Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)

My Lords, I believe in a woman’s right to choose; the right for her to choose what she does with her own body, the right for her to choose who owns her naked image. With the dawn of AI technology, women have lost this ability. A woman can no longer choose who owns an intimate image of her. Technology has made it possible for intimate images to be created by anyone, anywhere, at any time, regardless of whether a woman consents. The Bill will return power to where it belongs, in the hands of each individual woman. Each clause represents the lived experience of a survivor of image-based sexual abuse. Make no mistake, deepfake abuse is the new frontier of violence against women, and the non-consensual creation of a woman’s naked image is an act of abuse. Since this technology emerged around 2017, we have seen a rapid proliferation in the content created. It is now near impossible to accurately describe the quantity of these images and videos being made every single day. Research by #MyImageMyChoice found that one app, new to the market, processed 600,000 images in its first three weeks. The largest site dedicated to deepfake abuse has 13.4 million hits every single month. It is a disproportionately sexist form of abuse, with 99% of all sexually explicit deepfakes being of women. Women are sick and tired of their images being used without their consent to misrepresent, degrade and humiliate them. One survivor, Sophie, who I am honoured to say has joined us today, recalled, “After discovering these images, I questioned, ‘Why me?’. Why had he targeted me in such a way? I stopped making an effort, stopped wearing make-up and didn’t wear my hair down, because maybe, just maybe, if I hadn’t done that before, maybe he wouldn’t have looked at me twice, and maybe it would prevent it happening again”. This abuse causes untold trauma, anxiety and distress. All women are now forced to live under the ever-present threat than anyone can own sexually explicit content of them. The current law is a patchwork of legislation that cannot keep pace, meaning that we are for ever playing catch-up, while the abuse of women races ahead in a technological revolution of degradation. Meanwhile, victims face a challenging legal situation during a time that one survivor described as leaving her “at the brink of survival”. The Bill has been written with victim/survivor experience at its heart. This legislation is for Sophie, for Jodie and for every single other woman who has been violated by intimate image abuse: may their experience guide us in creating solid law that criminalises those who seek to minimise and hurt others in this way. The Bill aims to be comprehensive and future-proof against the evolution of these harms. I am grateful for the thoughtful and unwavering counsel of Professor Clare McGlynn, KC, and to the charities and organisations backing the Bill: Refuge, the Revenge Porn Helpline, #MyImageMyChoice, #NotYourPorn, the End Violence Against Women coalition and Jodie Campaigns. I declare my interest as a guest of Google at its future forum, a policy conference where we discussed the vital importance of clear legislation to tackle image-based abuse. The Bill should be seen as a piece of the puzzle of the much wider Sexual Offences Act. It is designed to complement the pre-existing offences within the Act in order to keep consistency and make the current law more comprehensive by closing the gaps that abusers slip through. The taking, creating and solicitation offences in the Bill are, importantly, consent-based, aligning with existing offences and removing the need for victims to prove the motivation of the perpetrator, a hugely unnecessary and re-traumatising burden on victims. Proposed new section 66E, the taking offence, follows the Law Commission recommendation that the current voyeurism and upskirting offences needed updating with a single taking offence. The new section defines “taking” by including the words “otherwise capturing”, in order to future-proof for the ways in which the taking of a photo will evolve over time. In this way, vitally, it brings screenshotting into the scope of the Bill. Proposed new section 66F makes it an offence to create or solicit the creation of sexually explicit content without a person’s consent. The solicitation offence is inspired by my work with Jodie, who I had the privilege of introducing to many noble Lords at the briefing last week. In the course of five years, Jodie found that her images were being stolen from her private Instagram page and posted on forums, with requests to use her image to create sexually explicit content. The images, which were of her fully clothed and were uploaded by someone she counted as her best friend, were accompanied by degrading captions and incitations, asking others on the forum what they would like to do to “little Jodie” and to deepfake her into pornographic situations on his behalf. One depicted Jodie as a schoolgirl being raped by her teacher. Jodie’s experience emphasises to us that it is not enough simply to make a creation offence; we must also make it an offence to solicit the creation from others. The borderless nature of the internet means that any creation law can be circumvented by asking others in different jurisdictions to create the content for you. I would like a firm commitment from the Government today that they will make the solicitation of sexually explicit content an offence, for Jodie’s sake. The Bill would introduce a clause on forced deletion to make the law clearer for survivors to navigate. The brilliant Revenge Porn Helpline, which offers essential support to those who are victims of image-based abuse, shared the case of a woman who, after a long fight for justice, managed to bring charges against her ex-boyfriend for the non-consensual sharing of her intimate images—only to be contacted by the police, telling her that they now had to hand back all the devices to the perpetrator, with the content remaining on them. That is yet another example of the abuse of women not being treated on a par with other crimes. I am sure we would all struggle to imagine a convicted criminal being handed back contraband. That survivor has to live under the ever-present threat that her ex-partner is still in possession of those photos of her. My Bill would give the court the right to enforce the deletion and destruction of those images, both physical and digital, so that survivors do not have to suffer the trauma of that content being in the hands of their abuser and living in fear that the content may be republished at any given moment. Will the Minister make a commitment today to legislate for forced deletion? The Bill works with the pre-existing definition of “an intimate state” in the Sexual Offences Act in order to have consistency. I have added to the definition as follows: “something else depicting the person that a reasonable person would consider to be sexual because of its nature”. In that way, it brings into scope the victims of semen images, rather sickeningly referred to in the online community as a “cum tribute”. This is where men physically masturbate over a woman’s image and share the image online, or artificially use AI to put semen on to the images. At present, if the victim depicted in the image is not nude or participating in a sexual act, they are afforded legal recourse only by way of a communication or harassment offence. The new wording would bring semen images into scope for not only the creation offence but the pre-existing sharing offence. Critically, the wording would also future-proof against the evolution of these harms. Does the Minister agree with me that this degradation is clearly sexual in nature and that women should be afforded greater protection from this sickening violation? Most importantly, the Bill would be implemented as soon as it reached Royal Assent. The victims of intimate image abuse have waited long enough. Given the rapid proliferation of this abuse, every day that we delay is another day when women have to live under this ever-present threat. It would simply be unconscionable to make them wait any longer. I put on record my gratitude to all noble Lords across the House and to those in the other place for their unwavering support for the Bill. I am grateful to the Government, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and the Minister, Alex Davies-Jones, for taking the time to meet me and discuss this legislation. I am disappointed by their response, suggesting that they will not support this vital Bill, and by their apparent willingness to delay on legislating on image-based abuse. The Government should be in no doubt that image-based abuse is the new frontier of violence against women. If they value legislation with victim survivor experience at its heart, if they want to fulfil their own manifesto commitment as quickly as possible, and if they are serious in their pledge to tackle violence against women and girls, they must change their minds and back the Bill. The Home Secretary committed to using every tool available to take power from abusers and hand it to victims, so I ask the Minister: why not this one? I beg to move.