Online pornography normalises sexual behaviours that are not “how to go around wooing a woman”, a peer has said as he called for compulsory age verification checks.

The Earl of Erroll told the Lords that freely available adult content “normalised” some sex acts that involved men “almost attacking” women.

He said this could be accessed by children who could come to believe such sexual behaviours were part of “how you should treat a girl when you first start going out with her”.

His comments came as peers debated proposals – opposed by the Government – to force porn sites to introduce age verification in advance of the Government’s planned duty of care laws.

A similar measure, which would have given the film censor powers to sanction porn sites that failed to introduce age verification checks, was abandoned by the Government in favour of incorporating protections for children against online pornography in its duty of care plans.

The Earl of Erroll said he was concerned at the Government’s failure to introduce the earlier crackdown.

‘Goodness knows when they first see it’

“The thing that really worries me isn’t just the extreme pornography – which quite rightly has been mentioned – it’s the stuff you can access for free, which is what you might call the teaser stuff just to get you into the site,” he said.

“It normalises a couple of sexual behaviours which are just really not about how to go around wooing a woman, because most of the stuff you see upfront is about men almost attacking the women.

“I’m afraid I don’t think that is the way you go about a relationship, a start of a relationship.

“Starting off children at the age of 10, 11, goodness knows when they start watching this stuff, that this is how you should treat a girl when you first start going out with her, probably in your early teens, is not a good idea and you could have stopped it.

“And for some reason the executive decided not to, and I’d love to know who it was in there that kept blocking it, because I think there’s some funny people in there and it really worries me.”

‘Eye-watering violence towards women’

Liberal Democrat Baroness Benjamin, a vice-president of Barnardo’s who is also known for her work on children’s television, said: “If, as the Government claims, it will take two years for Ofcom to be designated as a regulator under the Online Safety Bill, it could be 2025 or later before age verification and curbs on extreme pornography are in place. This is totally, totally unacceptable.”

Crossbench peer Baroness Kidron, who chairs a children’s safety group, the 5Rights Foundation, said: “Frictionless access to online pornography is not an equivalent to the hazy memories of men who once read a soft porn mag behind the cricket shed.

“It is a multi-billion industry delivering eye-watering violence towards women and girls, delivered by a tech sector proven to be driven by profit and with a wilful disregard for children’s safety and wellbeing.”

Under the Government’s duty of care laws, porn companies that have user-generated content will be covered by the duty requiring them to protect children from harmful content.

Other sites that do not have user-generated content are currently not covered by the plans but the Government said it was “exploring ways” to provide wider protections for children from accessing online porn.