My Lords, it is important that this proposed new clause is drawn with real care. While I hear the discussions about the motivation to degrade and humiliate or to secure sexual gratification, it is important to draft widely without specifying the nature of the motivation. That is because it is always difficult to pin down motivation. A case in Canada is currently attracting a great deal of public attention in which a woman judge has been suspended from the judiciary while an inquiry takes place because her husband put on to the web images of her that had been taken in intimacy.
The concern for the judiciary is that this undermines her authority in the courtroom, because these images are available. It is, if you like, bringing the judiciary into disrepute. The consequences for her life are therefore considerable. It is an interesting and rather difficult debate in Canada. She has remained with her husband and seems to have forgiven him for his transgression, but the issue has moved beyond the pair in the relationship to be an issue of public concern.
I urge that we think about the implications of the drafting. In Canada, a woman’s career has been held in abeyance. She has remained in a marriage because
of her commitment to it, but certainly it is causing problems. It is really an issue about consent: has a person consented to the disclosure of intimate photographs? It is not an issue of speculating about what the motivations might be.