Rebuttals

When the Bill reached the House of Lords in the spring of 2008, the Minister's invited Lords to visit Charing Cross police station to view examples of these iniquitious images.

Only one Peer who appears to have taken him up, Lord Faulkner, (a Labour appointment) who said "I was left with the question whether their possession is so threatening to society that it is worth turning people into criminals and sending them to jail".

He decided "I really cannot imagine that any useful purpose is served by creating criminals out of the people who possess them."

Rapid Evidence Assesment

On Friday 28th September, ten days before the Second Reading of the Bill on Monday Oct 8th, the Ministry of Justice published a rapid evidence assesment of the evidence of harm relating to exposure to extreme pornographic material, which is being assessed.

Previous Government claims are covered below or in the latest briefing document or shorter summary for MPs.

Liberty join campaign against the CJB

UK Human Rights lobby group Liberty joined its name to the growing list of opponents to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007 and has raised concerns about the plans to criminalise the possession of pornography. 29 June 2007

The International Union of Sex Workers

The IUSW issued an official statement in support of Backlash. 29 June 2007

Positions on the Politics of Porn

Deborah Hyde spoke at Durham University on March 15th where she outlined concerns about the proposals to an audience of academics, students, legal specialists and women's groups. A press release was issued by backlash.

Law Lords undermine Home Office case

In a major blow to the government's suggestion that extreme porn causes crime and therefore anybody who looks at it should be locked up, five Law Lords found that the verdict on the tragic death of Jane Longhurst - cited in the original consultation as a key motivation for the proposals - cannot be justified safely by her killer's interest in looking at this type of material.

A backlash supporting barrister comments "Lord Hutton's judgment points out that Coutts had engaged in breath play sexual games with previous partners years before he started to use internet porn. The Judge commented that if the same Defendant guilty of the same conduct been tried before the same jury, but without the evidence that he used internet porn, the jury would have been very likely to accept that he did not intend to kill."

"It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Judge thought the evidence that Coutts used porn prejudiced the jury and led to unfounded assumptions about Coutt's intent."

"In this the Judge agrees with the Home Office, which also accept that there is no evidence that porn leads to copy cat behaviour."

"What this judgment shows is that the obsession with criminalising the users of porn will further prejudice juries and lead to miscarriages of justice."

On October 19th the Court of Appeal formally quashed Coutt's previous conviction and ordered he be charged on a fresh indictment within two months and then retried at the Old Bailey on a date to be fixed.

The Home Office have taken down from public view their original consultation document, because they have been advised that until the outcome of the retrial is known the document should not continue to be made available on their website.

Minister misleads ?

The Minister responsible for this legislation, speaking on BBC Radio 4 on Wed 30th August, displayed a rather elastic perspective when he claimed "most people, that, er, responded to the consultation, and organisations that responded to the consultation, found it unacceptable, found that it was of a standard that needed the government to do something."

Not exactly. If you thought the Minister meant most respondees support his proposals, you would be wrong.

90 individals responded in favour of the proposals, and 223 against.

There were 53 organisations in favour, roughly half from police forces and the like.

The Minister's statement is about as misleading as his rationale for increasing censorship.

Click here for more misleading arguments.