Lords Chamber

Monday 2nd March 2026

(began 2 hours, 16 minutes ago)

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None Portrait Business of the House
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>> Order, order! >> My Lords, we come to some instruments previously debated in instruments previously debated in Grand Committee. Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 alternative Dispute Resolution (Conferral of Functions) Regulations 2026 and one other motion Lord Stockwood.

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My Lords, with leave of the House, I beg to move the motion Paper.

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Paper. En bloc question is that the two

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En bloc question is that the two motions. The question is the two motions in the name of Lord Stockwood be agreed to. En bloc, as Stockwood be agreed to. En bloc, as many opinion will say, content to many opinion will say, content to the contrary, not content with contents. Habit Energy-Intensive Industry Electricity Support Payments and Levy (Amendment)

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Regulations 2026 Lord Leong. So back to move the motion.

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Standing my name on the Order Paper. This motion be agreed to. As many as of that opinion will say content the contrary not content. The contents have it Child Benefit and Guardian's Allowance Up-rating

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and Guardian's Allowance Up-rating Order 2026 and one other motion Lord Wilson of Sedgefield. My Lords, on behalf of my noble

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My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend, I beg leave to move the motion standing in his name on the Order Paper En bloc.

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The two motions in the name of Lord Searchfield be agreed to. En bloc as many as opinion will say, bloc as many as opinion will say, content is contrary, not content. content is contrary, not content. The contents have it Victims and Courts Bill order of consideration. Baroness Levitt. My Lords, I beg to Baroness Levitt. My Lords, I beg to move the order of consideration. Motion standing in my name on the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Question is this motion be agreed to? As many as are of that opinion will say content to the contrary, not content with contents. Have it report of the Crime and Policing Bill Lord Hanson

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of Flint. My Lords, I beg. To move further consideration of the Bill on report.
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, the amendments in this group tabled by the government are largely consequential and minor drafting changes. They relate to drafting changes. They relate to the important topic of child sexual abuse image generators. I have little to say to this group of amendments, other than that the topic they address is one of serious and urgent concern, and the rapid emergence of generative AI has presented new and troubling challenges. And the recent EROC AI scandal, in which an AI model generated harmful sexual content publicly, some of which involve children, highlighted the potential for mainstream tools to be misused in ways that normalise or distribute abusive material.

That episode underlines why robust legal safeguards are essential as technology evolves. The government have continued to delay passing legislation regarding AI regulation, which was alluded to as far back as 2024. When I thank the Minister's assurances that the government will continue to monitor developments in this area and work with industry to protect children from abuse and exploitation. Thank you.

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Amendment 199 be agreed to. As many as are of that opinion will say content to the contrary, not say content to the contrary, not content. The contents have it. Amendments 200 to 208 Lord Hanson Amendments 200 to 208 Lord Hanson moved formally. Question is that amendments 200 to 208 be agreed to? amendments 200 to 208 be agreed to? En bloc as many as are of that opinion will be will say content to the contrary, not content. The the contrary, not content.

The contents of amendment 209 Baroness Kidron. My Lords, I rise to move amendment 209 and thank the noble Lady Morgan, noble Lords Russell
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Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron (Crossbench)
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and Cameron Jones for adding their names. I also thank the noble Lady Baron for trying to add her name, Baron for trying to add her name, but such was the enthusiasm, there was no space. The government has, as already discussed, brought a new clauses 92 and 93 to allow clauses 92 and 93 to allow companies and responsible third parties to risk assess the creation parties to risk assess the creation of CSA by gen AI models. That is an important detail. If a company is red teaming or the regular regulator needs to test, they must not be guilty of an offence for doing so.

So. But this new measure is permission. It is not obligation. And my Lords, permission is not enough. Amendment 209 does three things. It makes risk assessment mandatory. It requires mitigation within 14 days, and it holds companies not covered by the Online Safety Act to the same standard via the National Crime Agency. A report from Unicef last month referenced an Interpol study across 11 countries that at least 1.2 million children disclosed having their images manipulated into sexually explicit images in the past year.

In some countries, that is equivalent to one child in every classroom being subjected to this new form of child sexual abuse. The report recommended the introduction of guardrails for AI developers at the design stage, and in a meeting earlier in his Lordships house, we were told repeatedly and graphically reminded that AI CSAM creates appetite in offenders, and what happens online does not stay online. My Lords, we have consulted Ofcom consulting. Parliament has debated this for years and now we are consulting again.

