Lawlessness ‘characterises’ pornography online, says MP in plea to reform laws

Lawlessness “characterises” pornographic websites, a Welsh Labour MP has said, while a minister has agreed there is “much work to do” to tackle illegal behaviour online.

Labour backbencher Tonia Antoniazzi labelled the laws which govern pimping and pornography a “fudge”, during a House of Commons adjournment debate she secured to discuss the prevention of commercial sexual exploitation.

Victims minister Jess Phillips told the Commons that she has been unable to get images depicting her taken down from pornographic websites, weeks after Channel 4 News found more than 400 digitally altered pictures of more than 30 high-profile UK politicians online.

“Freely accessible”

“Lawlessness characterises the online pornography trade with films featuring child sexual abuse, rape and trafficking victims found on some of the UK’s most heavily visited sites,” Ms Antoniazzi said.

“Illegal content is freely accessible on mainstream pornography websites.”

Tonight I led an adjournment debate on the prevention of sexual exploitation.

I’ll never stop fighting for the most vulnerable women and girls.

Commercial sexual exploitation has no place in our society. It must be explicitly recognised and tackled as part of any meaningful… pic.twitter.com/beLxw7Nv5X

— Tonia Antoniazzi (@ToniaAntoniazzi) July 23, 2024

Gower MP Ms Antoniazzi referred to a 47-page All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Commercial Sexual Exploitation report from 2023 which featured a testimony from Alia Dewees.

Ms Dewees told the APPG she had signed a contract when she took part in a pornographic film, so the organisers told her she was “expected to perform, or that (she) would be in violation of that contract”.

On the buying and selling sex, Ms Antoniazzi said: “In England and Wales, there is a loose patchwork of laws relating to prostitution, with no consistent objective underpinning them.

“Third-party facilitation of prostitution is illegal in some circumstances yet permitted in others.

“Victims of sexual exploitation face criminal sanction for soliciting in a public place, while individuals who pay for sex only face criminal sanctions if they kerb crawl or pay for sex with an individual subjected to force, even then, the law is very rarely enforced.”

She claimed there had “not been sufficient political will” to update the statute books and added: “Pimping websites are commercial online platforms dedicated solely or partly to advertising women for prostitution. They function like mass online brothels, making it as easy to order women to exploit as it is to order a takeaway.

“Despite it being illegal to place a prostitution advert in phone box, the same advert can be legally published for-profit on a website.

“Our laws have not kept pace with technological change and pimps have got rich as a result.”

National emergency”

Responding, Ms Phillips said: “It’s time we treat tackling violence against women and girls as the national emergency it is.

The new Government policies will be announced in due course, but I want to re-state that I believe passionately that change in this area is needed and until it is achieved, we must not rest.”

She told MPs: “We will build on the Online Safety Act to ensure that online companies fulfil their duties to eradicate this exploitation from their sites. There is much work to do in this particular space, as has been highlighted by (Ms Antoniazzi), and I have handled many cases where this has not been handled well at all.

“I myself, there are images of me on pornographic websites that I cannot get taken down.”

Earlier this month, Channel 4 News identified Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Conservative former home secretary Priti Patel and Labour backbencher Stella Creasy among the victims of digitally altered images online – sometimes known as “deepfakes”.

According to the broadcaster, some of the victims in UK politics had said they planned to call in the police to investigate.