Online Pornography: Age Verification

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

I hesitate to pre-empt what will ultimately be in the draft Bill, but it is obvious that we would want any regulator to have extremely strong sanctions in extreme circumstances. However, we would also want there to be a tariff, as it were, of what they could do in less severe circumstances to make sure that users were protected from a whole host of both illegal and legal but harmful experiences online.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Age verification is important, but please, as a result of this debate today, let us not see it as a silver bullet. The real solution is to educate all young people on the harm caused by pornography. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that those who protest against mandatory relationship education for primary school age children—measures this Government have already put in place—are failing to see the importance of teaching all children what a good relationship looks like, which is not pornography?

[Matt Warman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. While pornography is one extreme example of some of the corrosive effects of the internet, we have to look far more broadly than online behaviour in order to try to fix some of the effects that have come into the real world as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

The hon. Lady raises the specific issue of the Garden Bridge Trust, which is concerning. The commission has rightly scrutinised the trustees’ conduct and management, and the charity itself, carefully, and it continues to monitor the charity’s progress on winding up. I understand that the commission intends to publish a concluding report on the running of the trust and to learn those wider lessons, setting them out for policy makers so that we can learn from them. I am happy to hear from the hon. Lady if she has further concerns.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that public trust in charities was shaken to the core by the revelations of the sexual abuse and harassment that occurred not only in the UK and Europe but around the world. What work is the Charity Commission doing to make sure that that issue is addressed, and that emerging concerns about the role of overseas orphanages in issues of modern-day slavery are looked into? These are important issues involving charities.

[Mims Davies]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising this issue; she is a doughty campaigner for women around the world and it is absolutely right that we will have the debate later today ahead of International Women’s Day tomorrow. People have been horrified by what has been allowed to be done around the globe under the watch of charities, and it is absolutely right that we learn lessons. I am due to talk to Ministers from the Department for International Development about this matter, and I would be happy to speak to my right hon. Friend about particular issues if she feels that anything has not been picked up on. We must make sure that we learn further lessons. Nothing can be left alone on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

I will look carefully at the issue raised by the hon. Lady. Of course it is important that we closely keep track of where these weapons are being sold and the methods being employed. She would expect me to say that the online harms White Paper will focus on the responsibilities of the online platforms to keep people safe from harm. Harm varies, and we are concerned about a variety of different harms, but we will certainly pay close attention to the point that she has raised.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

T4. Ahead of International Women’s Day, we should remember the thousands of women who live with nude and sexually explicit images of themselves posted online without their permission. The current legislation is piecemeal and ripe for reform. Will my right hon. and learned Friend look at amalgamating the legislation to outlaw all forms of image-based abuse and make it easier for such images to be removed quickly?

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the Law Commission’s work in this area, and we are looking at the issue carefully. May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to her, as she has played a significant part in the development of the law in this area? Whether on upskirting or revenge pornography, she and other Members have done a great deal to put the law in a better place.

Digital Economy

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The hon. Gentleman makes some very good points. I am aware of some of the cases to which he refers. When I explain the detail of the regulations, it should reassure him that we are seeking to catch the commercial provision of pornography on sites where at least two thirds of the content is of an adult nature. I think that should allay his concerns. However, we should keep the issue he raises closely under review.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I very much welcome today’s debate and the Government’s proposals, but parents who are listening to this debate may go away with the impression that everything on the internet will be subject to an age barrier. Will the Minister be clearer, for the benefit of parents who are listening, that the regulations will not include social media? What is she doing to ensure that social media platforms do not inadvertently become the way that young people under the age of 15 access pornography in the future?

