Member

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Stevenson agree that we should be looking at this matter. I say to them both that we have had that discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the companies and we want to do further work on this, for the very reasons indicated by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Davies of Gower. We have to get this right. We need to ensure that we understand how best to implement interventions in practice. While I acknowledge the noble Lord’s intention, it is important to recognise that his amendment focuses primarily on offenders’ consumption of CSAM. With the technology available today, such an approach would, in practice, intervene mainly on the most extreme categories of abuse, such as category A or pre-pubescent material. I take the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Davies of Gower, that we need to make sure the technology works effectively. That is not to say that it does not.