LONDON—United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been asked by a Conservative Party peer in the House of Lords to introduce a "minister for porn."
The Baroness Gabby Bertin was appointed by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, also a Tory (a member of the Conservative Party), to lead the "Independent Pornography Review" and the taskforce derived from the report. In an interview with The Guardian, Bertin urged her fellow MPs not to shy away from steeply regulating adult content.
“We’re really British about it so we don’t want to have a graphic conversation about sex and porn," Bertin explained to The Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman. "But you’ve got to shout about it as loudly as possible. The reason why we’ve got into this mess is because nobody has really wanted to talk about it."
Lady Bertin further made the case for MPs to introduce a minister for pornography regulation to fight "violent, abusive and misogynistic” images on the internet.
Bertin's proposal is noteworthy as she led the controversial study on online pornography in the United Kingdom's digital space. As AVN reported, Bertin's report called for a total ban on choking porn and consensual strangulation. Despite the nature of the kink being predominantly consensual in fictional productions by adult companies, Lady Bertin was influential in forcing an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill before the House of Commons that made consensual strangulation pornography illegal.
Gentleman reports for The Guardian that Bertin has urged Starmer's government to appoint a "minister for porn" to ensure direct attention.
She blames "embarrasment" and stigma on the lack of discussion about the issue of pornography and how this responsibility is passed between the Home Office and His Majesty's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Bertin's success with implementing a ban on choking porn comes before the backdrop of Ofcom, the country's digital regulator, having found successes in forcing age verification and assurance standards that required companies like Aylo, the parent of Pornhub, to overhaul its policies about blocking minors from accessing age-restricted content. The statutory authority granted to Ofcom to regulate online adult platforms like this stems from the passage and royal assent of the sweeping Online Safety Act law in 2023.
Her success also comes as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the conservative government of the state of Texas, which implemented age verification laws as well.
