Lord Farmer
Main Page: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for securing this debate and I fully support his opening contribution to it.
I believe that the impact pornography is having on society is, almost bizarrely, something of a no-go area for polite conversation, yet it is imposing considerable harm, particularly on young people and particularly on their perception of how healthy relationships should look and feel. Unless there is some basic honesty in this area, we are in danger of sleep-walking our way through deeply concerning changes to norms of decency and acceptability in our society and neglecting the young on a massive scale.
Today’s young people are the parents of tomorrow. We must also look ahead, further up the age range, and not ignore what is already happening in older generations. Others may consider that the viewing habits of consenting adults belong beyond the bounds of public comment, but I believe this approach is ostrich-like and naive in the extreme, for reasons I hope I will make clear to your Lordships.
Yesterday, the Children’s Society published a report suggesting almost 10% of 16 and 17 year-old girls have been victims of a sexual offence, but fewer than one in 10 of those offences were reported. Half of those not reporting sexual abuse to the police feel it is not worth their while to do so, hinting at a pervasive acceptance that this just comes with the territory of growing up in Britain today.
Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson says:
“Pornography has changed the landscape of adolescence beyond all recognition”.
Research shows that more than four in 10 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 in England have been coerced into sex acts and a fifth of girls have suffered violence or intimidation from their teenage boyfriends, a high proportion of whom are on a steady diet of pornography.
There is a clear and strong link between viewing violent pornography and perpetrating sexual violence. Despite the high premium we place on equality in this country, one in five boys harbour extremely negative attitudes towards women.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, there have been a number of interruptions. I ask noble Lords to remember that this is a timed debate and we are very close to time, so please keep interruptions to a minimum.
Lord Farmer
As the majority of online porn is created for men and is often aggressive, if not violent, the premature sexualisation of young minds is re-embedding constructs we have battled to eradicate: that women are primarily sex objects, there to provide men’s sexual gratification, and their significance is dependent on them being desirable and attractive to men.
The consequences are grim for young women’s physical and emotional health. Internal injuries can be caused by sex acts inspired by young men’s access to porn. I have read about one family doctor working in a leafy suburb in the Home Counties—not a concrete jungle in an inner city—treating growing numbers of teenage girls suffering from the after-effects of frequent anal sex, such as incontinence.
I cannot imagine that this GP is unique in having this in her case load and would be grateful if the Minister could ask the Department of Health whether there are data on the prevalence of such injuries. As the GP said:
“these girls are very young and slight and their bodies are simply not designed for that”.
Far from them enjoying it, considerable pain is frequently involved. She found that young women simply did not feel able to say no. Boys expected anal sex and it was treated as standard. Young women are under considerable pressure to act like porn artists.
There are also profound emotional effects of what has been termed the heterosexual meat market. The Journal of Adolescent Health reported a 7% increase over the last five years in the number of young girls aged 11 to 13 reporting emotional problems. Researchers ascribed the increase to pressures to achieve an unrealistic body shape, driven by social media and the increasing sexualisation of young women. It has gone way beyond whether they look good in the latest fashions to whether their naked or almost-naked bodies measure up to the remorseless scrutiny of people who neither know nor care about them.
The objectification of vast swathes of our young people is gathering pace: according to CEOP, sexting—or sending self-generated nude or nearly-nude images and videos—is becoming quite normal for teenagers, due to the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and apps. Two-thirds of 12 to 15 year-olds have smartphones, which are the biggest source of porn. Even vigilant parents have shockingly little control over what their children are seeing on their, or their friends’, mobile internet-enabled devices.
Tragically, 45% of boys treat porn as sex education, but that education can be violent, as I have mentioned. We must ensure that our young people receive clear and unapologetic messages in schools about the importance of respect and commitment in relationships which will, I hope, be backing up what parents are saying. The effects of pornography should be made crystal clear. Some may say that the case against it has not yet been proven but I would strongly disagree.
We know that the well-being of children, young people and adults depends on them having safe, stable and nurturing relationships with people who love them unconditionally, not on the basis of their physical appearance. Can the Minister inform the House about how schools are educating young people about relationships and warning them about the dangers to their physical and emotional health from consumption of porn?
As I said at the outset, it is not just young people whose relationships are at risk from pornography. Several studies have demonstrated that an adult’s use can undermine his or her partner’s sexual and relationship satisfaction and self-esteem. Many feel insecure, less desirable and unattractive since discovering their partner’s usage. There is also the concern that adults who want to view porn will not use protective internet filters or block viewing channels, thereby leaving any minors in the home at risk.
We know that relationships are already under considerable strain in this country. The price tag for family breakdown is around £47 billion per year, as we have already heard, yet national government funding for relationship support is a scant £7.5 million. A couple of months ago, I was one of more than 70 signatories to a letter published in the Telegraph calling for a tripling of this amount in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. Can the Minister please add her voice to others in government making a strong case to the Treasury for this essential help?
I will end on the implications of disturbing evidence of a link between violent pornographic use and recidivism in child sex offenders, especially those already at high risk of reoffending. This means that we can predict which individuals who have been imprisoned for deeply harming young lives are most likely to go on to destroy the happiness of yet more children if they access violent porn. Given the promise of a rehabilitation revolution from the Secretary of State for Justice, can the Minister confirm that this knowledge will be acted on? If we ignore these evidence-based insights, we do perpetrators no favours.
To conclude, pornography is shredding the social and relational fabric of our society. Soft-peddling its harms grossly neglects the welfare of young people, and as they will found the families of tomorrow, we ignore the pressures they are under at our peril.