As noble Lords will recall from the earlier debate on this issue, His Majesty’s Government take tackling violence against women and girls extremely seriously. This is why we have ensured that the Bill provides vital protections for women and girls, so that they can express themselves freely online without fear of harassment or abuse.
As noble Lords know, the Bill places strong duties on providers regarding illegal content. The Bill takes an approach which protects all users, but the framework accounts for the fact that some offences can disproportionately affect certain people. To that end, we have already listed several priority offences in Schedule 7 that we know disproportionately affect women and girls. These include sexual exploitation, intimate image abuse— including so-called revenge pornography—and extreme pornography.
In addition, I want to be clear that the Bill will also cover content which intentionally encourages priority offences, an issue that was raised as a concern in our previous debate. Paragraph 33 of Schedule 7 has the effect that inchoate offences of encouraging or assisting a priority offence are themselves to be treated as priority offences under the Bill. As a result, for example, where there is content that intentionally or knowingly encourages harassment online, services will have proactive duties in relation to this content.
Furthermore, the Bill will soon—as I mentioned earlier—introduce new intimate image abuse offences to tackle behaviour, such as the sharing of deep-fake images. These new offences will be listed as priority offences, as is already the case for the current revenge pornography offence under Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. These offences are a major milestone for protecting women and girls, and will be introduced to the Bill as soon as possible. They will sit alongside the Bill’s other criminal provisions, such as its offences on cyberflashing, false communications and threatening communications.
Although I appreciate the intention behind Amendments 269 and 270 and look forward to hearing the arguments made by the noble Lords who will speak to them, I remain concerned by the approach suggested to change Clause 167 to a consent-based model rather than the current intent-based approach. We are confident that the offence, as drafted, captures acts of cyberflashing, including when supposedly done “for a joke”—which, of course, it certainly is not. This is because the focus of the offence as drafted remains firmly on the perpetrator’s abhorrent behaviour and not on the actions of the victim, as would happen with a consent-based approach.
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I am grateful to the noble Lords who attended the briefing we organised with Professor Penney Lewis of the Law Commission, who explained in detail why it has taken the approach it has in suggesting this drafting.
I know that a number of noble Lords who attended found that it was useful and put their minds at rest. However, I look forward to listening to the thoughts of other noble Lords in this debate.
Amendment 271 would require instances of cyberflashing to be reported to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS is not the appropriate body to receive such reports, as its role is to prosecute criminal offences which the police have investigated. In addition, the Bill is primarily about introducing new duties on service providers. It requires them to take responsibility for the safety of their users and prevent illegal content and activity appearing on their services in the first place. I welcome the discussion we will have on these amendments and will listen closely to the points raised in them. However, I hope to be able to reassure noble Lords that these amendments are not needed.
Before we have that debate, I will address government Amendment 135A in my name. Although Schedule 7 already contains several offences which we know will go a long way to protect women and girls online, we want to go further to strengthen the protections in the Bill. That is why the Government have, following discussions, tabled an amendment to list controlling or coercive behaviour as a priority offence in Schedule 7. Doing so will require platforms proactively to identify and tackle content which amounts to this offence.
Measures that platforms can take to tackle this behaviour could include increased safety-by-design features aimed to prevent this type of content occurring in the first place, trusted flagger programmes, or options to enable users to report certain behaviour to platforms. As your Lordships will be aware, the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour, like some other priority offences currently listed in Schedule 7 such as harassment and stalking, includes a course of conduct element. I reassure noble Lords that platforms will be required to tackle this type of behaviour to comply with their safety duties in the Bill.
I hope that noble Lords will accept the government amendment, I look forward to the debate, and I beg to move.