Barnardo’s welcomes the thorough and detailed report from the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill. It rightly responds to strong concerns voiced by Barnardo’s and others about the omission of commercial pornography from proposed regulation – leaving children at risk of harm.
Viewing pornography – often extreme and violent – distorts children’s understanding of healthy relationships and can normalise abusive sexual behaviour. The Joint Committee recommends that pornography sites should be under legal duties to keep children off, them regardless of whether they host user-to-user or commercial content. Their report states ‘whilst there is a case for specific provisions in the Bill relating to pornography, we feel there is more to be gained by further aligning the Bill with the Age Appropriate Design Code’.
Barnardo’s recommends that the provisions to protect children from viewing pornography go much further than the recommendations in the Joint Committee’s report. In order to keep children safe and protected, we believe it is vital that these legal duties are specified in primary legislation rather than being left to secondary legislation and regulations. The duties should also be explicit that sites must implement mandatory age verification.
A Child Impact Assessment of the Bill and its provisions is also needed to fully understand how children will be affected. Children cannot afford to wait any longer for these measures to be implemented and as a society we can no longer afford to compromise on their safety or protection.