PORNOGRAPHY websites must verify the age and consent of the people who appear in all videos they host, say MPs. 

Labour former minister Dame Diana Johnson told the Commons that such websites are currently getting “very rich from hosting footage of rape, trafficking and child sexual abuse”.

“Some of the world’s biggest pornography websites allow members of the public to upload videos to sites without verifying that everyone in the film is an adult or that everyone in their film gave the permission to be uploaded,” she said.

“As a result, leading pornography websites have been found hosting and profiting from filmed footage of rape, sex trafficking, image-based sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.”

She called on MPs to back her amendments to the Online Safety Bill, requiring porn websites to verify the age and consent of people appearing in the videos they host.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, MP for Brighton Kemptown, said the “removal of consent must be put on the face of this Bill, that platforms must have a strict responsibility to remove that content”.

Without that, he said: “There is a danger that they will continue to play loophole after loophole and that content will still be there when it should not be.”

He added: “In pornography, there seems to be a free-for-all where people, even if they remove their consent, it still proliferates and copies of copies, that are put all over the internet.

“That’s not even to mention people who never gave their consent at all and have revenge porn, or their phones hacked and the devastation it can cause.”

Responding, Culture Minister Damian Collins said: “We believe that the technologies that the companies have, the powers of the regulator to have these proper codes of practice in place, to order the companies to make sure they’re doing it, will be sufficient to address the concern.”

Dame Diana said that a Sunday Times newspaper investigation found the website Pornhub was “awash with secretly filmed creep shots of schoolgirls, and clips of men performing sex acts in front of teenagers on buses”.

She said: “At the core of this Bill, as I understand it, is a legal duty placed on online platforms to combat and remove content that is already illegal, such as material relating to terrorism.

“So in keeping with this, my amendments would place a legal duty on online platforms hosting pornographic content to combat and remove illegal content through the specific and targeted measure of verifying the age and consent of every individual featured in pornographic content on their site.

“The owners and operators of pornography websites are getting very rich from hosting footage of rape, trafficking and child sexual abuse and they must be held to account under the law and required to take preventative action.”

Dame Diana’s new clause seven was rejected by 285 votes to 220, a majority of 65.