Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Rejected
Introduce a swift, inexpensive statutory civil process for non-consensual intimate image abuse.
Recommendation
The Government should take a holistic approach to legislating against NCII abuse by introducing a swift, inexpensive statutory civil process, as has been established in other jurisdictions such as British Columbia in Canada. Doing so would recognise survivors’ wishes to access redress beyond the criminal law, as well as empower them to take fast and effective action towards having their NCII taken down or blocked. Such a regime should be alongside and underpin the creation of a registry of NCII content—overseen by an expert body—that internet infrastructure providers are requested to take all reasonable steps to prevent access to. The statutory regime should enable civil courts to make orders, including: 53 a. designating an image as NCII content and ordering its inclusion on a dedicated registry for the purposes of having IIPs take action to prevent access to that content; b. prohibiting the individual from distributing the intimate image; c. requiring the individual to delete any images; d. requiring the individual to take down or disable access to an intimate image; e. requiring the individual to pay compensation for harm caused; f. requiring the provider and/or end user of a social media service, relevant electronic service or designated internet service to remove an intimate image from the service; g. requiring a hosting service provider who hosts an intimate image to cease hosting the image. (Recommendation, Paragraph 71)
Government Response Summary
The government rejects the recommendation for a new statutory civil process due to a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of the British Columbia model and because many functions are already covered by the Online Safety Act or existing civil routes. They consider the RPH and StopNCII to already serve as a dedicated registry for known NCII.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
Reject We currently have little evidence about the effectiveness or speed of the process in British Columbia, which this proposed statutory civil process is based on. Additionally, many of the functions of the recommended civil process are already covered in the Online Safety Act or through existing civil routes, as we outline below. We therefore do not believe it would be appropriate to create a new civil route at the current time. Notwithstanding that, the Government recognises the need to facilitate survivors to take fast and effective action towards having their NCII taken down or blocked. We will consider this further as we develop the upcoming VAWG Strategy. The RPH operates StopNCII, a free tool that allows individuals experiencing or concerned about the sharing of their intimate images non-consensually to hash their images. Those hashes are shared with participating companies so they can detect and remove the images from circulation online. Since it was created in 2021, Stop NCII has taken over one million images hashed from around the world. Individuals are able to report their images to the RPH in other ways for them to take action in support of that individual. An image reported to the Helpline is inherently a non-consensual image, and the Helpline confirms if the image meets the definition of a non-consensual intimate image. The Government, therefore, considers that the RPH already holds a dedicated registry of known NCII. Having an additional civil process for the specific purpose of placing images in a registry of known NCII would be more bureaucratic and slower than individuals reporting their images to the Helpline or hashing them with Stop NCII.