My Lords, I, too, wish the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, a very speedy recovery. Her presence here today is missed, though the amendments were very ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. Having worked in government with the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, I can imagine how frustrated she is at not being able to speak today on amendments bearing her name.
As my noble friend said, this follows our debate on the wider issues around violence against women and girls in the online world. I do not want to repeat anything that was said there, but I am grateful to him for the discussions that we have had since. I support the Government in their introduction of Amendment 135A and the addition of controlling or coercive behaviour to the priority offences list. I will also speak to the cyberflashing amendments and Amendment 271, introduced by my noble friend Lady Berridge.
I suspect that many of us speaking in this debate today have had briefings from the wonderful organisation Refuge, which has seen a growing number of cases of technology-facilitated domestic abuse in recent years. As a result of this, Refuge pioneered a specialist technology-facilitated domestic abuse team, which uses expertise to support survivors and to identify emerging trends of online domestic abuse.
I draw noble Lords’ attention to a publication released since we debated this last week: the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s violence against women and girls strategic threat risk assessment for 2023, in which a whole page is devoted to tech and online-enabled violence against women and girls. In its conclusions, it says that one of the key threats is tech-enabled VAWG.
The fact that we are having to debate these specific offences, but also the whole issue of gendered abuse online, shows how huge an issue this is for women and girls.
I will start with Amendment 271. I entirely agree with my noble friend about the need for specific user reporting and making that as easy as possible. That would support the debate we had last week about the code of practice, which would generally require platforms and search engines to think from the start how they will enable those who have been abused to report that abuse as easily as possible, so that the online platforms and search engines can then gather that data to build up a picture and share it with the regulator and law enforcement as appropriate. So, while I suspect from what the Minister has said that he will not accept this amendment, the points that my noble friend made are absolutely necessary in this debate.
I move on to the cyberflashing amendment. It has been very ably covered already, so I do not want to say too much. It is clear that women and girls experience harms regardless of the motives of the perpetrator. I also point out that, as we have heard, motivations are very difficult to prove, meaning that prosecutions are often extremely unlikely.
I was very proud to introduce the amendments to what became the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. It was one of my first contributions in this House. I remember that, in the face of a lockdown, most of us were working virtually. But we agreed, and the Government introduced, amendments on intimate image abuse and revenge porn. Even as I proposed those amendments and they were accepted, it was clear that they were not quite right and did not go far enough. As we have heard, for the intimate image abuse proposals, the Law Commission is proposing a consent-based image abuse offence. Can my noble friend be even clearer—I am sorry that I was not able to attend the briefing—about the distinction between consent-based intimate image abuse offences and motive-based cyberflashing offences, and why the Government decided to make it?
I also gently point out to him that I know that this is complicated, but we are still waiting for drafting of the intimate image abuse offences. We are potentially running out of time. Perhaps we will see them at the next stage of the Bill—unless he reveals them like a rabbit out of a hat this afternoon, which I suspect is not the case. These are important offences and it will be important for us to see the detail so that we can scrutinise them properly.
Finally, in welcoming the Government’s amendment on coercive control, I say that it is generally poorly understood by technology companies. Overall, the use of the online world to perpetrate abuse on women and girls, particularly in the domestic abuse context, is certainly being understood more quickly, but we are all playing catch-up in how this happens while the perpetrators are running ahead of us. More can be done to recognise the ways that the online world can be used to abuse and intimidate victims, as the Government have recognised with this amendment and as the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, said. It is very necessary in debating the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s remarks at the end of this debate.