Commissioner and many other organisations. We must listen to them. It would be completely morally irresponsible for us, as guardians of children, not to enact now.

In the last Committee session, the Minister promised me a meeting with the appropriate person and officials to talk about my Amendment to allow new technology that is now available to block out child sexual abuse material. He indicated that officials were unsure whether this technology works. Since then, I have met with the providers of this technology again and they have assured me that it does work, certainly for young children, and that they are in active dialogue at a senior level with the head of the technical solutions team at the Home Office, DSIT, the Internet Watch Foundation, the NCA and GCHQ. I very much look forward to that meeting.

I should say that, although I do not think this will happen—I am fully aware of the rules—I have committed to a radio interview, so it is just possible that I may not be here to the end. I think I will be, but I apologise if I am not.

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Bertin for her hard work and her review. I fully support all her amendments, but will focus my remarks on a couple of them. I declare my interest as a guest of Google at its Future Forum, an AI policy conference, and my interest as receiving pro bono legal advice from Mishcon de Reya on my work on intimate image abuse.

On Amendment 292, it is vital that we always remember that consent is a live process, and our law should protect those who have featured in pornographic content and wish to withdraw their consent, no matter how long after publication. One content creator said, “A lot of the videos, I have no rights under; otherwise, I would probably have deleted them all by now”, and went on to describe it as a stigma that will follow her for the rest of her life. Given the huge scale of the porn industry, it is vital that our law protects those who feature and offers them recourse to remove their content should they wish to.

Amendment 298 would make it an offence to possess software to create or amend a digitally produced sexually explicit photograph or film. I was delighted that, in the data Act, we passed legislation that firmly placed in law a woman’s right to choose who owns her intimate content. However, my noble friend Lady Bertin is right to highlight that it does not completely stop the use of the nudification apps that have rapidly proliferated with the dawn of AI. Research by campaign group #MyImageMyChoice found that one app processed 600,000 images in the first three weeks after its launch. It is important to note that this technology facilitates a disproportionately sexist form of abuse. The training data used is of women’s bodies, meaning that the output is also of women’s bodies.

As I have previously stated in the House, Internet Matters found that teenagers saw sexually explicit deepfakes as worse than real images, for reasons such as lack of autonomy and awareness of the image, the anonymity of the perpetrator and the ways in which the image may be manipulated to portray the victim. The Girlguiding survey found that 59% of 11 to 21 year-olds were concerned that AI may be used to create fake images of them online. The accessibility of this technology quite simply facilitates the gamification of abuse, and I believe that we must take this opportunity to put a stop to it.

My Lords, we have heard some very powerful and emotional speeches, and I very much hope that, having seen the unanimous support all around the Committee, the Minister will respond positively today. I wholeheartedly support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin; I would have added my name to all of them, had there been space on the Order Paper.

This has been quite a dark debate, but as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, these are the direct, evidence-based conclusions of her independent pornography review. I very much welcome the questions the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked about the lack of a response to the Creating a Safer World review. It analysed 132,000 videos and clearly established an unambiguous link between the consumption of extreme pornography and violence against women and girls, both online and offline. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said, it is poison; as the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Boycott, said, it is motivated by money; and as the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, said, it is the worst end of human nature for profit.

As we have heard today from all around the Committee, we are extremely mindful of the emotional impact on young women and girls in particular. I acknowledge that, in their later Amendments 294 and 295, the Government have made some progress on the possession and publication of pornographic images portraying strangulation and suffocation. The review by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, found that such content is rife on mainstream platforms and has normalised life-threatening violence, to the extent that 58% of young people have seen it, so I welcome the Government’s moves to close that specific gap.

However, while the Government have addressed the issue of strangulation, these amendments address the remaining glaring legislative gaps identified by the review. We cannot shut the door on one form of extreme violence, while leaving the windows wide open for others.

