Responding to the concerns in a written statement, technology minister Feryal Clark said the Government would take “urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm”.
Welcoming the report’s recommendations, Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “For too long, the porn industry has been free to profit from sexual violence against women and children, shaping collective behaviours and expectations about sex in a deeply harmful way.
A Government spokesperson said: “To deliver our mission to halve violence against women and girls, we must interrogate the link between violent pornography online and dangerous behaviours offline which this important review highlights.
“We have already announced we will ban the creation of intimate deepfakes without consent and, from next month, under the Online Safety Act, platforms will have to proactively tackle illegal content including extreme pornography and sexual abuse material.
Videos showing the practice are rife on pornography sites and have helped established it as a sexual norm, a review of the industry led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin said.
