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At an away day last week, Keir Starmer told his cabinet that they must become “disruptors if you don’t want to be disrupted”. Yet timidity, caution and hesitation have damaged too many of Labour’s bold policies. Will Starmer’s new message percolate through to the cabinet – and to their junior ministers, civil servants and official lawyers? This week, one policy decision that went largely unnoticed suggests his party is still far from embracing disruption.
Tens of thousands of deepfake porn images are produced every week, many of celebrities, mostly of ordinary women. These obscene AI-generated images have the power to destroy lives, roaming the internet for ever. They can be sent to friends, family, children, school friends, present or future employers. Those who create these poisonous pictures often turn out to be close friends, or people seeking revenge. Nobody thinks this is OK. Indeed, sharing deepfake porn became a criminal offence in the 2023 Online Safety Act.
But a loophole means it’s not an offence to create deepfake porn, only to share it. The Tory peer Charlotte Owen, a longtime campaigner on the issue, introduced a private member’s bill in the Lords last year that would ban people from creating sexually explicit photographs, films or digitally produced images without consent. The bill is urgently needed, since the existence of such images allows perpetrators to blackmail, intimidate and terrify their victims. But in our tribal political system, private members’ bills never succeed without government say-so, no matter how reasonable those bills may be.
The government instead promised to include the provisions of Lady Owen’s bill in the data bill debated in the Lords last week. But it was watered down in crucial ways. The only penalty for creating a deepfake porn image would be a fine, with no possibility of prison, however many times the offence was repeated, however dreadful it may be. A storm erupted: a host of angry Labour peers spoke out against the Ministry of Justice under-secretary Frederick Ponsonby. When he refused to relent, they abstained very publicly; peers such as Helena Kennedy, Ayesha Hazarika, Jan Royall and Jim Knight remained on the red benches during the vote. Many others stayed away. As a result, the government suffered a stonking loss.
The bill moves into the Commons this Wednesday: will the government reconsider, or, as some fear, water it down even more? The reasons for this remain entirely mysterious. There is no lobby pushing for the rights of deepfake porn-makers. Lady Kennedy led the Labour challenge in the Lords last week, and told them about a woman whose deepfake pictures were sent around her child’s school. The KC and crossbench peer David Pannick said courts should have “the option of imposing a sentence of imprisonment”. Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said a fine is no deterrent to a company or person “inordinately rich” nor to “someone extremely poor” who doesn’t have the money to pay it. For those rightly wanting fewer people imprisoned, this would be a tiny number, but a vital deterrent. However, Lord Ponsonby just reaffirmed: “We think it more appropriate this should be a fine-only offence.”
The other key change the government tried to make was even more bizarre. It added the provision of a defence of “reasonable excuse”. But no one, including Ponsonby himself, could actually think of any valid “reasonable excuse” for making an obscene image without someone’s consent. The government lost overwhelmingly and deservedly on both points. The hapless minister, by all accounts a decent man, was a lamb to the slaughter. Goodness knows what he actually thought he was defending, but if Labour are now to be the “disruptors”, every MP, peer and especially every minister should be arguing ahead of debates that they should not be forced to defend the indefensible.
Who drafted the government position? Perhaps civil servants, or lawyers claiming improbably that “reasonable excuse” was needed to conform to the European convention of human rights, on freedom of expression.
Will justice ministers, whips or anyone sensible step in and restore the provisions of Owen’s original bill? I tried in vain to get a reply from Jess Phillips, parliamentary under-secretary of state for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, but received no reply from her office. The Ministry of Justice tells me the line has not changed (yet).
Much that happens in parliament never reaches the public. But this episode is an apt example of a cautious state of mind that has damaged Labour throughout its first months. The party has too often softened its commitment to vital policies that all Labour members support. It is too prone to risk-averse officialdom. If Labour is now seen to backtrack on the whole thing, this will only help undermine the public’s trust in its politics, and its radicalism. With terrible choices ahead in the spending review, Labour should be shoring up its position on everything it can right now – with no vacillating, pressing full steam ahead on disruption.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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