Amendment 314 seeks to establish a fundamental principle: parity between the online and offline worlds, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, and others, have explained. Since 1984, we have prohibited content offline that the British Board of Film Classification would refuse to classify, such as material promoting non-consensual acts or sexual violence. Again, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I hope that, given the extremely effective way the BBFC has carried out its duties, we will not find it too difficult to find a way of sharpening that amendment to make sure that there is a very clear definition of the kind of content online that is equivalent to that offline, which we are seeking to regulate.

Amendments 290 and 291 address content that mimics child sexual abuse and incest. The noble Baroness’s review highlighted that “teen” is one of the most frequently searched terms, often leading to videos featuring performers styled with props, such as lollipops and school uniforms, to look underage. Experts working with sex offenders have made it clear that viewing this type of violent or age-play pornography is a key risk factor. Men who offend against children are 11 times more likely to watch violent pornography than those who do not. By allowing this content to proliferate, we are effectively hosting a training ground for abuse. These amendments would extend the definition of extreme pornography to cover these specific, harmful depictions.

Amendment 292 would introduce a duty for pornography websites to verify not just age but consent. We know that the average age of entry into trafficking for pornography in the US is just 12.8 years. Currently, once a video is online, a woman who has been coerced, trafficked or simply changed her mind has often no legal mechanism to withdraw that consent. What the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, said on this was particularly telling. This amendment would provide a necessary right to erasure, ensuring that platforms must remove content if consent is withdrawn. If the banking sector can verify identity to secure our finances, the multi-billion pound pornography industry can verify identity to secure human dignity.

Amendment 298 addresses the rapid rise of AI nudification apps. As my noble friend Lady Benjamin said, the Internet Watch Foundation reported a 380% increase in AI-generated child exploitation imagery between 2023 and 2024—a staggering figure. These tools are being weaponised to humiliate women and children. This amendment would criminalise the possession of software designed to create non-consensual nude images, closing a loophole before it widens further. I add to what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said on the need for wider guard-rails on large language models in, I hope, future government legislation.

The Government have rightly recognised the harm of strangulation content, and I urge them now to accept the logic of their own position and to support these additional amendments to deal with incest, child-mimicking content and the fundamental issue of consent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, we should be ashamed of ourselves, and I hope that we now ensure that the legislation catches up with the reality of the digital age.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Bertin not just for tabling and speaking to these amendments but for the excellent work she has done and continues to do in this area, which by all accounts has taken its toll. She has campaigned on these matters for a long time and deserves so much praise from all of us.

When I first discussed these amendments with my noble friend, I could hardly believe what she was telling me. Essentially, their underlying premise is that certain forms of extreme pornography are still allowed despite the fact that they have been proven to have highly damaging impacts on the development and behaviour of young boys and adolescents, not to mention the exploitation of children, women and so many victims and potential victims of this subject matter.

We have heard compelling speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Kennedy, and, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, in support of these amendments. There are so many perspectives from which one can look at them. One slightly personal perspective I have is that of a father of teenage children. I have teenage sons. Like all teenagers, they are bombarded with technology, challenged by social media and confronted with the unlimited scope that access to the internet can provide, with all its positive possibilities but also all its temptations, and in particular the dangers inherent in online pornography of an extreme nature. My sons, in effect, are the target audience of much of this material and I do not want this to be the new normal, as one of my noble friends described it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, spoke of poison and how we have to find ways of dealing with it. I concur completely. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, who said so powerfully that technology is outpacing regulation. That is the real danger here. As my noble friend Lady Shawcross-Wolfson said, we have to close the loopholes.

My noble friend Lady Bertin has highlighted that, at present, we criminalise child sexual abuse in all its forms. We thus criminalise sexual activity within certain family relationships and the making of indecent images of children, yet, astonishingly, online content that depicts, fantasises about or encourages these same criminal acts is legally and widely available.

Amendment 290 confronts the deeply troubling reality that material which appears to portray a child—even when the performer is an adult—can be used to groom, normalise or encourage sexual interest in children. We know that such material is not harmless fantasy. Law enforcement, child protection organisations and international research bodies have all warned that material appearing to depict children fuels harmful attitudes and increases the risk that individuals progress towards real-world offending.