And I argue that there are three reasons for for accepting this amendment right now. First, in committee, I laid this in a similar amendment about LMS to establish exactly which services were covered by the Online Safety Act, and so far, neither Ministers nor officials in repeated meetings have given a clear answer. So I ask the Minister today to say whether all large language models are already in scope and required to do CSA risk assessments, and if the confusion remains, then this amendment is necessary.

We just can't wait. Second is that there is confusion about Ofcom's ability to demand mitigation in a timely manner, or indeed at all. This amendment deals with that by requiring mitigation in 14 days. There is nothing that I have seen yet in the consultation about enforcement, and unless and until we can act swiftly, the Online Safety Act will continue to disappoint. Third, the government plans to consult and then bring changes in secondary legislation, irrespective whether it's affirmative or negative procedure.

In practice, this is beyond meaningful parliamentary amendment oversight. I have been fighting for this group of amendments since 2023, and the best I have had is for the government to take a key offence, which I'm very happy to see, but make it so narrow that it doesn't cover. Most service providers. Risk assessing for CSAM should not be controversial, it should be done, and it should be done in sight of Parliament. During committee, government said there were already clear laws prohibiting CSA creation, but they also made clear there are gaps.

I do not understand how any reasonable person, let alone a government that has claimed violence against women and girls as a core purpose, could, in good faith reject this amendment. Yet at committee, the Minister said that the amendments would place an unmanageable and unnecessary burden. And I ask the noble Lord, the Minister, is the government saying that the burden on a sector, public sector, crime agency or regulator is a reasonable justification for enabling widespread child sexual abuse.

If the argument is that it is too much of a burden, I ask noble Lords themselves to consider is it too much of a burden when it is your daughter, your granddaughter, who has been made to look younger, put on all fours, turn to the camera with a stranger abusing them? Is it too much of a burden when children who cannot yet walk and talk are abused? My Lords, it is not a burden. It is a privilege to check that something you have built and profit from does not accidentally allow for fun by accident or deliberately.

The sexual abuse of children. And I say to noble Lords that if this does go to the vote, it will not be because I enjoy the support of government or opposition, but so that we in this House can put on record the unwillingness of either party, despite the obvious need and the performative outrage at rock to do anything at all about it, I have made clear at every stage that I'm willing to look at drafting, and if it is simply a case of drafting, then I will happily bring something back at Third Reading that is drafted as the government would accept.

But my Lords, this is a harm that organisations such as the IWF have long raised concern about. It was a risk reported related to EROC as early as July last year. It is something the police have asked for for years, and we have been discussing it in Parliament since 2023. What these models can do reflects how they are designed, tested and deployed when they fail to protect children. That is not an accident. It is a design choice. Government Ministers, like the rest of the public, rightly expressed outrage at EROC.

But according to the Centre of Countering Digital Hate, at least 23,000 images were made during using its new tool that featured children. And last week Ofcom announced it could not enforce against EROC, but would instead take action against against for distribution. My Lords, it is not enough and it's after the fact. Not prevention, but huge resources deployed too late and too narrow in the aftermath. My Lords, a risk is something that can be mitigated. A harm is something already done, and this is an opportunity to deal with the risk here and now.

Not maybe and not sometime in the future. I beg to move.

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Amendment proposed page 65. Line 84, line. Four. Page 84.

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Page 84. Line 42. At end, insert the words printed on the Marshalled List.
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Lord Russell of Liverpool Portrait Lord Russell of Liverpool (Crossbench)
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including others in this chamber, was at a meeting that we had at lunchtime today with a variety of of really knowledgeable experts in this area, and even for those of us who have been to these sorts of meetings in the last few years fairly regularly, the latest news is really deeply, deeply shocking. I can't I can't even begin to tell your Lordships how shocking it is. Indeed, there was an expert from Finland there, who is about to deliver a very comprehensive analysis of the status quo, which will be delivered to Ofcom and will be will be published shortly.

She was not unable to give any details. However, what she did tell us, and I must confess, I'm not that shockable, but I did find this pretty shockable that the earliest instance that this research has discovered about a child being abused sexually was a child who was seven hours old, if you can believe that, my Lords. And what is more, we were told that there are manuals available on the web and on the dark web which actually tells perpetrators if they wish to sexually abuse newly born infants, how to do so in such a way that it is not able to be medically identified.

