Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)

My Lords, when I became a practitioner at the Bar as a young woman in the late 1970s, freedom of expression was regularly used as the excuse to justify sometimes horrific porn. When there were discussions about this among lawyers, it was almost invariably said that women were being prudish and did not understand that erotica—that was always the word used, rather than pornography—was rather benign and had no effect on behaviour. It has taken decades for that viewpoint to be challenged and research to be done to show the links between behaviours and exposure to extreme pornography—not that it has to be that extreme. Young women at the Bar tell me now that almost invariably when the computers of people who are brought to court for allegations of rape and sexual violations of all kinds are examined, they are full of pornography. The link between pornography and serious violation of women is now well established. It is not about benign erotica. We are talking about the ways in which we have added to the menu of possibilities, often giving guidance to young men on how to perform sexually—in a way that does not involve any kind of tenderness and intimacy but is about objectifying women’s bodies and dealing with them in ways that are abusive, not hearing resistance or “no”, and never finding out whether something is acceptable. The last time I wrote a book about the law was very interesting. This was 2018, and it was then republished a few years later after the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The book was being put on to audio, as nowadays happens, and I was doing the reading myself. A young woman was the technician in the sound lab where this was being done. There was a piece of the book about pornography, the way in which it was impacting on sexual offending and the serious influence that it brings to bear on the behaviour of many of the men who were coming before the courts. She said to me, “I watch pornography every single day”, and I asked why. She said, “Because I wanted to know how to do sex—I wanted to know how it was done—but I’ve now become addicted to it���. It had replaced for her the possibility of having real sexual relationships. It was her confiding, in a sort of confessional box way, and saying, “What can I do about it to change my life? I find that it’s the only thing that can give me relief”. It was quite a shock to me as someone who thinks they know most things that happen under the human condition’s spread of behaviours. Here was this young woman, probably only about 18, describing how she was now addicted and how she had come to do it because boys felt that she was no good when it came to sexual behaviour. I just want to say why I readily support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to whom I pay tribute. Over the years I have been exposed to pornography because it was part of the evidence in cases that I was doing. In war crimes, increasingly, there is on the phones of young soldiers all across the world a high level of pornography, and it leads to really vile and terrible abuses of women in conflict. For looking at the stuff that she has had to look at and the experience that she has had to bear, I really feel that we owe the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. People do not realise the toll that can take on somebody. I was in chambers with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the famous writer Sir John Mortimer, who wrote the Rumpole series. John Mortimer was a great believer in freedom of expression, and he had done a number of cases around literature and freedom of expression in rather explicit novels. He then was pursued by the porn industry and offered great sums of money if he would act in porn cases, which on occasions he did. He said he used to take his glasses off because it was the only way he could live with looking at the stuff he was having to watch. We were all offered the opportunity of inheriting his porn practice when he left the Bar, and I have to tell noble Lords that none of us was very interested in doing it because of the toll it takes on the human imagination. You want a mind that is not contaminated by this stuff in your expressions of love and intimacy, and men at the Bar who are doing this stuff say that there are times when they cannot dismiss it. We have to learn from the reality of this. This is poison; it poisons our children, and it is probably poisoning many of the menfolk who sit in this House. We have to find ways of dealing with it—it is going to be difficult. I have supported the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, including the one on the mimicking of children. I can tell noble Lords very clearly that that is a real problem that we have currently. There is the business of depicting incest and the poison that it brings into households and so on. We discussed it only last week, and it disturbed so many people when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, described bots now doing that and the seeming inability to prosecute because it is not a human who is at the other end of it. Then there is business of not verifying age adequately. These are serious problems that we have. One of the things that is inhibiting the response of jurisdictions, and I think ours might be one of them, is that we are concerned not to lose the confidence of the tech bros who are the billionaires making so much money out of many of the ways in which new technology exploits this and makes an incredible amount of money out of it. One of the great Trumpian boasts is that our world should not be inhibited by regulation, but there are some areas where we need regulation and this is most definitely one of them. All of us need to come together and not feel that we should be obeisant to the American way. I urge the Government, as sometimes happens with Governments of all complexions, not to make this an example of resistance to amendments that have been promoted largely by the other side. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has the support of women from around this Committee and from men. I ask the Government please to listen to these submissions; they are made because of the real detriment to our society and quality of life that is created by virtue of this stuff. Not very long ago, I did a report for Scotland on sexual harassment in the street and the public square. It was very clear that disinhibition online leads to disinhibition in other places and in the public square. It is why young women out for an evening are suddenly abused by men coming out of pubs, asking to have sex with them and talking about the size of their breasts or their behinds, and speaking to women in the most revolting way. The women were saying, “I go home feeling degraded. I feel that I do not have the equality and dignity that are promised to me in this new world in which we like to imagine that men and women will be treated as well as each other”. I urge the Committee to go with Amendment 314 on the parity of pornography online and offline, because we have to start regulating this stuff. If we do not do it soon, we will pay an incredible price.