Contribution
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Kidron—I was very happy to put my name to this. The noble Baroness and others in this Chamber were at a meeting that we had at lunchtime today with a variety of really knowledgeable experts in this area. Even for those of us who have been to these sorts of meetings in the last few years fairly regularly, the latest news is really deeply shocking. I cannot even begin to tell your Lordships how shocking it is.
Indeed, there was an expert from Finland there who is about to deliver a very comprehensive analysis of the status quo, which will be delivered to Ofcom and published shortly. She was unable to give any details; however, she did tell us—I must confess that I am not that shockable, but I did find this pretty shocking—that the earliest instance that this research has discovered of a child being abused sexually was a child who was seven hours old, if noble Lords can believe that. What is more, we were told that there are manuals available on the web and the dark web which tell perpetrators, if they wish to sexually abuse newly born infants, how to do so in such a way that it is not able to be medically identified.
It reminds one slightly of the recent, very brave, interview that Gisèle Pelicot gave, which some of your Lordships may have seen—if noble Lords have not, I recommend it—in which it appeared that the reason that Gisèle did not realise what was happening to her was that her husband had availed himself of sufficient medical knowledge to know that, when he drugged her, he also put muscle relaxants into the medication. The normal physical reaction of anyone’s body, particularly a female body, when it is being violated is to resist it and seize up; in the case where you had muscle relaxants administered, of course, that was not the case, so, when Gisèle woke up, she did not feel well, but she did not realise what had happened. There are manuals on the web telling perpetrators how to do that with newly born infants in order that it is not identified. This is the world we are living in.
I am reminded of an analogy that we often used to use when I was a management consultant, when we were trying to indicate to a business that things were getting slightly out of control and not going the way they wanted: the parable of the frog in the water, which is gently increasing in temperature until the point that it realises it is being boiled alive, by which time it is too late. If you look at the scale of the abuse that is happening and the way in which artificial intelligence is accelerating this exponentially, it is never too late, but I can only add to the words of my noble friend Lady Kidron: how much longer do we have to keep on beseeching the Government to listen?
I reminded the meeting of a meeting I had a few months ago with a Minister from another department and her team. The Minister was female and all the advisers were female. We asked them, “How many of you have children, and what age are they?” They told us, and we then described some of the things that are happening to children of that age. You could see a visible change in demeanour and body language. This is not something that is happening to other people, or happening remotely on the BBC news or online; it is happening to us and our children, and it becomes deeply personal. The reason why the noble Baroness and others of us feel so passionately about this is that it is happening all around us—to our children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces—and we appear to be blind to what is going on.
We are blind in the sense of finding solutions that will work and blind to even trying solutions that may not be perfect but at least indicate a level of intent to do something about it. The companies that are the aim of the noble Baroness’s amendment know what they are doing; they are aware of what they are allowing. They are probably doing some risk analysis, which is probably not very good reading, but they know exactly what they are doing. To try to limit the Government’s approach to only those engines that have clearly been designed primarily to produce child sexual abuse material is the tip of the iceberg. It is all the other ones that are doing the damage. Until and unless we face up to that, zero in on them in such a way that they have to pay attention, and make it seriously painful for them, we are not going to change anything.
I appeal to the House, should the noble Baroness decide to take this to a vote, to send a clear signal to the Government about what is going on. Those of us in this House who are involved in this are frequently approached by the Government’s own Back-Benchers from another place—many of whom have young children —who are deeply concerned about what is going on. They are desperate for their Government to show real leadership and, rather than having consultation after consultation, to take action. So I appeal to the Government to look at this very seriously and I appeal to the House, if the noble Baroness decides to divide, to go with her.