It reminds one slightly of the recent very brave interview that Giselle Pellico gave, which some of your Lordships may have seen. If you haven't, I recommend it in which it appeared that the reason that Giselle did not realise what was happening to her was her husband had indeed availed himself of sufficient medical knowledge to know that when he drugged her, what he also put into the medication was he put muscle relaxants so that the normal physical reaction of any anyone's body, particularly a female body, when it's being violated, is, is to resist it and to seize up.

In the case where you had muscle relaxants administered, of course, that was not the case. So Giselle, when she woke up, didn't feel well, but she didn't realise what had actually happened. And my Lords, there are manuals on the web telling perpetrators how to do that with newly born infants in order that it is not identifiable. My Lords, this is the world we're living in. I am reminded of an analogy that we often used to use when I was a management consultant, when we were trying to indicate to a business that things were getting slightly out of control and weren't going the way they wanted, was the parable of the frog in the water, which is gently increasing in temperature, gently increasing in temperature until the point that it realises that it's actually being boiled alive, by which time it's too late.

And if you look at the scale of the abuse that is happening, the way in which artificial intelligence is accelerating this exponentially, my Lords, you know, it is never too late. But I think I can only add to the words of my noble friend, Lady Vivian. How much longer do we have to keep on beseeching the government to to listen? I reminded the meeting of a meeting that I had a few months ago with a Minister from another department and the minister's team.

The Minister was female, all of the advisors were female. And I remember we asked them, how many of you have children and what age are they? And they told us and we then described some of the things that are happening to children of that age. And you could see visibly the change in demeanour and body language. This was not something that was happening to other people. This is not something that was happening remotely. As you look at the BBC news or you look at stuff online, this is actually happening to us and to our children, and it becomes deeply personal.

And the reason that the noble Baroness and others of us feel so passionately about this is that it is happening. It is happening all around us. It is happening to our children, to our grandchildren, to our nephews, to our nieces. And we appear to be blind to what is going on. We are blind in the sense of finding solutions that are going to work. We are blind to even trying solutions that may not be perfect, but at least are indicating a level of intent to do something about it.

That the companies that are the going to be the aim of the noble Baroness amendment, if it goes through those companies know what they're doing, they they are aware of what they are allowing through, you know, they probably are doing some risk analysis and it's probably not very good reading, but they know exactly what they're doing. And to try and limit the government's approach only to those sort of engines that have clearly been designed primarily to produce child sexual abuse material, that is, you know, that is the tip of the iceberg.

It is all of the other ones that are that are doing the damage. And until and unless we face up to that and we really focus and zero in on them in such a way that they have to pay attention, and we make it seriously painful for them, we are not going to change anything. So I appeal to the government and to the House. Should the noble Lady decide to take it to the vote, to send a very clear signal to the government about what is going on, those of us in this House who are involved in this are frequently approached by backbenchers, the government's own backbenchers from another place, many of whom themselves have young children, who are deeply, deeply concerned about what is going on.

They are desperate for their government to show real leadership and rather than having consultation after consultation, after consultation, to take action. So I appeal to the government and I appeal to the House to look at this very seriously. And if the noble Lady, the Baroness, does decide to divide the house to go with her.
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Baroness Benjamin Portrait Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrat)
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Thank you. amendment 209. In the name of the noble Baroness Kidron. And I was at the meeting Lord Russell so graphically described. I wish all of you were there too, because if you were, you too would be supporting this amendment. It makes me weep to think, my Lords, of the harm and the damage that's being done to babies, babies and young children. It's shocking. And if we don't vote for this amendment, we should be ashamed of ourselves because it might not be affecting you personally.

But you've got to be caring about the millions of children out there who are having to face this abuse. My Lords, the growth in artificial intelligence tools is exposing children to new and enhanced harms. Perpetrators are using image generators to create hyper realistic child sexual abuse material, which can be used to abuse and extort children, including to financially blackmail young people. My Lords. Devastatingly, Childline is hearing from more and more children who are experiencing this type of abuse.

