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Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 December 2025

Debate

Sentencing Bill

Contribution

I thank the Minister for his response, which was pretty much what I think probably all of us expected. There is a case to be made for looking at this more carefully. The exponential rise in the volume of this type of abuse using technology has outpaced the ability of the system to understand what is going on. It has outpaced the statistics that the Minister mentioned. That is the tip of the iceberg; it does not actually tell one what is going on. As in so many cases to do with the online world, we are all behind the curve. This is happening now, in plain sight; it is not theoretical. I hope that, in the meetings that we will have, we can explore this more fully and explain the extent and the depth of this and the deeply worrying link that is increasingly being demonstrated between perpetrators abusing online, using images, and then at some point moving on to actual physical abuse of children. I hope that we can explore that in more detail. I thank all noble Lords who contributed and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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