Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I fully support these amendments and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on her fight to highlight these issues over many years and on her opening remarks. I also pay respect to the bereaved parents who have been campaigning tirelessly and look to us to achieve change.

It is common sense for coroners and law enforcement agencies to have access to the social media accounts of deceased children who are believed to have died as a result of social media activity. If it was your child or grandchild, would you not want that? This action needs to take place automatically before accounts are deleted. Accounts should be preserved, and it should be a criminal offence to delete or edit them before they are reviewed by investigators. Like so many grieving parents across the country, I strongly believe that social media companies should not be allowed to withhold or destroy often crucial evidence that could be vital to investigations and lead to criminal convictions.

After hearing on “BBC Breakfast” news this morning some of the heartbreaking stories from bereaved parents who are campaigning on this issue and urging the Government to take more robust action, I was convinced that tragic cases such as these clearly highlight the need for social media companies to be compelled to protect our children and safeguard them from harm. This is yet another plea before more harm is done because, right at this very moment, there is a child viewing harmful content that could lead to tragedy, so I hope the Government are listening—and is Ofcom listening? I want them to listen to these bereaved parents and take further action. I urge the Government to accept these much-needed amendments and act now.

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot match the eloquence of some of the previous speakers, but I want to add my support for this group of amendments. We have heard the policy arguments for these proposals and, as a policymaker, I think they are overwhelming, but I add my support as a parent as well as a legislator.

Those of us with children and teenagers know full well how much of a child’s life nowadays is conducted on a screen behind a password. Friendships, pressures and influences are impossible to get at without access to that digital record. I pay tribute to the bereaved parents who have campaigned with such courage and dignity; they have turned unimaginable grief into a determination to protect others, and the whole House will honour what they are doing today.

I very much hope that the Government accept these amendments and, if not, I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, will be true to her word and continue to bring them back on Report.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, we live in an age where pretty much all of us carry in our pocket the means to access pornographic content so extreme that it would be illegal for any shop to sell it to any adult, anywhere in the country and, until very recently, children have had ready access to this extreme content. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, said—it bears repeating—44% of children see depictions of rape in pornography before they turn 18. I think everyone in this House would accept that, since the early 2000s, there has been a huge change in who sees pornography and what pornography they are seeing. However, by and large, the regulatory framework has not changed. It is not designed for the digital age or the smartphone age, and it is certainly not designed for the age of AI, where anyone can generate a pornographic image in seconds.

Our legislation must catch up. The provisions in the Online Safety Act and the Data Act are an important first step, but more is needed. While running the No. 10 Policy Unit for Rishi Sunak, I pushed for an independent review to look at the problems associated with online pornography and to advise the Government on what could be done. That review was established in 2023 and my noble friend Lady Bertin was appointed lead reviewer.

I am extremely glad that the current Government shared our concerns and continued to support the work of the independent review, which, as we have heard, published a comprehensive and shocking report earlier this year. It is thanks to my noble friend Lady Bertin and her team that we now have a much clearer understanding of what is happening online and the impact it is having in the real world. As she set out in her speech, our failure to regulate online pornography has facilitated an industry that is

“increasingly violent, degrading and misogynistic”.

It is an industry that directs users towards ever more extreme content, and in doing so it is changing attitudes and fuelling violence towards women and girls. Indeed, almost every month seems to bring fresh evidence of the damage being done to children, to women and to those viewing this harmful content—content that goes unchecked because we have failed to apply our existing, settled laws and regulations to the online world.

In the pre-internet age, we had a broadly effective mechanism for regulating pornography through classification. We balanced the rights of consenting adults with the need to protect society. For over 40 years, legislation has ensured that pornographic videos are regulated by the British Board of Film Classification. Depictions of illegal activity such as rape, and harmful activity such as violent sexual activity, are banned. However, this regulation has never been extended to cover online pornography. There is nothing rational about a system that says content is illegal and harmful when watched on a DVD, but legal and permissible when watched on the internet. If we still believe that it is wrong and harmful for adults to watch depictions of incest on video, Blu-ray or DVD, how can we believe that that content should be readily available online?

In this Bill, the Government have a chance to act decisively, and I am extremely grateful for the commitment to bring forward an amendment to ban depictions of strangulation and suffocation in pornography. That is an important start but, during the passage of the Bill, I hope the House will agree to go further. My starting point is that we should apply the same standards to films that are distributed online as we already do to those that are distributed offline. It raises legitimate questions of enforcement and regulatory capacity. Those are valid concerns and I hope that we will debate them in Committee. However, I do not believe it should raise concerns about freedom of expression: after all, I am simply proposing that we apply and enforce our existing standards consistently—unless, of course, some would like to argue that our current laws for offline pornography have been stifling our freedom for decades and should now be relaxed, in which case I look forward to debating that, too.

I know that regulation in the digital age is not straightforward. Having spent many years in government, I have every sympathy for the current Government, who may well think that this is simply too hard to do. It is hard to do. But I would say to them that it is too important not to do, which is why I will be supporting the amendments in this space, including those from my noble friends Lady Owen and Lady Bertin.