My Lords, I too add my support to Amendments 123A, 142, 161, 183, 184, 185, 297, 300 and 306. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bethell and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for putting before us such a comprehensive list of amendments seeking to protect children from a host of online harms, including online pornography. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, who, through her Amendment 185, draws our attention to the horrifying material that is prohibited in the offline world though is inexplicably legal in the online world. I also lend my support to Amendment 306 in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, in relation to the swift implementation of age verification for pornography. I am sorry to have jumped the queue.
I spoke at Second Reading on the harms of pornography to children, but so much more evidence has come to my notice since then. I recently wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph about age verification, which resulted in my inbox being absolutely flooded by parents saying, “Please keep going”. There are probably noble Lords here who feel that we have spoken enough about pornography over the last few weeks, but anybody who has watched any of this would, I am afraid, beg to differ. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for quoting from another email I received in response to that article, which is relevant to today’s debate. A young man wrote:
“When I first visited online porn, I was about 12”.
Incidentally, that is the average age at the first exposure. He said:
“I can remember feeling that this was ‘wrong’ but also that it was something that all boys do. I had no idea about masturbation, but that soon followed, and I was able to shake off the incredibly depressive sensation of having done something wrong after finishing by finding many online resources informing me that the practice was not bad, and actually quite healthy. Only over the past 3 years have I been able to tackle this addiction and I am now 31.
I will try and keep this letter as succinct as possible, but I believe the issue of pornography is at the root of so many issues in society that nobody, no man at least, seems willing to speak about it openly. If you research what happens in the brain of a person viewing pornography”,
especially when so young,
“you see that the dopamine receptors get so fried it’s almost as bad as a heroin experience and far more addictive. Far more addictive, in that I can just log on to my phone and open Pandora’s box at any time, anywhere, and it’s all free.
I’ll tell you that I became alienated from women, in that I became afraid of them. Perhaps out of guilt for looking at pornography. Instead of having the confidence to ask a girl out and experience an innocent teenage romance, I would be in my room looking at all sorts of images.
The human brain requires novelty, mine does at least, so soon you find yourself veering off from the boring vanilla porn into much darker territories.
The internet gives you access to literally everything you could possibly imagine, and the more you get sucked down the rabbit hole, the more alienated you become from your peers. You are like an addict searching for your next hit, your whole world revolves around your libido and you can’t actually look at a woman without fantasising about sex.
Then if you do manage to enter into a relationship, the damage this causes is beyond comprehension. Instead of living each moment with your partner, you end up in a dual relationship with your phone, masturbating behind their back. In fact, your partner can’t keep up with the porn, and you end up with issues with your erections and finding her attractive.
Whenever you would watch information about porn on TV or the internet, you would be told that it should be encouraged and is healthy. You end up trying to watch porn with your partner, and all the weird psychological ramifications that has. You go further down the rabbit-hole, but for some reason nothing feels right and you have this massive crippling depression following you wherever you go in life”.
I hope noble Lords will forgive me for reading that fairly fully. It is a tiny illustration, and it is typical of how pornography steals men’s childhoods and their lives. I discussed this with young men recently, and one told me that, because he had been in Dubai—where there is no access to it—for a month, he feels much better and plans to keep away from this addictive habit. When young men reach out to Peers because they have nowhere else to go, we must surely concede that we have failed them. We have failed generations of boys and girls—girls who are afraid to become women because of what they see—and, if we do not do something now, we will fail future generations.
7.15 pm
Porn addiction is very real and it is growing. As I just read, it triggers the dopamine processes in the brain and, just like addictive products such as tobacco and alcohol, it can create pathways within the brain that lead to cravings, which push consumers to search longer and continually for the same level of high. What is worse is that the amount of dopamine that floods the brain increases only with repeated consumption. Porn can trigger this process endlessly because it is endlessly available.
No one doubts that we have a serious problem on our hands. The Children’s Commissioner report published in January this year made clear that the volume of pornography accessed by children is rising and that pornography exposure is widespread and normalised, to the extent that children cannot opt out. We know that it is shaping sexual scripts and, in the absence of good relationships and sex education, it is teaching children that violent sex is normal, that girls and children like to be subjugated, and that boys and men need to be dominating and violent. We cannot let this continue, which is why I support the package of amendments outlined today by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and my noble friend Lord Bethell.
I strongly appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, raised similar issues on the timeline for age verification. I am aware that the Bill makes provision for age verification for pornography, and I was relieved to hear that primary priority content and priority content would be in the Bill. But there is still a massive problem with the intended timeline for age verification: the Bill fails to outline a timeline for the implementation of it—there is no clear road map in the Bill—which allows for repeated delays. This is on top of what is already a repeated delay; as we heard, it could have been introduced in 2017. I and many others in both Houses fear that, without the timetable, it could be several more years before it is put into place. Parents expect age verification to start protecting children soon after Royal Assent, and a long delay will be unpopular and baffling to the public—it is baffling to me. Either it can be introduced now, in which case it should be, or it cannot, in which case I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why, in words that the public can understand.
I am also bewildered by the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised. I seek to support her by asking my noble friend the Minister: why is content depicting child sexual abuse allowed to be freely accessed online when it would be prohibited or illegal in the offline world? I watched with horror the documentary “Barely Legal”, screened here last week. It outlined this violent and horrific material, with young women dressed up to look like children, told to look as young as possible and having sex—and worse—with older men. The instructions from the interviewed porn directors and producers who produce this material were that the younger these women could be made to look, the better. This material contributes to the number of porn consumers—mostly men—who, as a result of watching this material, seek out real child sexual abuse material. So I fully support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which would make this content illegal and prohibited online, as it is offline. I ask my noble friend the Minister to explain why this is not already the case.