For example, a 16 year old boy contacted the charity saying that a girl claiming to be his age made fake sexual images of him and threatened to share them to his friends unless he sent her £200. My Lords, what is this world coming to children being blackmailed like this? My Lords, children are speaking about feeling incredibly scared, distressed and isolated in these situations. They're unsure about why this is happening or where to turn to for help.

My Lords, the Internet Watch Foundation has reported a dramatic surge in AI generated child sex abuse material, a four fold increase in just one year. My Lords, because this damaging content is harming children, I welcome the steps by the government to tackle AI generated child sex abuse material in this bill, and for recently announcing changes to the Online Safety Act. My Lords, the recent horrific case of EROC being used to generate child abuse images show that the act does not include the relevant provisions to tackle such abuse.

It is therefore important that we have a regulatory system that tackles risks before they occur by embedding safety by design to AI platform models. My Lords, the Online Safety Act currently focussed on content detection and moderation and therefore adding AI chatbots to the act requires a different approach, as these systems have the ability to generate this content in the first place, my Lords Baroness Kidron amendment. The noble Baroness Kidron amendment. Hallelujah for her will ensure that this risk assessment process tackles the distinct risk of AI platforms.

This should involve auditing, training data and testing systems using methods such as red teaming to ensure that models cannot be exploited to create child sexual abuse material, my Lords, only after we know these models are safe, only then they should be released to the public. So can I ask the government, how does it intend to risk assess AI chatbots so that we don't find ourselves back here again in a few years time, after more and more children have been victimised with us asking the question, how can we find better ways to regulate this technology? My Lords, this is why I urge the whole House and I urge the government to accept this amendment, and I look forward to the Minister's response.
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Portrait Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Labour)
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internet. I must say I was it revealed figures that I was not aware of and regard myself as relatively well briefed on this relatively well briefed on this matter and and the further information which came out today, particularly from the work that's already been alluded to from from members who were present at that meeting, that much of the of the material which is seen on line, also moves across into the real world. And the use of these elements in the internet to groom children, to set up meetings with them, to then participate with them in illegal acts, has been growing to a point where it's quite clearly an epidemic which must be dealt with.

Where at the at the start of something which I think is extraordinarily unpleasant and needs to be looked at in the round in a way which we have not yet done, being able to do. So, my Lords, having been heavily involved in the Online Safety Act, I'm consciously aware of the fact that we are dealing with legislation which I think has been overtaken by technology. The developments that have happened since we were able to get the bill into, into the, into, into an act have meant that very often the tools that we thought were given to often to, to the, to Ofcom and being used by the government are no longer appropriate, are probably not as far reaching as far as where they're down to, and certainly don't deal with in the speed with which this technology is moving forward.

I've not been able to attend any meetings on this, which Ministers may have had with with my own side, but I gather that there is a whip on against this amendment, and I wonder if the noble Lord who's to respond to this meeting could could think hard about how he wants to play this issue out. It seems to me that one of the problems we have in dealing with legislation in this area is that we're never dealing with the right bill.

The bill that we want to amend is, or the act we want to amend is the Online Safety Act. But obviously, by moving in this bill in another department, we're not maximising the chances of having an output which is going to work. In addition, the way in which Ofcom is interpreting the act seems to make it very difficult for it to reach out to new technologies, such as, as described by Baroness Kidron in her excellent speech introducing this amendment. My Lords, it seems to me that in a moment of transition and when when we're so keen to try and grasp things so that they don't get out of our control, there may be a case here for further work to be done.

Baroness Kidron mentioned that she was happy to try and look again at the wording of her amendment, if it wasn't appropriate for the government, and I'm conscious the government is also trying to move in other areas, and other other departments are also issuing measures which may or may not bear directly on the issue ahead. It does seem to me that there is a very strong case, although I don't know how the Lord is going to respond, my noble friend, for asking for this issue to be kept alive, and brought back perhaps a Third Reading, where a joint amendment might be brought between Baroness Kidron and her supporters and the government to try and make sure that we do what we can, even if it's not the complete picture.

To take this step another way down the road.
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Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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innovation first safety, later culture of Big Tech. While the bill now will rightly prohibit the now will rightly prohibit the creation of models specifically designed to generate CSA images, it designed to generate CSA images, it remains silent on general purpose models that can be easily manipulated or jailbroken to manipulated or jailbroken to produce the same horrific results as the unacceptable use of tools as the unacceptable use of tools like grok, referred to by my noble friend Baroness Benjamin in her powerful speech, has recently illustrated we cannot leave the safety of our children to chance.