Crucially, Amendment 290 would also create a new offence of producing or distributing material that glorifies or encourages sexual activity with a child or family member. No one in this Chamber needs reminding that such conduct is criminal and profoundly harmful, yet text-based, audio and visual material explicitly celebrating child abuse and incest remains widely accessible on mainstream pornography sites and user-generated content platforms. The law should recognise the role of such material in grooming, desensitisation and normalisation of abuse.

Amendment 291 addresses the glaring inconsistency whereby extreme pornographic content is prohibited in many contexts yet explicit depictions of unlawful sexual acts between family members—including those involving persons described or portrayed as under 18 —are not necessarily captured by existing legislation. Incest is a criminal offence, reflecting both the safeguarding imperative and the inherent power imbalance within some familial relationships. Yet, again, pornographic content portraying incest, often stylised to appear illicit, coercive or involving younger family members, remains permissible to host, sell and distribute online so long as it is performed by adults.

This amendment would not criminalise lawful adult behaviour; it would criminalise the possession of extreme pornographic images depicting acts that would themselves be criminal if performed in reality. Once again, the principle is consistency. What is an offence offline should not be freely commodified online under the guise of entertainment.

Finally, Amendment 292 addresses concerns regarding mandatory age and consent verification for those appearing in pornography hosted online. Despite the measures in the Online Safety Act, there are still platforms that do not have systems in place to verify the age of those involved in such material. Thus, the reality is that huge volumes of pornographic content are uploaded with no verification whatever: no verification of consent or age, or any record-keeping to support claims of either. We have heard stark evidence that minors have been found in mainstream pornographic content; that adult performers have had videos published without their consent or retained after they sought removal; and that platforms profit from this without meaningful accountability.

In conclusion, these amendments do not target free expression; they target exploitation. They would not restrict lawful adult behaviour; they would restrict the depiction and monetisation of criminal acts. They would not create new moral codes; they would simply insist that our existing Laws protecting children and families apply with equal force online as they do offline. For those reasons, I support all the amendments in this group from my noble friend Lady Bertin. Having heard the support from across the House this evening, I hope the Minister will too.

My Lords, it would not be right to begin the Government’s response to this group of amendments without first thanking unequivocally the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. The whole Chamber will join me in saying that we have a great deal to thank her for. She has worked tirelessly on the independent pornography review and has long campaigned to raise awareness of the ways pornography shapes sexual behaviour. This Government share her determination to ensure that the online world is a safer place for everyone, and we are immensely grateful to her for her insights.

The motivation for these amendments is important and I make it absolutely clear that I take them seriously. I have not disagreed with a single word that has been said in the impassioned and sometimes angry contributions in this Chamber—I share that anger and outrage. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, is aware, following our meeting last week, of the reasons why the Government will resist her amendments at this stage. However, I look forward to continuing our discussions in greater detail over the coming weeks, including in meetings between my department, the Home Office and DSIT. I hope we will all work closely together to achieve our shared objectives.

I also take this opportunity to announce that the Government will accept, in part, one of the noble Baroness’s recommendations from her pornography review—namely, recommendation 24. The Government will review the criminal law relating to pornography, which will give us a chance to look at the law holistically and consider whether it is fit for purpose in an ever-developing online world. Importantly, the review I am announcing today will look into the effectiveness of the existing law in relation to criminalising, among other things, harmful depictions of incest and any forms of pornography that encourage child sexual abuse.

I know the noble Baroness is anxious that any review should not be used as a delaying tactic to avoid making any decisions. I hope she will take it from me that it is my wish to make sure that this takes place quickly. In addition, as I mentioned to her when we met, the Government are not completely opposed to considering swifter action where this is critically important, and I know we will discuss this further at our next meeting.

Given what I have just said, I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I address Amendments 290 to 292 briefly, in the light of the fact we are proposing a review. I am very grateful for the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin, Lady Kidron, Lady Sugg and Lady Owen, my noble friends Lady Kennedy and Lady Berger, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Cameron of Lochiel—I hope I have mentioned everybody.

