Extreme online porn may be banned

Tory peer reviewing industry finds strong case to outlaw ‘completely abhorrent’ material

EXTREME pornography could be banned as part of the biggest overhaul of the legislation in 40 years, says the Tory peer appointed by Rishi Sunak to review the industry.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Bertin, the independent reviewer of porn, said she was concerned that adults and children were legally able to view “very harmful” pornographic material online.

It was so extreme that if they physically had a video with the same images, it would be illegal under laws that would punish possession with up to two years in jail.

She said online porn had become more extreme and outpaced regulation, which was currently based on 40-yearold rules.

These are policed by the official censor, the British Board for Film Classification (BBFC) but only cover DVDs, videos and Blu Ray.

She said she was wary of regulating people’s private lives but there was an argument for closing a legal loophole that allowed “completely abhorrent” content online such as role play of sex and incest involving actors who look like children.

“The legal but harmful area is clearly a difficult area and it has to be done very, very carefully but if there are things going on online, which are not illegal but are very harmful in the pornography space, then we should look at making those illegal,” she said.

Lady Bertin was appointed by the Prime Minister to review the UK’s porn laws, the impact porn is having on adults’ and children’s attitude to sex, the effectiveness of enforcement by police and the risk of exploitation in the industry. She has issued a call for evidence to help inform the review.

In a wide-ranging interview, she said adults should be more open about their use of porn so they could seek help if needed; said she wanted to provide parents with a “roadmap” on how they could support their children; and criticised tech firms for not having done enough to protect children from being exposed to such material.

The Government’s Online Safety Act – which followed this newspaper’s campaign for a duty of care on firms to protect children – requires porn companies to bar under-18s from their sites and tech giants to put in place tough age checks to prevent children accessing such content. She said she wanted

‘If there are things going on online which are very harmful, we should look at making those illegal’

robust application of those protections.

However, the Act does not address content and the potential damage it can cause to relationships which is why charities and online safety campaigners have called for online pornography to be regulated in the same way as it is by the BBFC “offline.” Barred “extreme” material includes adults role-playing as children, the portrayal of sexual activity with real or apparent lack of consent or sexual threats, humiliation or abuse. “There is a whole tonne of stuff that is legal online but which the BBFC wouldn’t accept,” said Lady Bertin.

“It cannot be beyond the wit of man to try to get that into a better place. Whether you are ever going to get it into quite the same place as we are offline, I’m not so naive as to think it can be 100 per cent but surely we can get it closer.”

Allied to that, Lady Bertin is concerned about exploitation of women in the porn industry where she is seeking safeguards to, for example, protect against the use of under-aged actors.

“A lot of ‘responsible’ companies in this area would admit that the embryonic nature of the exploitation and modern slavery laws means they are not on top of it as much as they ought to be,” she said.

She admitted porn could be a “grim” issue that many people found “embarrassing.” ”It’s not something that you necessarily want to chat about at the kitchen table,” she said.

“Normal respectable people just want to put their heads in the sand and not think this stuff ’s going on but it is.”

She drew an analogy with gambling where addiction could be equally difficult to talk about. “It shouldn’t be not spoken about. It’s not unlike gambling in trying to help people. If people feel they’ve got an addiction or a problem and it’s affecting their relationships, there should be more ability to reach out,” she said.