Debates in the House of Lords
October 14th 2004
The Lord Bishop of Oxford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, together with international agencies, to shut down websites that give access to violent pornography.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to the important work of the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK in providing a hotline for the reporting of child abuse images. She rightly paid fulsome tribute to its work. The IWF decides whether the reported website carries potentially illegal material, and passes details of illegal material to the relevant law enforcement agencies to take action. When the site is hosted within the UK, law enforcement will seek its removal with the relevant Internet service provider. That procedure has been extremely successful in practice.
In 2003, less than 1 per cent of illegal material identified by the Internet Watch Foundation was hosted in the UK. In respect of adult pornography, we are confident in the ability of the IWF to identify material that is potentially in breach of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 in response to complaints, and to refer to the police any that is hosted in the UK.
We are told by the IWF and UK law enforcement that hardly any extreme material that might be illegal in the UK if distributed to an adult is hosted within the UK. As already outlined, we have well established procedures and industry co-operation for seeking its removal.
That may mean that the legislative environment, action taken by law enforcement agencies and industry co-operation in the UK have all contributed towards such material being hosted elsewhere. That makes it very difficult for the producers and distributors to be dealt with unless they also break local laws in the country where they operate.
There is much being done at present and which can be done in the future to combat extreme and violent pornographic websites, wherever they are hosted. It is important to tackle the problem on a variety of fronts. For example, dealing with the producers and distributors of material is much more effective than simply taking down one website...
Created: Thu, October 14th, 2004 | Last Modified: Tue, February 6th, 2007