I appreciate the motivation behind these amendments, and I reassure my noble friend Lady Kennedy that the Government and I are very much in listening mode. Of course images of actual child incest or actual child sexual abuse are extremely harmful. The same is also true for intimate photos or videos shared without consent, and I note the concerns about how effectively this law is being enforced and regulated. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, that I am committed to working with her on the issues raised by these amendments and I very much look forward to meeting again to discuss them in greater detail to see where we can go with them.

Amendment 298 would criminalise the possession of nudification tools by users. Once again, I accept the intention behind this amendment and recognise the harm caused; it is horrifying. My noble friend Lady Berger spoke movingly about its impact on young women, and other noble Lords spoke strongly about this as well.

Our concern is that this amendment would not target those who provide these unpleasant tools to users in the UK. Additionally, as drafted, it would criminalise the possession of legitimate tools which are designed to create intimate images, such as those used in a medical context. I reiterate that we have significant sympathy for the amendment’s underlying objective, so we are actively considering what action is needed to ensure that any Intervention in this area is effective. I assure the noble Baroness that we will reflect carefully on what she and other noble Lords—including the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Boycott and Lady Owen, my noble friend Lady Berger, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, among others—have said in this debate. I also assure her that we aim to provide an update on this matter ahead of Report.

Finally, Amendment 314 seeks to bring regulatory parity between offline and online pornography. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for her continued advocacy on this topic over the years. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—for whom huge respect is due, in this House and elsewhere—the noble Lords, Lord Carter of Haslemere and Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, among others, all spoke powerfully about this.

I stress once again that I do not disagree with the motivation that underlies this amendment. No one could disagree with the general principle as a matter of common sense, but extensive further work with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, is needed to consider and define with sufficient certainty what currently legal online pornography should not be permitted. It is also important that we make a thorough exploration of the existing legislation and regulation to ensure any new offence is enforceable, protects users to the highest standard and works as intended.

Under the Video Recordings Act, the distribution of pornography on physical media formats is regulated by the BBFC, as we have heard. Obviously, the BBFC will not classify any content which breaches criminal law. Amendment 314 as drafted would create a criminal offence which would require a judgment to be made about whether the BBFC would classify content which has not been subject to the classification process. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, expressed concerns about the drafting of this amendment while supporting its underlying motivation. As I hope your Lordships will agree, creating this style of criminal offence requires a clearer and more certain definition of this pornographic content, as any individual would need to be able clearly to understand what they need to do to regulate their conduct, so as not to inadvertently commit a criminal offence.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, will appreciate the reasons I have set out for the Government not supporting these amendments today. That said, I hope the announcement of the review into the criminal law and the Government’s commitment to work with the noble Baroness over the coming weeks will leave her sufficiently reassured not to press her amendments at this stage.

I want to ask the Minister about the timing. Her tone is exceptionally welcome— I will leave the substance of her response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin—but I am watching facial recognition, edtech and AI being rolled out by the Government with impunity. Even earlier today, at Questions, the tool was put at a higher order than the safety. What is the timeframe for the reviews and in which we can expect these very Urgent Questions to be addressed? There is a Bill in front of us, but when will the next Bill come?

Can the noble Baroness imagine just how unpopular I would be if I committed to an absolute timeframe? What I can say is that I hope she will take it from me that I regard this as important. The meetings with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, have started. This matters but we need to get it right.

Will this review—yet another review—take place before Report? The Bill is before us, so once Report has passed, it will be too late to have the review. This is not something that we can leave until it is too late. Can we at least have an assurance that Report will be timed in a way that enables the Minister to come back and say, “This review has happened, and this is what we’re going to do”?

I entirely understand the sentiments. I cannot commit to that today, but I will take the point away.

