Baroness Bertin urges ban on extreme porn featuring child abuse and violence
The head of an independent review examining the pornography industry has called for extreme online content played by adults that depict incest and child sexual abuse scenarios to be outlawed.
Her Conservative counterpart, Baroness Bertin, is leading efforts in Westminster to address loopholes that allow the widespread availability of digital material deemed too harmful to be sold in brick-and-mortar stores.
Speaking in Parliament, Lady Bertin described this inequality as “untenable”.
It is advocating a series of changes to the law to implement recommendations made in its review, commissioned by Rishi Sunak and published in February. The Labor Party leadership has not yet responded officially to these proposals.
While the government has moved to ban online pornography showing women being strangled under the Crime and Policing Act, Baroness Bertin argues ministers must go further to tackle other harmful material.
Lady Bertin said: “My review for the government has shown me the corners of this world you cannot ignore.
“Online pornography is now so extreme and pervasive that it not only reflects sexual pleasures, it shapes them.
“It normalizes violence, violates privacy, encourages men and boys to commit sexual violence, and leads to child sexual abuse as well as child-to-child sexual abuse.”
Among the measures he puts forward is a ban on pornographic content in which an adult impersonates a child.
Lady Bertin said: “This material sexualises children, normalises them as objects of gratification and encourages sexual interest in children.”
Noting that online pornography falls outside the regulations governing physical media such as DVDs, he said: “As a result, content that would be refused classification (offline) – depictions of torture, incest pornography, highly exploitative misogynistic content and material that sexualises children, as previously described – is freely available online. This disparity is indefensible.”
Proposing an amendment aimed at closing this “glaring gap”, Lady Bertin said: “This is about saying that material that is too harmful to be sold in a store should not be available for free on smartphones.”
He also pushed for changes to the bill to make it illegal for adults to possess so-called nudification software, which can produce nude images of another person and make it an offense to produce or share content that encourages the sexual exploitation of children.
In addition, he suggested introducing a legal duty for pornography websites to verify the age and obtain consent of anyone on the platform, and the ability for people to withdraw consent.
Lady Bertin said: “These changes do not control private sexual behavior nor do they aim to ban porn.
“Instead, they aim to regulate an industry that evades scrutiny and causes obvious harm, normalises violence, sexualises children and enables abuse. The law needs to evolve to meet these challenges and reintroduce proportionate guardrails.”
It was backed by former Playschool presenter Baroness Benjamin, who is vice-president of children’s charity Barnardo’s.
His Liberal Democrat colleague said: “If we don’t act we risk legitimizing a culture where abuse is normalized and young people grow up with a distorted understanding of healthy relationships.”
Filmmaker and children’s rights campaigner Baroness Kidron stressed the need to ensure equality between laws regulating online and offline pornography.
The independent crossbencher said: “The laws that apply to the rest of our lives in society do not apply to the technological sphere, which is protected by tens of millions of lobbying dollars.”
Praising Lady Bertin’s work, Justice Minister Baroness Levitt said: “This Government shares her commitment to ensuring the online world is a safer place for everyone, and we are extremely grateful for their understanding.”
He said the Government would review the criminal law on pornography, “which will give us the chance to look at the law holistically and assess whether it is fit for purpose in the ever-evolving online world”.
The Labor frontbencher added: “The review I am announcing today will examine, among other things, the effectiveness of existing law in criminalizing harmful depictions of incest and any pornography that encourages the sexual exploitation of children.
“I know that Lady Bertin is concerned that any review should not be used as a delaying tactic to prevent any decision being made. I hope she will take it from me that it is my wish to ensure that this happens as soon as possible.”
Lady Levitt said she would continue talks with her Conservative Party counterpart.
However, Lady Bertin, responding, stated that she had already made a review and prepared an “oven-baked plan”.
He said: “By all means review the legislation, but please come back with the report (the Bill phase). I worked at Number 10 for years, where I found reviews were just code for kicking things into the long grass.”
