Explainer: What is the porn review?

Note: This blog contains themes that are not suitable for a younger audience.

This week, a groundbreaking review of pornography was published. The review, overseen by Conservative Peer Baroness Burtin, explored evidence of porn’s harms, and how laws could be amended to ensure that women and children are better protected.

The review makes more than 30 recommendations to the government, and many of these stem from input by CARE and other charities working in this space. To understand more about all this, we put some questions to CARE’s Senior Policy Officer Tim Cairns.

Q: What is this porn review?

“The internet is awash with illegal and harmful pornographic content. This has had catastrophic consequences for our society and particularly women and girls, for whom it has meant misogynistic abuse, harassment and sexual violence. The review of pornography led by Baroness Burtin recognises the scale of this problem and sets out a path to deal with pornographic content that is harming vulnerable groups.

“It is in part thanks to CARE. We helped secure a commitment for further work on pornography from the last UK Government when its online safety regime was being debated. The wide-ranging review, which ran for two years, looks at pornographic content being consumed by the public, its impact on society, and the legislative landscape – how pornography is regulated in both the offline and online world.”

Q: What does the review ask for?

“The review makes a number of recommendations, including making online porn involving choking, adults dressing as children, and degrading, violent and misogynistic themes illegal; banning so-called ‘nudification’ apps; and making it an offence to take non-consensual intimate images, or create them via AI. It’s suggested that a body should be established to audit online platforms and punish non-compliance. We fully support these ideas.

“CARE has campaigned for an alignment of the laws covering pornography online with those that are in place to regulate offline content. For many years, there has been a troubling lack of parity between our approach to porn offline and internet porn. Content that would not be allowed in shops is freely accessible online. Baroness Bertin has recognised that this is an issue that needs to be remedied and set out a way forward to ensure that our laws are harmonised.”

Q: Is there more to be done?

“Yes. It is clear that further education and public health initiatives are needed to help alleviate the damage caused by porn. Baroness Bertin calls for better health outcomes and research in this area. The NHS across the UK has been too slow to recognise the dangers and negative health outcomes of pornography consumption, and support is rarely available.

Q: What happens now?

“The Government has been given a number of recommendations and needs to come up with a clear implementation plan. Its initial reaction has been a bit guarded, but we would expect Ministers to give a fuller announcement about the government’s plans in the coming months.

“This is a seminal moment, and the UK Government has a choice: either it can implement the review in full and start the process of undoing the harm caused by porn in our society or leave the review to gather dust and abandon another generation of young people to its pernicious effects. Action will be difficult, but the Government must now set out a robust plan to ensure the difficult decisions necessary are taken, and recommendations are implemented in full.”