Lords Second Reading 22 Jan 2007

Extracts from the House of Lords debate bearing on the "extreme images" clauses.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)

In tackling the possession of extreme pornographic images, the Bill seeks to bring our controls on such violent and explicit material into the internet age.

We can no longer control the circulation of this pernicious and potentially harmful material through legislation dealing with the traditional forms of publication and distribution. We have to look to an offence of possession.

We want to ensure that the new offence hits the right target. In the other place, concerns were expressed that the offence went too wide. We understand that concern.

I aim to bring forward amendments in Committee that will clarify the drafting of the offence and, I hope, put beyond doubt that the type of imagery found in popular mainstream films will not be covered by the offence.

Lord Henley

In Part 7, we move on from criminal justice to the criminal law itself. We find a whole array of diverse and disparate matters, as the noble Lord assured us.

We deal with extreme pornography, prostitution, homophobic hatred, self-defence, nuclear material and facilities, and new penalties for unlawfully obtaining personal data.

The Government might also consider some new penalties for incompetently losing personal data�something that the Government seem to know a great deal about at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord West, smiles ruefully. Perhaps we can leave that for an amendment at a later stage.

My first point on this part of the Bill is that there will be problems of definition - the Minister touched on this in his opening speech - and a need for certainty or, at least, a degree more clarity.

Lord Thomas of Gresford

As for extreme pornography, Clause 113 is utterly vague, and Clause 115 proposes an unacceptable reverse burden of proof.

We welcome what the Minister said a moment ago, when he appeared to recognise that.

I shall leave it to my noble friends Lord Wallace of Tankerness and Lady Miller to comment further on the provisions of Parts 7 and 8.

Similarly, in Committee, my noble friend Lady Harris will deal with policing matters in Part 11 and my noble friend Lord Avebury with special immigration status in Part 12.

4.46 pm

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (Hansard here)

The two issues I shall concentrate on are set out in Part 7 � the first is extreme pornography.

It is a difficult issue to debate at all, but one to which I hope we shall bring some cool and objective thinking. Again, it did not really receive the sort of examination in the other place that it should have had.

We have had an interesting briefing from a large number of academics such as lecturers in media studies and so on who have joined together on this issue.

The first point they make bears repeating at this stage: the Government have been using a rapid evidence assessment to back up their claims that legislation is necessary in this area.

They say that the REA document is based on largely discredited research emanating from particular psychology and sociology traditions once favoured in America and that the supporting evidence has no real connection to the British case.

That is the sort of issue that we need to examine in Committee.

Legislation needs to be objective and evidence-based, not subjective.

Personally, I do not like pornography and believe it to be essentially degrading to the spirit, and violent pornography is even worse. Indeed, anything depicting extreme violence is, I think, dangerous as regards the well-being of society.

However, I also do not believe in censorship unless it is absolutely essential to protect people, and my personal view is not what I want the House to focus on.

We need to concentrate on the fact that this sloppy clause is dangerous.

On 6 December last the Minister said that the Government believe that the individual pornography user will have no difficulty in recognising pornography.

That is not an objective or evidence-based approach. Surely it cannot be for the possible perpetrator of a crime to judge whether he actually is committing a crime.

A great deal more thought needs to go into exactly how these clauses have been drafted, and I recognise that the Minister has suggested that the Government will bring forward something which I hope will be more evidence-based.

Further, I am extremely glad that we will have the benefit of the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights before us.

Before I leave this point, I refer to the specialist interest material we have received from the Outsiders Trust, which represents the interests of physically disabled people. That is the sort of issue I hope we will come back to in Committee.

The Earl of Onslow

I now turn with gentle delicacy to extreme porn. What is it? Is it Juvenal's ninth satire? I have unfortunately lost my Latin copy of it; otherwise, I would have quoted it to your Lordships. However, I certainly would not dream of translating it. Luckily, we are of a much less classical generation so I hope that most of your Lordships would not have understood it.

I once quoted it on the wireless�on a Radio 3 programme about pornography rock with the encouragement of the noble Lord, Lord Alli, and a minor payment. This little sideline concerns what is meant by extreme porn.

"Extreme" is an extremely subjective word. The law must not have subjective judgments in it; it makes things too difficult, if not impossible, and it makes judgment on facts difficult.

We wrote to the Minister, asking for a definition that was sufficiently precise and foreseeable to pass Article 8, relating to respect for privacy, and Article 10, relating to freedom of expression, and asked whether the new offence was necessary in a free society.

We are concerned at the vagueness of the offence. We question whether Clause 113 is precise or foreseeable enough to meet the Convention requirements. The offence requires the image to be extreme. That is an extremely subjective judgment in itself.

The Explanatory Notes state that the new offence was made to protect individuals from participating in degrading staged activities or bestiality, to cut supply and to prevent others from accidentally coming across such material.

We question whether the behaviour criminalised in Clause 113(6)(a) and (b) should be so if carried out by adults in private.

Lord Elystan-Morgan

On pornography, it is only right that we should tighten the law in regard to its most scurrilous and dangerous form, if only to protect people from being murdered in sadistic sexual cases where the stimulation seems to come from such sources.

8.15 pm

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (summing up for the government).

I turn to the subject of extreme pornography. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and a number of other noble Lords expressed some concerns, which I well understand, about the definitions and how they might be applied.

The reasons for bringing this matter before your Lordships" House are well taken: some very disturbing cases, with disturbing impacts, have arisen from the availability of extreme pornography.

Equally, I accept that we have to be very careful about the definition; we do not want it to be wider than we intend.

I said in my opening speech that we will bring forward amendments in Committee, I hope to make that absolutely clear.

ends

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