Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Bertin Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 16th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Motions H and J. In doing so, I declare an interest, as having received pro bono legal advice on intimate image abuse from Mishcon de Reya.

Amendments 257C and 257E in Motion G1 seek to ensure that internet services record, collect and publish data on the proportion of content they remove in 48 hours. I am aware that Ofcom has transparency powers under Schedule 8 to the Online Safety Act to gather information from internet services and that these regulations can be developed further. I am keen that the Government address any remaining gaps to ensure that all internet services that Ofcom defines as being high-risk or medium-risk of sharing intimate image content, as Ofcom will outline in its hashing measures, are required to publicly report their takedown times.

I was disappointed by the Government’s removal of the fine per day per account of £39,000 that noble Lords so overwhelmingly voted to support. While I acknowledge that Ofcom has the power to issue daily fines, I still believe that we must be more agile in our approach to ensure that no victim is left behind. I am keen to return to this issue in future legislation, when we have further information on how regularly Ofcom is issuing daily fines in response to this.

I am very grateful for the vast movement the Government have made by introducing their amendments under Motions G, H and J in response to my amendments at Report and Third Reading. We have made huge progress on the deletion of content after conviction and on the hashing of intimate content to prevent re-upload. I very much look forward to working with the Government and the charities as the centralised hash registry is developed.

I do not intend to test my Motion today. I am grateful to the Government, particularly to the Minister, and to the noble Lords across this House who have worked with me so constructively on these issues. I also wish to thank the survivors who have worked alongside me, Professor Clare McGlynn KC, and Sophie Mortimer from the Revenge Porn Helpline, for their steadfast support. We have made huge strides towards protecting victims from this appalling form of abuse. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bertin (Con)]

Very briefly, I welcome the Government’s Amendments 263A to 263G, 264A to 264F, and 265A to 265C. I put on record how grateful I am to the Government for the constructive conversations that we have had to get to this place. I also put on record my view that these amendments mark the beginning of a new era in the regulation of harmful pornographic content in this country.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to act swiftly on the outcome of this work, particularly the online/offline parity sprint, and I assure Ministers that we will hold them to account on that commitment. In reaching this point, I also echo my noble friend Lady Owen’s point about thanking the cross-party and team effort there has been to get to this point. In particular, I thank my team, Gemma Kelly in particular, and Clare McGlynn, who have been at the helm of these reforms and pushing this work through for a lot longer than I have.

I quickly turn to Amendments 264A and 264F, which address duties on pornographic providers to ensure age and consent verification, and enable performers to withdraw consent. This process must not be about revisiting whether action is needed. The case for action has been made conclusively and the focus must now be on effective delivery, enforcement and regulation. Although I am wary of “review”—allergic to it, even—I accept that a tightly timed statutory process with a clear duty to return to Parliament and the power to act strikes the right balance between urgency and rigour. We know that this industry is rife with coercion and trafficking, and falling short here would be a grave failure to victims.

Amendments 265A and 265C address adults role-playing children in pornography. The purpose of this offence is clear: to ensure that material which simulates, normalises or encourages an interest in child sexual abuse is illegal to host online. This is not theoretical harm; this content acts as a gateway to a very real and dangerous interest, and it is right that the law intervenes decisively. I am very grateful that the Government are moving on that.

Very briefly, though, I offer reassurance to communities that have raised concerns. This offence is carefully and deliberately drawn—I thank officials for doing that—with clear exclusions for genuinely fanciful depictions involving unambiguously adult participants. This is not about criminalising benign fantasy but about drawing a firm line at the point where content begins to replicate the dynamics, power imbalance and harms of child sexual abuse.

I also welcome Amendments 263A to 263G, which extend offences to include step-incest and foster relationship pornography involving children. For far too long, pornography has been allowed to normalise and incite sexual abuse within the household, and these amendments begin to close a deeply troubling gap in the law. However, I appreciate the Minister saying that this is only the beginning.

On nudification tools, criminalising their creation and supply and bringing them within the scope of the Online Safety Act is a proportionate and necessary step, but we must emphasise that platforms and search engines must not be allowed to direct users or to profit from this software. We saw just today reports from Bloomberg that Apple and Google have profited heavily from nudifying apps, which only underlies the need for urgent action and how specific it must be to stop search engines allowing these kind of apps to remain possible to find.

This work matters far beyond this Chamber. Harmful pornography is a global problem requiring a global response. Regulation and law change are not an end in themselves but, used properly, can raise awareness, disrupt profit and accelerate change. These amendments are not the final word but they are a decisive and long overdue step forward. I welcome them.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the work that she has done on the issues that have been raised in the House about pornography and online harm. I add my thanks to my noble friend and her honourable friend the Minister in the other place for the very competent amendment they have made in Motion W to the pardons on the decriminalisation of abortion.