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The head of an independent review into the pornography industry has called for extreme online content depicting incest and child sexual abuse scenarios, when played out by adults, to be outlawed.
Conservative peer Baroness Bertin is leading efforts in Westminster to address legal loopholes that currently permit the widespread availability of digital material deemed too harmful for sale in physical shops.
Speaking in Parliament, Lady Bertin described this disparity as “indefensible”.
She is advocating for a series of legislative amendments to implement proposals from her review, which was commissioned under Rishi Sunak and published in February. The Labour administration has yet to issue a formal response to these recommendations.
While the government has moved to ban online pornography showing women being choked through the Crime and Policing Bill, Baroness Bertin argues that ministers must go further to tackle other harmful material.
Lady Bertin said: “The review I led for the government showed me corners of this world that you simply cannot unsee.
“Online pornography is now so extreme and pervasive that it does not just reflect sexual tastes, it shapes them.
“It normalises violence, distorts intimacy, grooms men and boys to perpetrate sexual violence and has driven child sexual abuse as well as child-on-child sexual abuse.”
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Measures she has put forward include prohibiting pornographic content where an adult mimics a child.
Lady Bertin said: “This material sexualises children, normalises them as objects of gratification and fosters a sexual interest in children.”
Pointing out online pornography fell outside regulations governing physical media such as DVDs, she said: “As a result, content that would be refused classification (offline) – depictions of torture, incest pornography, highly abusive misogynistic content, and material sexualising children, as previously described – is freely available online. This disparity is indefensible.”
Proposing an amendment targeted at closing this “glaring loophole”, Lady Bertin said: “It is about saying that material that is too harmful to sell in a shop should not be freely available on a smartphone.”
She also pressed for changes to the Bill to outlaw adults possessing so-called nudification software which can produce naked images of another person, and make it an offence to produce or share content that promoted child sexual abuse.
In addition, she proposed placing a legal duty on pornography websites to verify the age and gain consent of everyone featured on the platform, with the facility for people to withdraw permission.
Lady Bertin said: “These amendments do not police private sexual behaviour, nor do they seek to ban porn.
“Instead, they aim to regulate an industry that has evaded scrutiny and is causing demonstrable harm – normalising violence, sexualising children and enabling abuse. The law must evolve to meet these challenges and put proportionate guardrails back in place.”
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She was supported by former Playschool presenter Baroness Benjamin, who is vice-president of the children’s charity Barnardo’s.
The Liberal Democrat peer said: “If we fail to act, we risk legitimising a culture in which abuse is normalised and young people grow up with a distorted understanding of healthy relationships.”
Filmmaker and children’s rights campaigner Baroness Kidron stressed the need for parity between laws that regulate pornography online and offline.
The independent crossbencher said: “The laws that apply to the rest of our lives in society do not apply in the technological sphere, protected by tens of millions of lobbying dollars.”
Praising the work of Lady Bertin, justice minister Baroness Levitt said: “This Government shares her determination to ensure that the online world is a safer place for everyone, and we are immensely grateful to her for her insights.”
She said the Government would review the criminal law relating to pornography “which will give us a chance to look at the law holistically and consider whether it is fit for purpose in an ever-developing online world”.
The Labour frontbencher added: “Importantly, the review I am announcing today will look into the effectiveness of the existing law in relation to criminalising, among other things, harmful depictions of incest and any forms of pornography that encourage child sexual abuse.
“I know Lady Bertin is anxious that any review should not be used as a delaying tactic to avoid making any decisions. I hope she will take it from me that it is my wish to make sure that this takes place quickly.”
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Lady Levitt said she would continue to hold talks with the Tory peer.
But responding, Lady Bertin pointed out she had already carried out a review and produced “an oven-baked plan”.
She said: “By all means review the law, but please come back by report (stage of the Bill). I worked at No 10 for many years, where I saw that reviews are just code for kicking something into the long grass.”
