My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment 25YD, tabled in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It would have the effect of requiring a review of the use of the term “extreme pornography” after two years and provide the opportunity to replace it after three years with a broader standard of protection enforced offline. I shall also speak against the Government’s amendments to Clauses 22 and 23. They would water down the Bill by deeming only the narrow category of “extreme pornographic material” unacceptable and not the wider category of prohibited material.
I understand that Part 3 of the Bill is primarily about protecting children and that the Opposition Front Benches do not want to provoke a discussion about adult access to porn. However, by asserting that adults should have online access to what is prohibited offline, it is they who have opened up this debate.
I also understand that the Government have legally founded reasons for their amendments. As we have heard, they are concerned, for example, about the mismatch between the Crown Prosecution Service guidance and what is actually prosecutable following developments in case law. Amendment 25YD would create a window of time in which to deal with this.
Standing back for a minute, it seems incomprehensible to a non-lawyer like myself that juries can determine that henceforth something is now acceptable that would,
until fairly recently, have been considered obscene under law, and yet they bear no responsibility for meeting the societal costs that accrue when such lines of acceptability are moved.
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Many of the practices portrayed in porn scenes and films that would now be deemed acceptable under case law are medically harmful. For example, a very cursory glance at NetDoctor reveals that fisting—putting the whole hand into the rectum—which case law now deems acceptable in porn scenes,
“may be acceptable and enjoyable for some couples. But the diameter of the hand is so much greater than that of the penis that there’s an increased risk of anal injury. For that reason, we do not recommend this practice”.
There is no public recognition whatever of the medical harms, and therefore costs, associated with these sexual practices. We know that around 510,000 new STI diagnoses were made in the UK in 2011, with estimated treatment costs of £620 million. While these are obviously not all directly related to porn use, they are an indicator of the social and medical costs that hyperliberalism in sexual activity is exacting.
There is also scant regard for the well-documented effects on people’s intimate relationships. I have already talked in this Chamber about increasing numbers of young girls being injured, even to the extent of incurring lifelong fistula conditions, by anal sex that has been inspired by their partners’ consumption of porn. Researchers also point to how very dubious it is that men will properly obtain consent from their girlfriends and to the social pressures that girls endure: that they should like it or that the pain will decrease as they get used to it. To me this points straight back to the ubiquity of porn, which is normalising not just potentially harmful sexual practices but also coercion and aggression.
We will never deal with the appalling prevalence of violence against women in our society—our Prime Minister’s laudable ambition—unless we face up to the intense violence in relationships being played out every night on millions of computer screens. Research indicates that extensive exposure to porn can make it impossible to obtain sexual satisfaction without also releasing the aggressive drive. In other words, as tolerance to porn grows, sexual excitement is no longer satisfying and aggression must also have an outlet.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, stated in Committee, with no apparent irony, that her party’s opposition to existing Clauses 22 and 23, which passed in the other place, is based on the fact that:
“We are simply trying to protect the status quo so that adults who currently look at material can carry on looking at it—and this has nothing to do with child protection and children’s access to pornography”.—[Official Report, 2/2/17; cols. 1362-63.]
Again standing back, the status quo is not one that responsible legislators should defend. The prohibited material she wants adults to be able to access, which the BBFC has determined they would not be able to view offline, is sowing violence and relational misery across the nation.
Of course, not all consumers of porn are compulsively so or addicted to the material, but we are beginning to learn from research that the effects of compulsive or addictive responses to porn are harrowing and ultimately avoidable. Experts on porn addiction say that, just like
other forms, it is progressive and destructive. I am aware of one individual who started watching adult porn and found it was a gateway into child sex abuse images. He followed a few links and found himself hooked. He was caught after downloading a huge number of pictures and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence. However, he can now only see his own children under supervision and will never work in his profession again.
The internet has made porn more accessible, affordable and anonymous. It has radically changed the terms of society’s engagement with porn. The libertarian argument is that we should cease from regulating anything until we are sure, beyond any doubt, that it is intrinsically harmful. I am surprised that a Conservative Government do not instinctively see the need to act before more harm has been perpetrated as a result of such an enormous change in behavioural norms.
The BBFC offers protection offline, which the Bill could have extended to the online world, but this has been swept away by these amendments. The Government have abrogated their responsibility in order to preserve people’s freedom to walk in a minefield that they could have done something to help clear and make safer. Talking with one young man who has struggled to stop watching porn because he feels compulsively drawn to it but hates the way it affects him—a common paradox in porn consumption—he said it would make a difference if the top 50 sites were effectively blocked. It would cut down on the accessibility of the best quality porn—they are the top sites for a reason, after all—and undermine porn’s acceptability.
When the Government use their powers to restrict access to something for the public good it sends an important message, and when they choose not to use those powers it sends another message—that the practice is neutral or even positive. Neither are the case. By the time we had irrevocable evidence that smoking was harmful, about 85% of the population smoked. However, the Government acted in the teeth of vested interests and public practice. This Government should also act in this area. If they are intent on passing their amendments in order to get their age verification legislation through, then shame on the Opposition for exacting so high a price. The amendment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, will at least ensure we revisit this issue in a timely fashion.