Contribution
My Lords, I am pleased to be opening this group with the introduction of government Amendments 272, 297, 449, 450 and 458. I once again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for the insightful recommendations in her pornography review. I also thank her for meeting me on a number of occasions over the last few months, and for the cordial and constructive tone of those meetings.
There is very little between the Government and the noble Baroness in our objectives. We recognise that her intention is to prevent the deeply unpleasant and damaging effect of what happens in both the online and offline worlds, including the effects upon our children. I hope and believe she also recognises that I am sincere when I say that we want to achieve the same thing. Where possible, the Government have tried to deliver on the issues that she has raised, and I thank her for the time she has taken to talk them through with us. I know that she has some concerns with regard to certain aspects of these amendments, to which I will respond later, but first I will speak to the government amendments.
I start with nudification apps. Together, Amendments 272 and 449 introduce a new offence that will ban the making, adapting, supplying or offer to supply of a tool or service for use as a generator of intimate images. The offence will give effect to our violence against women and girls strategy commitment to ban nudification tools. The offence will capture intimate image generators in all their unpleasant forms, including, but not limited to, apps, software, websites, AI models and bots. To be captured by the criminal offence, the tool must be made or supplied for the use of generating purported intimate images, irrespective of whether that is a primary purpose. The nudification tool ban will be the first of its kind in the world, and it will target the developers and suppliers who profit from the profound distress and victimisation of others. We will work with international partners and fora to tackle this issue.
The Government are committed to tackling the scourge of non-consensual sexual deepfakes and will continue to act to ensure that artificial intelligence cannot be misused to generate this abusive content. In addition to banning image generators, we have announced that we will table an amendment to the Bill to allow the Government to bring additional chatbots into the scope of the Online Safety Act and require them to protect their users from illegal content, including non-consensual intimate images. We will also work with international partners and fora to tackle this issue. Once the offence is in force, the Online Safety Act will impose requirements on social media and search services to have processes and systems in place to remove illegal content that supplies or offers to supply nudification tools, and this will significantly limit their accessibility to users in the UK.
I turn to another unpleasant topic: incest. It is with some pride that I bring forward Amendments 297, 450 and 458. Together, these amendments criminalise the possession or publication of pornographic images that portray sexual activity between family members, otherwise known unattractively as incest porn. In doing so, we give effect to one of the key recommendations of the Independent Review of Pornography by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I know that she will soon speak to a cluster of her own amendments on this issue but, before she does, I place on record my sincere thanks to her for the vital role that she has played in bringing forward this important change.
We know there are concerns that the proliferation of incest-themed pornography can contribute to extremely harmful attitudes, particularly where it risks normalising child sexual abuse. The government amendment recognises those concerns. We are also pleased to announce that the new offence will be listed as a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, requiring platforms to take proactive and proportionate steps to stop this harmful material appearing online.
The offence as it stands will not capture pornography depicting relationships between step-relatives. This is a controversial topic, but such relationships are not illegal in real life. To be clear, though, any pornography involving real children, whether a step element is present or not, is already criminalised under the Protection of Children Act 1978. I beg to move.