My Lords, I admire the continued work of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, in putting forward this amendment. I have been inundated with requests from members of the public that I speak on this amendment, and express their strong support for it. One grandparent got in touch to tell me about the experience of their young grandchild and how they had been exposed to listening to another child talk about incredibly graphic violent pornography. Out of all the letters, this struck a chord with me.
I also thank We Can’t Consent to This, the Click Off campaign and the Reward Foundation for spending time with me in the last year to talk me through some of the many issues related to pornography. Much of it was harrowing, especially around redefining the boundaries of consensual relationships.
Now is the time for the Government to take a positive step forward after not implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2019. It is clear from the extensive research that there is a link between domestic abuse, general violence against women and pornography. The British Board of Film Classification has said that half of children aged 11 to 13, and 66% of 14 to 15 year-olds, have come across pornography. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised social media. It is shocking how easy it is to find pornography after just one or two clicks away from someone an individual may innocently follow.
The evidence of how compulsive use of internet pornography can affect the brain and decision-making faculties of a compulsive user over time is something that we have to take seriously, but relatively little has appeared in the media about it and there are three reasons. The first is that substantial pornography use is relatively new and coincided with increased internet speeds around 2008. The second is that it can be hard to isolate one factor as a root cause. The third, and of most concern, is that the multibillion-pound pornography industry has financial reasons for keeping the public and politicians in the dark about the links between its product and health risks. The playbook that we now know was used by, among others, the tobacco industry to counter the message of a negative link between smoking and ill health was highly effective for a long time, and this is similar to the pushback that we are seeing now from a multibillion-pound industry that does not want to change.
Pornography is such a politically sensitive subject and a largely private activity that it stops many people discussing it publicly. The Government need to address this issue and I strongly support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.