Bertin has noticed that her desire to talk frequently and openly about extreme pornography is not shared by all her Westminster colleagues. “I’ve definitely seen people swerve at lunch, not wanting to sit next to me for fear of what they’re going to hear coming from my mouth,” she told fellow delegates at the launch meeting of her pornography taskforce this week, prompting a flutter of sympathetic laughter.
The jokes just write themselves with this one, don’t they?
Since being appointed by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak to lead an independent review into the regulation of online pornography in December 2023, Bertin has observed how a double taboo has made most politicians extremely reluctant to engage. Some simply find the subject hugely embarrassing; others stay silent because they do not wish to appear prudish by criticising the proliferation of extreme and often illegal pornographic material online.
And some are just a little too enthusiastic about the subject…
The government needs urgently to appoint a minister for porn, she recommends, to ensure that the issue gets the attention it deserves, rather than being passed reluctantly between the Home Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
I recommend a hard-drive check for anyone who throws his/her hat in the ring for this role!