We're facing a technological and moral emergency. The Internet Watch Foundation represented at the meeting, which the noble Lord Russell and my noble friend have mentioned today, has warned of a staggering 380% increase in confirmed cases of AI generated child exploitation imagery. And my Lords, the noble Lord Russell is right. The extent of this abuse is sickening beyond imagination. This amendment mandates a safety by design intervention, requiring providers to proactively risk assess their services and report identified risks to Ofcom within 48 hours.

In committee. The Minister, the noble Lord Hanson, pushed back against this proposal, arguing it would place unmanageable and unnecessary operational burdens on the National Crime Agency and Ofcom. He further claimed these measures risked creating legal uncertainty by duplicating the Online Safety Act. My Lords, both assertions need rebutting first, protecting children from an industrial scale explosion of AI generated abuse is not an unnecessary burden. It is the primary duty of our law enforcement and regulatory bodies. Secondly, we cannot rely on the theoretical protections of an online safety act designed for a pre generative AI world.

Ofcom itself has maintained what might be called a tactical ambiguity about how the act applies to standalone AI chat bots and large language models. Alongside the noble Baroness Kidron. And we will be supporting her if she puts this to a vote. My Lords, we are asking for an ex-ante duty. Providers must check whether their models can be used to generate CSAM before they're released to the public. Voluntary commitments and retrospective enforcement are simply not enough. The government has already committed to this principle.

It's time to put that commitment into statute. My Lords, I urge the Minister to accept amendment 209 and ensure we move away from ex post measures that only address harm after a child has been victimised. My Lords, the current definitions of search and user to user services do not neatly or comprehensively capture these new generative technologies, and we cannot allow a situation where tech developers release highly capable models to the public without first explicitly checking whether they can be used to generate CSAM voluntary commitments and retrospective civil enforcement are simply not enough.

We need this explicit statutory duty on the face of the bill today, and I urge the of the bill today, and I urge the

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Minister to accept amendment 209. My Lords, amendment 209, in the

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My Lords, amendment 209, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, would require providers of relevant online services to assess relevant online services to assess and address the risks that their platforms may be used for the creation, sharing or facilitation creation, sharing or facilitation of child sexual abuse material, placing a strengthened duty upon
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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them to take preventative action. When Lords. More than anyone in this chamber, I fully recognise the intention behind strengthening preventative mechanisms and ensuring that providers properly assess and mitigate risks to children, requiring companies to examine how their services may facilitate abuse is, in principle, entirely sensible. The scale and evolving nature of online exploitation means the proactive duties are essential. However, I do have some concerns about the proposed mechanism about which I hope the noble Lord, the Minister may also be able to provide some input.

The amendment appears to rely on providers conducting their own risk assessments. That immediately raises several practical questions, such as what objective standard would those assessments be measured against? Whether there be statutory guidance, setting out minimum criteria, and how consistency would be ensured across companies of vastly different sizes and capabilities? It also remains the crucial question of what enforcement mechanisms would apply if an assessment or superficial or inadequate, and without clear parameters and oversight, there is a danger that such a system could become uneven in practice, and I would welcome reassurance from the Minister as to how the government intend to ensure that risk based duties in this space are transparent and robust for the purposes of child protection.

My Lords, the question is not whether we act, but how we all share the same objective of reducing the prevalence of child sexual abuse material and protect children from exploitation. The challenge is ensuring that the mechanisms we legislate for are clear, enforceable in practice, and I look forward to the Minister's response.
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I'm grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for tabling the amendment and for her commitment to doing all we can to prevent online harms. And I must prevent online harms. And I must say, as well, I'm struck very strongly by the contributions of the noble Lady Baroness Benjamin, the noble and learned Lord Pannick, the noble Lord Russell of Liverpool, noble Baroness Burton, my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and the Earl of Erroll. Look, this is this is a really serious issue, and the government is committed to making sure that we have, as I have tried to do, have constructive engagement with the noble Lady, including one formal and one informal meeting this very day to ensure that we can make this a work in the interests of doing what everybody in this House wants to do, which is to ensure that we, particularly with the rapid development of technology that the public, especially children, are safeguarded from harm.

