My Lords, the final issue I raised in Committee is dealt with in this group on so-called proportionality. I tabled amendments in Committee to ensure that under Part 3 no website or social media service with pornographic content could argue that it should be exempt from implementing age verification under Clause 11 because to do so would be disproportionate based on its size and capacity. I am pleased today to be a co-signatory to Amendment 39 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, to do just that.
The noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, have also tabled amendments which raise similar points. I am disappointed that despite all the amendments tabled by the Minister, the issue of proportionality has not been addressed; maybe he will give us some good news on that this evening. It feels like the job is not quite finished and leaves an unnecessary and unhelpful loophole.
I will not repeat all the arguments I made in Committee in depth but will briefly recap that we all know that in the offline world, we expect consistent regulation regardless of size when it comes to protecting children. We do not allow a small corner shop to act differently from a large supermarket on the sale of alcohol or cigarettes. In a similar online scenario, we do not expect small or large gambling websites to regulate children’s access to gambling in a different way.
We know that the impact of pornographic content on children is the same whether it is accessed on a large pornographic website or a small social media platform. We know from the experience of France and Germany that pornographic websites will do all they can to evade age verification. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said on the eighth day of Committee, whether pornography
“comes through a Part 3 or Part 5 service, or accidently through a blog or some other piece of information, it has to be stopped. We do not want our children to receive it. That must be at the heart of what we are about, and not just something we think about as we go along”.—[Official Report, 23/5/23; col. 821.]
By not shutting off the proportionality argument, the Government are allowing different-sized online services to act differently on pornography and all the other primary priority content, as I raised in Committee. At that stage, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said,
“we do not need to take a proportionate approach to pornography”.—[Official Report, 2/5/23; col. 1481.]
Amendment 39 would ensure that pornographic content is treated as a separate case with no loopholes for implementing age verification based on size and capacity. I urge the Minister to reflect on how best we can close this potential loophole, and I look forward to his concluding remarks.