[Margot James]

I welcome the intervention from the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Let me clarify here and now that the regulations are a very important step forward in preventing children from viewing pornography online. In particular, we are closing the loophole whereby children can stumble across such material inadvertently. However, my right hon. Friend is right that the regulations do not extend to social media platforms that contain pornographic content that is a relatively small minority of the content that they provide. This is not a foolproof guarantee that young people and children will not be exposed to pornography online. It is a significant step forward, but there is, as my right hon. Friend points out, the potential for people to access material on social media platforms, which do not fall within the scope of the regulations unless more than a third of their average content is pornographic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I very much welcome this groundbreaking piece of legislation and thank the Minister for going through it so thoroughly today in her opening statement. I think the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) is wrong when he says that this is a set of half-measures, but it is only a start—he is right in that respect. When we look at the scale of the problem we are dealing with, with almost two-thirds of young people seeing pornography online for the first time when they were not expecting it, the Government are right to start the long journey in trying to stop the unexpected exposure to what can be very damaging material.

The Women and Equalities Committee published a number of reports highlighting the damaging impact that exposure to pornography at an early age can have on young children—not only in the report, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), on sexual harassment in public places, but in the report on sexual harassment in school. The evidence is there and it is clear, but rather than going through those findings again I would like to focus particularly on the amendments made in the other place to the Digital Economy Act 2017 (Amendment) (Definition of Extreme Pornography) Bill. They have caused concern not only this evening but outside this place by setting extreme pornography as the threshold for non-compliance and for the images that appear to be allowed as a result of those changes made in the other place.

There are serious concerns about part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, which has been weakened by Lords amendments. The noble Baroness Howe has been working hard in the other place to try to offer a solution. I hope the Minister can comment on that if time allows this evening. The Lords amendments mean that non-photographic child sexual abuse images, which would be illegal for anybody to possess, could be accommodated behind age-verification checks. Whereas previously the regulator could block that illegal content, the Lords amendments mean that that could happen only if the material was without age verification.

Secondly, the Lords amendments mean that a lot of violent pornography that is illegal to supply to anyone of any age under the Video Recordings Act 1984 will now be accommodated behind age verifications. That sends out all the wrong messages, so will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government will be not only keeping these issues under close review, but examining whether they could take forward the recommendations in Baroness Howe’s Bill, and that these issues can be addressed directly in the online harms White Paper, if not before?

We have the opportunity to return to these issues after 18 months, but I would not want to see what is a good start being hampered by changes in the other place that ComRes polling would suggest almost three-quarters of Members in this place simply would not agree to. Why can we not bring forward measures that would better reflect the will of this House, rather than that of unelected peers? The Front Bench spokespeople often tell me that something that is illegal offline is illegal online as well. They are really close to the edge of breaking their own rule, where things that are actually illegal offline appear to the normal man on the Clapham omnibus to have a different effect online. That is really regrettable.

The Minister was very generous in responding to my earlier comments on social media. I hope she keeps under review the need to put much pressure on social media companies to ensure that they also are within these sorts of parameters.

BBC Pay

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; it is good to be shadowed once more by him. He is quite a shadow, and I am sure we will all enjoy his stand-up in the exchanges ahead.

There is a very strong degree of cross-party unanimity on this subject, and I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for the measures that we have taken to introduce more transparency. As well as introducing transparency measures for the BBC, we introduced wider transparency measures on the gender pay gap for all large organisations. I think that that answers many of his questions about other organisations, but other public organisations have strong duties, and I will take his point about that very seriously. When it comes to investigating individual cases and policing the Equality Act 2010, that is a job for the EHRC. We welcome the fact that it is taking action in this case now, and it must take action wherever it sees that as appropriate.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

This country has some of the best laws in the world to protect women who face these sorts of employment problems, but those laws need the Equality and Human Rights Commission to act, and to do so quickly. Why is it that, despite the overwhelming evidence that has been in the public domain for more than six months, the EHRC has failed to intervene on the BBC but has been placated by a BBC-funded internal review, which has clearly not tackled the problem? What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that the Equality and Human Rights Commission performs its statutory duties and uses it statutory enforcement powers to protect women facing these sorts of problems in not just the BBC, but many other organisations?

[Matt Hancock]

I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend—my predecessor—who has brought to the EHRC’s attention the importance of acting in this case. It has a statutory duty to act when it sees unequal pay, and I am glad that, as of this morning’s announcement, it is taking that forward.