This government is committed to tackling sexual exploitation and abuse and to ensuring that new technologies are developed and deployed responsibly. And I know it matters, and I know it's important, and I know that this government wants to make sure that we deal with it now. A few weeks ago, the EROC A1 chatbot was used to create and share vile, degrading, non-consensual, intimate deepfakes. And quite honestly, my Lords, this House should not ensure that no one should live in fear of having their image sexually manipulated by technology.

And we said at the time, from the Prime Minister to the DSIT secretary, that we will do something in order to stamp this demeaning and illegal image production out. Now, the government and I speak here today for the government, but I speak for the Home Office, but I also speak for DSIT, and I speak for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when we say that government has taken decisive action in this bill, I draw noble Lords attentions to clauses 65 to 76 of the Bill, which we've already brought forward in this bill, to prohibit the creation of AI models that are specifically designed to generate child sexual abuse material.

But I'll be frank with this house that we don't think we've done enough in that bill so far, and things are moving. And that is why we have this very day tabled again, an amendment which will be debated later in the month, I hope on the 18th, possibly the 18th of March, which will confer a regulation making power to enable us to expand the scope of the Online Safety Act to include unregulated generative AI services such as chat box.

It should have gone down no later than 4:00 today. I apologise to the house that they haven't got sight of it now. I have tried to give details of the proposed amendment to the noble Lady Baroness Kidron, but the amendment will bring forward to ensure that services are bound to assess the level of risk held on those services, and to take steps to protect users from illegal material, including preventing CSAM. Now, I'm happy to confirm to noble Lords that this will allow us to impose duties on these services that correspond to, or are similar to, the Act's duties on tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse content.

Chat box providers will have a legal duty to protect all users from illegal content, including non-consensual sexual deepfakes, and where chat box continue to generate. Well, let me just finish this sentence and where chat box continue to generate such content, they should expect to face the consequences of breaking the

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law that we hope this House will pass. Many thanks for giving way, but

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Many thanks for giving way, but I think that if I was in the same meeting as the noble Lord, the Minister officials were unable to Minister officials were unable to say that llms and generative models say that llms and generative models would be covered by that. And indeed, they said the policy of the government was chat bots only, and government was chat bots only, and the chat bots is the subject of another amendment I have later in, in, in, in a report.

So I think that we have to be clear that the amendment in front of us is only remaining here because I was told this afternoon that the new government amendment would not cover the same territory.

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The government amendment has been tabled. What I'm asking for been tabled. What I'm asking for the noble Lady to do is whether she does this is a matter for her, self-evidently, but I'm asking her self-evidently, but I'm asking her to look at withdrawing her amendment, to look at the amendment that we have tabled today from a that we have tabled today from a cross-party basis on behalf of DSIT and the Home Office, the Department I represent here today that will be debated around the 18th.

She can make comments at that stage on that particular amendment. Now, I'm trying to meet the needs of the House and the the needs of the government to respond to what are complex and difficult challenges. And all I say is that by bringing more AI services into the scope of the Online Safety Act, we will ensure that there is clear, consistent regulatory framework which will allow us to hold companies to account. We've also introduced the technology Testing Defence in clause 93 that will enable persons authorised by the Secretary of State to test technology for these harms.

The defence will give providers reassurance in testing the robustness of their model. Safeguards, identify weaknesses and design out harmful inputs and this in turn will, I would argue, reduce the risk of their models being criminally misused, particularly to abuse women and children. This further supports all AI companies in scope of the Online Safety Act in their risk assessment obligations. Now, with those measures, I would say to the noble Lady, she will have to make a judgement on it, but I will say to her that the government considers that amendment 209 is therefore unnecessary, as it cuts across the approach that I've outlined to date, both in the Bill and in clause 93, and the clauses I've already outlined earlier, and the proposed amendment that I've shared with the as best I can prior to this debate today, and which the House can have a chance to look at now it is published, the cuts across that duty, and it imposes a broad statutory duty on online services, duplicating regulatory mechanisms, and it could create legal uncertainty.

Now I know again, the noble Lord Clement-Jones challenged me on that. That is the view of Ministers, officials, our legal departments and ensuring that we are worried about the similar enforcement routes outside the Online Safety Act framework. Now, again, we do take this seriously. I mean, the points that the noble Baroness Benjamin has made are extremely important. I wasn't able to attend the briefing earlier, but I you know, I know how much that has impacted members who have spoken in this discussion.

