My Lords, I apologise for the delay in finding my papers, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, who very kindly stepped in.
Amendments 4 to 7 form the second group of amendments that I tabled in response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report published on 20 July. They relate to my proposal under Clause 8 to introduce a licensing scheme for foreign pornographic websites in the absence of any robust regulation of these websites.
The Committee may remember that ATVOD, the Authority for Television on Demand, which I am sad to say will cease to exist at the end of the month, published a report in 2014 that found that 23 of the
top 25 adult websites visited by UK internet users provide instant, free and unrestricted access to hardcore pornographic videos, some of which would not be available on a British high street.
ATVOD’s report explains that it has encouraged the UK payments industry—credit card companies, Paypal and so forth—not to process transactions involving websites showing hardcore pornography that is presented without robust age verification safety checks. However, it also explains that the transaction providers are unwilling to do so because,
“the absence of clear case law on the issue precludes such an initiative”.
In short, unless the provider of the material is breaking a law, a financial transaction provider could be taken to court for failing to process the transaction. Setting up a licensing scheme, however, as proposed by Clause 8, would set up clear case law. An organisation would have a licence, or it would not. If the organisation did not have a licence, there would be no legal obstacles if a financial transaction provider was minded not to process the transaction—something that Clause 10 crucially mandates.
Clause 8 would provide a regulatory framework to ensure that these websites are not available to children. Clause 9 makes it an offence not to have a licence and Clause 10 provides a means of ensuring that payments to unlicensed websites would cease—a matter I shall come back to when I speak on Amendments 8 to 13.
The committee was concerned that appeals against decisions on not granting a licence or having a licence revoked would be heard by the licensing body. That is a genuine concern, so I tabled Amendments 4 to 7 to ensure that an independent body be able to review any appeals.
Amendments 4 and 5 ensure that the powers under Clause 8(1) allow the Secretary of State to designate both a licensing body and a separate independent appeals body. Amendments 6 and 7 ensure that the Secretary of State is not able to designate a licensing body without knowing that the independent body has adequate arrangements for appeals. As I have already said, I sought the counsel of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, about whether these amendments deal with the problems highlighted by the committee and he assured me that they do. I beg to move.