I will give the Minister a little bit of context, because she has not been in this House very long, for which she is probably very grateful. Many of us speaking today were very involved in the genesis and ultimate passage of the Online Safety Act. That took six years to happen. When we passed that Act, we thought we were being crystal clear, in both Houses of Parliament, on what we intended to happen and what we intended the regulator to do. One of reasons why her ministerial colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, got a pretty hard time from this Committee on 27 November was that we felt there was a certain unwillingness to recognise the degree of frustration many of us feel about how the Online Safety Act is being enacted.

In particular, on 27 November, the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, told us that the Molly Rose Foundation has, in effect, given up on hoping that ofcom will actually do its job, because Ofcom has told the foundation that its attitude and strategy in enacting the Online Safety Act, when dealing with the large platforms, is what it calls “tactical ambiguity”. If I were a lawyer for one of the large platforms, I would think that having a regulator that was applying tactical ambiguity was absolutely wonderful; it would be exactly what I would hope for. What we are looking for is action from His Majesty’s Government, and when it happens, we are not looking for any kind of ambiguity.

I have already said that I have heard, and indeed share, the anger and frustration in Committee. I may not have been in your Lordships’ House for that long, but I have not been living underneath a stone. Given my previous existence, I am acutely aware of these debates. What is obvious to us all is that, however well-intentioned past attempts have been, these things are still happening. If we want them to stop, we have to do something about them. I do not believe I can go further than I have at the moment; all I can say is that the will is there.

During Robert Runcie’s time in the Church of England, he was exasperated that when matters became very difficult, the General Synod was called to set up a committee. He saw the setting up of committees as a postponing of a decision that ought to be taken. These inquiries keep going on and on. Given the Government’s machinery and lawyers, I do not understand why this could not be looked at before Report.

I have already answered that, I am afraid. With the greatest of respect to the noble and right reverend Lord, I cannot give that commitment today, but he has heard what I have said.

My Lords, this has been humbling for me, and it is very hard to know how to respond. There are big shoes to fill after so many amazing speeches. That is what we call teamwork and showing this Chamber at its very best. I assure noble Lords that I still have plenty of petrol left in the tank on this issue. I am very grateful for the acknowledgement that it has been a gruelling piece of work, but what would damage me more is if we did not get this right. I am not prepared to look back and think that we could have done more, and I believe that many others in this Committee would agree with that.

I will now respond to the Government. I know that the Minister cannot give more assurances than she has given. To give some context, the reason why we are here now discussing these amendments is that the previous Government created a review to park the very difficult conversations in the debates on the then Online Safety Bill around this issue. They said, “Oh, we will put it into a review. When that review publishes, then we will have the answers”. I have given the Government the answers and an oven-baked plan.

I thank my team during that review and my team today; I had a team of brilliant civil servants working with me. It was an independent review; I was the boss, but it was a properly done thing. We did it hoping that the Government would literally take it and put it into action, and there is no reason why they cannot do that. By all means review the law, but please come back by Report. I worked at No. 10 for many years, where I saw that reviews are just code for kicking something into the long grass.

The Committee has spoken, and we are reflective of the country too. When I agreed to do the pornography review, I thought for five minutes, “My God, should I actually do this? Am I suddenly going to be Mary Whitehouse?”; I imagined pictures of the pearl-clutching prude. However, I have never had so much support. We have the mainstream media behind us. My inbox is filled every day with people saying, “For the sake of our sons and for the sake of our daughters, keep going”—and I will keep going. If this Government want to have a legacy and to show leadership, they should take all these amendments in full.

However, I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. I would love clarity on Amendment 314. There needs to be a proper debate about what we need to outlaw, because the greyness is where the industry gets away with just carrying on as it was. Let us take the amendment away, take the greyness away as much as possible and bring this back properly on Report. I am happy to have conversations on that and happy to do more work for this Government; I will do it voluntarily and I will do anything it takes. Please take on board these recommendations and do not leave it for another five or 10 years, by which time society will be even more damaged. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment—for now.

Amendment 290 withdrawn.

Amendments 291 and 292 not moved.