BASINGSTOKE MP Maria Miller has welcomed a new law which will make the revenge posting of explicit images illegal after MPs debated the plans on Monday evening.

So-called “revenge pornography” is the uploading of sexually explicit images to the internet, without the consent of the person. It is designed to cause the victim distress or embarrassment.

As previously reported by The Gazette, Mrs Miller has been campaigning for a change in the law to protect victims, and to make the act a criminal offence as, before now, there was no law to protect the victims.

And MPs supported the plans on Monday after the bill, which will see the posting of explicit images a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison, received support from the House of Lords.

There are currently an estimated 30 websites in the UK that are used by ex-partners to post intimate pictures of former partners and people who are the subject of images usually find that they are impossible to remove from the internet, as they are often reproduced on other websites within minutes.

The bill will now need to be granted royal assent from the Queen before it is formally made law.

Maria Miller told The Gazette: “It is excellent. I think it is an important step forward in making the internet a safer place for people to use.

“This is really important news for all those people who contacted me from many areas in the country who were affected by the posting of explicit images without their consent and it caused people to consider taking their own lives because of the shame they felt it had brought upon them.

“It also shows the importance of law keeping pace with the challenges of the internet.”

Mrs Miller added: “It is now for the industry to show how they are going to be ensuring the law is enforced. But, also, I want to see industry-wide agreements in how people can report illegal images and an approach to how they are taken down.

“Organisations like the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) have used software to recognise imagery of child abuse and the same software that is available to other organisations could be used to see images that are illegal to make taking them down straight forward.”