I have great sympathy with the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley). When I read Government amendment No. 91, which as she rightly said goes a long way towards meeting our concerns and is therefore to be welcomed, it struck me that we are complicating matters. Perhaps it is worth going back to first principles.

We accept the principle that the age of consent is 16, and that people can marry at that age. At the same time, we accept that 18 is the right cut-off point in laws pertaining to the family or to the protection of minors. I therefore do not find anything philosophically wrong in providing restrictions on what is permissible with a child under 18, even though I may be perfectly content and comfortable with the idea that 16 is the age of consent. Those two things are very different. It is possible to be married to somebody without feeling that it is right to take indecent photographs of him or her.

During our previous discussion of the marriage exception, I have tended towards the view of the hon. Lady—although I would not press the matter to a Division. Why are we providing an exception at all? If we think that it is right to protect those under 18 from having indecent photographs taken of them, and from the consequences that flow from that—for example, pictures might be put on the internet and never removed—why are we getting so anxious about providing exceptions? I will be interested to hear the Minister's response.

I understand the concept of privacy of marriage, and that a 17 year old who is lawfully married might want to have indecent photographs taken. On the whole, I think that taking indecent photographs of people is undesirable; presumably the Minister does too, or we would not have clause 47. If we agree that it is an undesirable activity, but we accept that adults over the age of 18 must be allowed to do it if they want to, why are we so concerned about allowing an exception for that two-year period?

Subject to that, Government amendment |No. 91, which we will hear about in more detail later, is perfectly sensible. It tries to weave its way through the problem. The thing that worries me about the amendment is the phrase, ''enduring family relationship''. How long is a piece of string? Is a relationship enduring after a girl has been with her boyfriend or lived with him for two weeks, or six months, or nine months? Once again, we will have to ask the courts to disentangle that issue. Although I fully understand the intention behind the phrase, it worries me that we will end up with problems in deciding what an enduring family relationship is. I wait to hear from the Minister. I hope that we have a dialogue on the issue.

Welcome as the Government amendment is, I wonder, like the hon. Member for Romsey, whether we are making our lives excessively complicated. Why do we not just say, ''No indecent photographs of children under 18, irrespective of the circumstances''? It does not seem to me that the infringement of privacy and the rights of the individual would be so great that that would be improper.