CARE urges government to usher in age checks for porn sites
Online SafetyThe UK Government should usher in mandatory age checks for pornographic sites, CARE has said, as it was revealed representatives of the porn industry would not oppose the measure.
Yesterday, The Times revealed that Children's Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza had met with representatives from 'adult sites' and been assured that sites would adopt age checks to stop children being exposed to explicit content if the government placed a duty on them to do so.
In a letter to the newspaper, CARE's Chief Communications Officer James Mildred called for Ministers to take porn sites up on their offer and introduce age verification safeguards which are already on the statute book but not yet enforced. Mr Mildred wrote:
"We welcome the disclosure by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, that porn sites are willing to adopt age verification safeguards.
"In 2017 parliament passed the Digital Economy Act, Part 3 of which was supposed to put age checks in place on all commercial pornographic websites. This section, however, was never enforced.
"The government has said that its Online Safety Bill is an improvement on Part 3 but this claim does not stand up to scrutiny: there is no requirement to block sites that host extreme pornographic content and it is not clear if porn sites will be subject to age verification safeguards.
"It will also be some time before the online safety regime is in place — if it is agreed at all. Hence we urge the government to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act now, rather than wait for its Online Safety Bill to clear all the parliamentary hurdles."
The government has been strongly criticised for scrapping Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act in 2019, following a series of delays. The provisions would have ushered in mandatory age checks on all commercial porn sites, and punished sites that host "extreme content".
Earlier this year, former children's television presenter Baroness Floella Benjamin wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to enforce Part 3, citing recent attacks on women where pornography was implicated, including the case of Sarah Everard. Her letter stated:
“The last two months have raised very serious concerns about the safety of women and children in relation to sexual violence. While it is too early to talk in depth about what happened to Sarah Everard, it is clear from the outpouring of stories from women across the country following her death that a very large proportion of attacks on women are sexually motivated.
“We have also witnessed the impact of the 'Everyone's Invited' website, with over 10,000 rape culture testimonies and revelations about its impact on children through the recent Centre for Social Justice report.”
“In this context, given the growing body of research (including research commissioned by the Government) demonstrating a clear association between pornography consumption and a higher incidence of violence against women and girls, the failure to implement Part 3, in the absence of alternative protections, has become unsustainable.”
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CARE urges government to usher in age checks for porn sites