My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendments 29, 83 and 103 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. I am extremely pleased that the Minister said last Tuesday that pornography will be within primary priority content; he then committed on Thursday to naming primary
priority content in the Bill. This is good news. We also know that pornography will come within the child safety duties in Clause 11. This makes me very happy.
In the document produced for the Government in January 2021, the BBFC said that there were millions of pornographic websites—I repeat, millions—and many of these will come within Part 3 of the Bill because they allow users to upload videos, make comments on content and chat with other users. Of course, some of these millions of websites will be very large, which means by definition that we expect them to come within the scope of the Bill. Under Clause 11(3) user-to-user services have a duty to prevent children accessing primary priority content. The duty is qualified by the phrase
“using proportionate systems and processes”.
The facts of deciding what is proportionate are set out in Clause 11(11): the potential harm of the content based on the children’s risk assessment, and the size and capacity of the provider of the service. Amendments 29, 83 and 103 tackle the issue of size and capacity.
7.30 pm
With millions of sites on the internet, it is not unreasonable to think that some sites will argue that, despite the potential harm to children, they are not of a size to have the capacity to invest in technology. The amendment would require all user-to-user sites with pornographic content to use age verification to determine that the person accessing the content was aged 18 years or older, regardless of size and capacity. This issue was touched upon on Tuesday in the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, which said there should be a level playing field for websites that contain pornographic content regardless of which part of the Bill they fall within. Websites that come within the scope of Part 5 do not have any exceptions and must have age verification to meet the duty in Clause 72, and that should also apply to Part 3 services.
The Government have said there is a significant risk of harm posed by children’s access to pornography online since exposure to pornography may impact children’s perception of sex and relationships, increase the likelihood of engaging in sexual activities and harmful or aggressive behaviour, and reduce concern about consent from partners. For those reasons alone, all sites with pornographic content should have age verification.
I know that we will have further debates on age verification in due course, but I hope the Government’s announcement that pornographic content will be in the Bill means that age verification for pornography on Part 3 and Part 5 services will come into force at the same time. I urge the Government to support these amendments.