Today, the National Crime Agency and police will play a key role in protecting children from UK child abuse. It is warned that the scale and complexity of online child sexual abuse is resulting in tens of millions of annual referrals of suspected online sexual abuse. Now, policing resources are best spent on protecting children and arresting offenders, so it is appropriate that Ofcom continue to play a critical regulatory role in preventing and tackling the AI generation of child sexual abuse material.

Now, I've tried to persuade the noble Lady if I haven't, then that will have to be a division. I don't want there to be a division because I think this House should speak with one voice on tackling this particular issue. The laudable objectives of the amendment are, we believe, better addressed through both the existing legislative framework and the targeted government amendment. We've tabled today to expand the scope of the Online Safety Act to bring illegal content duties in line for chat box, which will mean providers need to mitigate potential risks to prevent children having such abuse and facing such abuse.

I hope that I have convinced the noble Lady I am. Again. I apologise to the House for the lateness of the tabling of the amendment. We're trying to work across government on this matter and that amendment has been tabled. It will be debated on the 18th. And in the light of that, I hold the noble Lady would feel able to withdraw her amendment.
16:07
Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron (Crossbench)
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My Lords, I. point of information it would be useful to say that the clause of 64 and 65 to which the noble Minister refers are in fact a narrowing of an original amendment put laid by myself and other noble Lords, that the government deliberately narrowed. So it only deals with. Electronic files that have been deliberately and exclusively created for to create child sexual abuse. And I do very much welcome those. However, if the government hadn't narrowed that amendment, I wouldn't be standing here today with this amendment.

And I do say to the noble Lord, the Minister, I'm grateful for his time. I'm happy for the for the chat bot amendment in as far as it goes. And in as much as I have seen it an hour before everyone else. But it doesn't deal with this issue. And I rang the noble Lord myself this morning, asked for a meeting to say if if you can tell me that this is covered by the chat bot amendment, and if you can say it's already covered in another way, I will back down.

But I'm afraid nobody could tell me that. And that is because it isn't. And that's just how it is. And I'm afraid I want to say to the noble Lord on the official opposition, speaking for the official opposition. No, no, no, it's not OK to say, you know, we must work out how this is an opportunity to work out how we always do it. This way we get an amendment, we get a power. Ofcom does the guidance, government does the guidance.

And I'm going to say to the whole House, particularly my friends on the Labour benches who may be considering voting against this. Have any of you seen child sexual abuse made out of your image? I have. It's not funny. It's serious, and it's easily done. And I think it is unacceptable to vote against an amendment that only says risk assess. Risk assess. It is not OK to put a product out in the world if you don't have any responsibility for the harm it causes.

So, my Lords, I don't expect I win because the government is whipping against and the opposition is sitting on their hands. But I think to say to those people who are in a vortex of this kind of abuse, that at least some of some of us in this House have

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their back. The noble Lady give way when she says, some of us in this House are says, some of us in this House are concerned about this issue, I want to say to her that all of us in this House are concerned about this this House are concerned about this issue. The noble Lady, the noble Lord Davies of Gower myself have many, many differences in this house, but we are at one in trying house, but we are at one in trying to improve the position of the regulations to tackle this issue.

The amendment that I've tabled is The amendment that I've tabled is very important. Step forward on behalf of the government on a DSIT and Home Office basis, and I'm grateful for the support for the noble Lord. I do not want to have a division in this House where the government and the opposition may well win that vote, but I don't want that division to happen. I want us to go forward in a constructive way, to look at the amendments that have tabled and to people.



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I say to the noble Lord, there is only one way to stop a division on this issue, which is either to on this issue, which is either to be able to stand at the Dispatch Box and say it is covered, or that we will keep it alive till Third Reading so that we can make sure it's covered. And if I have insulted anyone by suggesting some of us are willing to walk through of us are willing to walk through the lobby to protect children from child sexual abuse, forgive me, but child sexual abuse, forgive me, but unless unless the Minister has something to say, I am going to, as a matter of principle, divide the house.

Yeah.
16:12
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16:13
None Portrait Legislation: Crime and Policing Bill – report stage:Division:Amdt:209
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No.

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