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Online Child and Adult Protection

I am grateful to you, Mr. Key, and to the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) for allowing me to make a brief speech. I very much agree with what the hon. Gentleman said, and it is a tribute to him that he has brought this issue forward. There must be a proper balance between new technologies and the uses to which they may be put. That is something that we have experienced over many centuries. I am thinking of the introduction of printing, the introduction of books on a massive scale, and radio and television. We are now into the new technology of the type that the hon. Gentleman so clearly described. The problem, as I see it, goes back to a wave of very considerable laxity that developed in the latter period after the war, in the 1950s and '60s, which gradually developed to such a point that in 1977 my then hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath, Mr. Cyril Townsend, came to see me to try to stop child pornography, because at that time it was possible for a person to take photographs of children but to escape conviction under the then enactments, as they had not touched the child. Through a simple change in legislation, we introduced the Protection of Children Act 1978, which was bitterly opposed, I have to say, by Labour Ministers until the late Lord Callaghan became Prime Minister. I asked him what made him give extra time to a private Member's Bill on Report, which was so unusual in those days and still is. It was very simple. He said, "We took it to the Cabinet because there was so much concern, and my wife told me that she wouldn't speak to me again if I didn't get the Bill through." That was the beginning of a change, and I pay tribute to the late Lord Callaghan and to all those who were responsible for making that change. With regard to what followed from that, I think that I am right in recollecting that in the 1990s, when my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) and I were in the House, he, too, took a great interest in the question of how to deal in a proportionate manner with the difficulties of child pornography. We were often criticised for invading freedom of speech, freedom of expression and so on, but let us just consider briefly the fact that what we are discussing leads to horrific murders in certain cases or to the general degradation of society, and that although it may not be fashionable to do this, cycles in appreciation of these matters do occur over the decades and we are due for a rebalancing of what I would describe as the moral force. That needs to be brought in to get the balance right. We do not seek to be negative about the new technologies or the advantages that can come from them, but we wish to make absolutely sure that we do not expose children to paedophile rings. I may say that the Protection of Children Act, as amended, has been used to deal with international paedophilia to great effect. So I strongly support what the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West said. The return to a balance, and all the suggestions that he made, are practical measures that could be implemented. Claims of freedom of expression must not be allowed to interfere. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression. The Government must properly regulate the evil people who use the new technologies to pervert and undermine young children. That has to stop, and I am sure that the Minister will have something constructive to say along those lines.