Chris Philp: ...about the Government listening and responding, and we accepted 66 of the Joint Committee’s recommendations —a Committee that he served on. We made very important changes to do with commercial pornography, for example, and fraudulent advertising. We accepted 66 recommendations, so it is fair to say we have listened a lot during the passage of this Bill. On the amendments that have been...
Alex Davies-Jones: ...and girls is defined as including, but not limited to, intimate image abuse, online harassment, the sending of unsolicited explicit images, coercive sexting and the creation and sharing of deepfake pornography. The Minister will also know that Carnegie UK is working with the End Violence Against Women coalition to draw up what a code of practice to tackle violence against women and girls...
Maria Miller: ...with that better. The Government already recognise that women disproportionately experience the impact of online abuse, and they have a track record of acting. They were the first to outlaw revenge pornography, and they have introduced more laws since. I hope the Minister will put at rest my mind and the minds of those who drew together the code that was issued late last month by setting...
Maria Miller: ... about third-party complaints processes by other organisations. We heard a bit about the revenge porn helpline, which was set up a few years ago when we first recognised in law that revenge pornography was a crime. The Bill creates a lot more victims of crime and recognises them as victims, but we are not yet hearing clearly how the support systems will adequately help that massively...
Chris Philp: ...be open to those who are affected by the content but who are not themselves users of the site. For example, that might be non-users who are the subject of the content, such as a victim of revenge pornography, or non-users who are members of a specific group with certain characteristics targeted by the content, such as a member of the Jewish community reporting antisemitic content. There is...
Baroness Merron: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Online Safety Bill will contain provisions to enable Ofcom (1) to proactively investigate pornography websites' compliance with the law, and (2) to take swift enforcement action where necessary.
Baroness Merron: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Online Safety Bill will ensure that commercial pornography websites do not carry any illegal content, such as (1) extreme pornography, or (2) prohibited images of children.
Maria Miller: ...clarify exactly how the Bill works in relation to such important work? Secondly, it is important that the Government have made the changes to schedule 2. They have listened closely on the issue of pornography and extended the provisions of the Bill to cover commercial pornography. However, the hon. Member for Pontypridd mentioned nudification software, and I am unclear whether the Bill...
Chris Philp: ...threatening and abusive and result in harassment, alarm or distress. The list of priority offences includes a number of offences which disproportionately afffect women and girls, such as revenge pornography and cyberstalking, which companies must tackle. Beyond the priority offences, all services will need to ensure that they have quickly taken down other illegal content directed at women...
...that we welcome as a children’s charity. One of them, age verification, has just been mentioned. We are particularly concerned and have written about children’s access to harmful and extreme pornography—they are sometimes only a couple of clicks away from harmful online commercial pornography—and we welcome the age-verification measures in the Bill. However, we are concerned about...
...means, as I read it, that search engines would have absolutely no duties to children under their children safety duty in relation to advertising content. You could, for example, target a child with pornography and it would fall outside the regime. I think that is a bit of a gap.
Maria Miller: ...you here. The strength of the Bill will really be underpinned by the strength of the criminal law that underpins it, and schedule 7 lists offences that relate to sexual images, including revenge pornography, as priority offences. Can the witnesses say whether they think the law is sufficient to protect women from having their intimate pictures shared without their consent, or indeed...
Alex Davies-Jones: Q Thank you. Just one final question for Twitter. A query we raised with the Children’s Commissioner and the NSPCC is about pornography and children accessing it. A person needs to be 13 years old to join Twitter—to host a profile on the site—but you do host pornographic content; it is used mainly by sex workers to promote their trade. How does the proposed provision affect your model...
Kim Leadbeater: Q Thank you, Ms Rees, and thank you to the witnesses. Many websites host pornography without necessarily being pornographic websites, meaning that children can easily stumble across it. Does the Bill do enough to tackle pornography when it is hosted on mainstream websites?
Ronnie Cowan: Over the years, many people have been coerced, often through violence, into being filmed in pornography that has been put online for people to see for years to come. Will the Government consider making provision in the Online Safety Bill for people to withdraw their consent and have that content removed from the internet?
Robin Walker: ...to support young people to develop healthy relationships and to prevent sexual violence and sexual harassment. The department has also delivered three webinars on teaching about domestic abuse, pornography, and sexual exploitation, reaching over 1,000 teachers nationally. The department has started work on user research to inform non-statutory guidance on teaching relationships education...
John Howell: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the debate entitled For an assessment of the means and provisions to combat children's exposure to pornographic content, which took place at the Council of Europe on 25 April 2022.
Lord Paddick: ...of the Government’s aim to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. The issue of legal but harmful content has yet to be effectively addressed and the protections for children from pornography, self-harm and grooming all fall short of the standard the Government have set for themselves. To think that short cuts in data protection will reap a Brexit dividend ignores the...
Maria Miller: ...three years, just one in three young people in our country have learned about how to tell whether a relationship is healthy, including online, and just one in three have learned about the harm of pornography. The Minister needs to consider how we review Ofsted’s effectiveness in monitoring the roll-out and whether others should be involved in that, given the current failures in that...
Nicholas Fletcher: ...or a bad childhood experience? What drove these people to drugs, alcohol or depression? Why are they not talking about their dreadful past? Is it the result of being the victim of sexual abuse or pornography? Is it the internet? Is it from being brought up in a dysfunctional family or a community that does not bring hope? Is it peer pressure or gangs? Why do young people join a gang? There...
