I am repeating the following written ministerial statement made today in the other place by the Minister for the Future Digital Economy and Online Safety, my noble Friend Baroness Jones of Whitchurch.
In 2023, the previous Government appointed Baroness Bertin as the independent lead reviewer to explore issues surrounding the regulation, legislation and enforcement of online pornography. Throughout the review, she reviewed evidence submitted from the public, academics and civil society, as well as stakeholders in law enforcement, the pornography sector and health service providers. The final report provided to the Government is insightful and timely.
The report has been laid before Parliament today and it will also be available on gov.uk.
Baroness Bertin’s report highlights some of the harms caused by unregulated access to some online pornography. The review finds that online pornography can impact people’s health and mental wellbeing, and is potentially fuelling violence against women and girls offline.
Baroness Bertin’s review makes a case for bringing the regulation of pornography online into parity with offline regulation. In the time she has had to do the review, she has considered the existing evidence on the topic, but she has also highlighted where some issues are still poorly understood and more research is needed to understand the potential harms from pornographic content and how to mitigate those.
The review acknowledges the important protections that the Online Safety Act 2023 will put in place to protect young people from seeing harmful content online, including pornographic content. It also notes that the Act has made it a priority for in-scope services to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal content, which includes intimate image abuse, extreme pornography and child sexual abuse material.
This review has revealed shocking detail about the prevalence of violent and misogynistic pornography online, and the extent to which it is influencing dangerous offline behaviours, including in young relationships. Graphic strangulation pornography is illegal but is not always being treated as such and instead remains widely accessible on mainstream pornography platforms. There is increasing evidence that “choking” is becoming a common part of real-life sexual encounters, despite the significant medical dangers associated with it. The Government will take urgent action to ensure that pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm.
Additionally, the review’s findings have noted that as technologies such as artificial intelligence continue to evolve and become increasingly sophisticated and accessible, they are reshaping the online pornography landscape. Individuals can now create sexual content, consensually and non-consensually, with nudification applications and other forms of software. Baroness Bertin has found that more needs to be done to protect those online from being victimised by non-consensual sexual content.
The Government are delivering our manifesto commitment to ban sexually explicit deepfakes: the Data (Use and Access) Bill introduces a new offence that will criminalise the creation of a purported intimate image, or deepfake, of an adult without their consent. It will also criminalise asking someone to create a purported intimate image, or deepfake, for you, regardless of where that person is based or whether the image is created.
We are introducing a package of offences in the Crime and Policing Bill to tackle the taking of intimate images without consent and the installation of equipment with intent to enable the taking of intimate images without consent. Through the offences at section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the law already captures situations where intimate images, including deepfakes, are shared without consent.
Together these measures will ensure that law enforcement can effectively tackle this abusive behaviour. This demeaning and disgusting form of chauvinism must not become normalised, and as part of our plan for change we are bearing down on violence against women, whatever form it takes. We are putting offenders on notice: they will face the full force of the law.
The review has also made several recommendations related to the education system. This Government consider healthy relationships a key part of RSHE—relationships, sex and health education—and relationships education will support our mission to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade. This Government will support schools to tackle misogyny and promote healthy relationships and positive masculinity.
The relationship, sex and health education statutory guidance is currently being reviewed following a public consultation last year. As part of this, we are working with stakeholders and teachers to ensure that the curriculum covers all content that pupils need to keep themselves and others safe and to be respectful in their relationships.
This Government are equipping teachers with the information, resources and training to teach young people about healthy relationships and behaviour, which plays a significant role in preventing harmful sexual behaviours. We have recently published a new guide for teachers on incel culture on the Department’s Education Against Hate website. Teacher training contains the teachers’ standards, including high expectations of behaviour, and we are working with schools on what more we can do to support them to root out misogyny and ensure that young people treat each other with respect.
This Government have set out an unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, and this will require a renewed focus on prevention—including ensuring that online content is not encouraging offline violence and abuse. We will therefore take forward the findings of Baroness Bertin’s review, which will help to inform the cross-Government violence against women and girls strategy to be published in the next few months.
I thank Baroness Bertin for her efforts in bringing this report together and shedding light on a complex yet deeply important topic. The Government will provide a further update on how they are tackling the issues raised in the review as part of their mission to tackle VAWG in due course.
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