Yesterday’s edition of the BBC programme “Daily Politics” covered the issue of network-level content blocking for images of child abuse, giving NSPCC campaigner Lesley Garrett an unchallenged platform to call for legislation to force ISPs to implement a blocking system “today”.

Garrett asserted (incorrectly) that the availability of such a technology meant “we can stop anyone being able to see these images”. This is untrue: existing network content blocking is only able to prevent accidental access to web sites, and is not designed or capable of preventing access to such material by those actively seeking it. Her remarks went unchallenged by the presenter, who described it as a “very, very compelling case”.

Although the Internet Watch Foundation was mentioned as a “wonderful organisation”, no mention was given of the industry’s creation or years of financial backing for the IWF.

A complete transcript follows.

Presenter: “Every year thousands of children worldwide are subjected to unthinkable horrors to fill the demands for Internet pornography. The government say they’re putting pressure on Internet Service Providers to install software which would block access to child porn sites, but opera singer Lesley Garrett thinks more needs to be done.”

Garrett: “The Full Stop campaign aims to stop child abuse completely within a generation, and part of that campaign involves the abolition of child Internet pornography. It is frighteningly easy for paedophiles to produce and distribute material of the most appalling kind, involving children taking part in unbelievable sex acts. Often the same child is used over and over and over again. You can track them as they are forced to take part in ever more degrading activity; they literally disintegrate before your very eyes.

G: “Just imagine a child – actually, imagine your child, your five year old, waiting, in a darkened padded room, alone, for a monster, or monsters, to come and rape them, again, and again, and again. Do you think that’s unthinkable? It’s an everyday occurance for some children and we have to stop it. We have to catch these men. We have to close down these sites.

G: The irony is we can do it. Two years ago British Telecom perfected a blocking technique for obstructing access to pornographic sites and although several Internet providers have adopted the technology by no means all are prepared to. Why can’t our government legislate to make this mandatory? How much longer do we have to wait? Why isn’t the government being more aggressive?”

Presenter: “You made a very very compelling argument there. Just tell me a bit more about how the system would work and why Internet Service Providers aren’t doing it now”

G: “Well a lot of the bigger ones are, it’s the smaller Internet Service Providers that we’ve got a problem with. Although British Telecom have made this technology freely available to all Internet Service Providers it does cost money to adapt it to each system and they’re saying they simply can’t afford it”

P: “How much money?”

G: “Roughly £500,000. And I want to see the government either fund it and make these systems work or just insist that they have to find the money themselves. We have to stop this. The problem we have is that the sites – the child pornography web sites – don’t originate necessarily in this country, in fact the vast majority originate overseas. Something like 40% are in the United States for instance. We’re actually doing very well at catching these web sites, finding these web sites. So the only way we can control this is by blocking the access from overseas to our computers at home. And the technology exists to do this, we can stop anyone being able to see these images”

P: “So that would stop people in Britain being able to see these images, but it wouldn’t stop the web sites, the films being made or the web sites being put on the Internet, is that right?”

G: “That’s true. We really do need a lot more international co-operation, because if all the countries in the world adopted this technology then nobody would be able to see these things.

P: What about the practicalities of these things though. I’m a bit of a Luddite, I mean I don’t have in-depth understanding of how these things work, but my understanding is that if you block access to an Internet site then the clever people behind the site will just go somewhere else and just set it up somewhere else. Is it practical, is that a practical way of solving the problem?

G: It is a practical way. Yes you’re right they will appear elsewhere. We’ve got a wonderful organisation called the Internet Watch Foundation who collect websites and make this information known to the police, and the NSPCC are doing an enormous amount to help with this. They’ve set up a brand new initiative called don’t hide it for particularly children who have been abused, and who have been a part of this appalling paedophile abuse system to come and talk to trained people, trained therapists. I’ve been to one of these therapy centres myself and I’ve seen the work that these people do and it’s extraordinary work and you couldn’t do, none of us could do it. These children, their lives are ruined, and they have to be put back together, and again I’d like to see the government do more to provide more therapy centres because the NSPCC are doing this by themselves.

P: So it’s partly a money issue but partly, as you said in that film, you want the government to legislate to force Internet Service Providers to have this blocking?

G: Absolutely.

P The government has already encouraged, they said that by 2007 they want the Internet Providers to adopt it.

G: That’s just not good enough. ‘They’re suggesting that they should adopt it’ — OF COURSE they should adopt it, and right now! The end of 2007 is another 18 months away, who knows what can have happened by then? And also they’re not saying what they’ll do at the end of 2007, they’re not promising then to make it mandatory. It has to happen and it has to happen today. There’s a child going to be raped today, as we sit here and they can do something to help stop that.

P: Kitty, should the government be doing this?

Kitty Ussher MP (Lab): “We need to do what works, absolutely, I’m no expert in this area but I’m very taken by what you say. If we need to legislate we should. I suspect just from listening to the debate that what the government are saying is ‘In general, it’s better not to legislate if we can do it in other ways’ and so they’re trying to do it in other ways. But if it’s not working we need to make it happen.”

P: “The government would spend hours legislating the foxhunting ban for example, and yet they wouldn’t take the time to legislate for this. That’s something very wrong there isn’t it?”

K: “They haven’t said that they won’t. I think Lesley’s totally right in what she’s trying to achieve. If what she’s saying works then we need to do it.”

P: “They haven’t said they won’t, but they haven’t said they will. Why haven’t they said they will?”

K: “I don’t know because I’m not the Minister. From what you’ve said it sounds like they’re trying to do it voluntarily or in some other way, but if that doesn’t work of course you have to.”

G: “I’ve just got to say it’s simply not high enough on your agenda. Taking it in the wider context 16% – sixteen percent! – of all children in this country will experience some kind of sexual abuse by the time they are sixteen. Sixteen – that’s one in six children – will have some kind of sexual abuse, yes, and three-quarters of them will not be able to talk about it, will have nowhere they can go to talk about it.”

K: “It is an extremely high proirity certainly for me and for anyone listening to this, you’ve done absolutely right by trying to raise it up the agenda. I hear nothing from government that makes me think they don’t care about it, and we need to do what works.”

G: “We need some therapy centres, we need help.”

P: “Unfortunately we need to leave it there. Thanks for coming in, Lesley Garrett.”