Claire Perry interview: Leaving internet on at night is as reckless as leaving the front door unlocked

Claire Perry, the determined MP for Devizes, is very, very determined not to be set up as a 21st century Mary Whitehouse. Her job title, as the Prime Minister’s adviser on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, might suggest the Tory MP is yearning for a more innocent bygone era. But she’s insistent that she isn’t anti-porn, or even a mother who snoops on her children:

‘I’m in no way the Mary Whitehouse of this,’ she tells me as she sits under a washing line in her office decorated with children’s artwork.

‘I am in no way old-fashioned, this is not some kind of anti-porn crusade. Amongst consenting adults, it’s fine, it’s just that it’s not porn as we know it. Children are very curious, it’s very easy, there’s this great phrase that the whole history of sexual perversion is just two clicks away on the internet and you know what, if you’re a 14-year-old boy and you’ve got the freedom to look at that, you’re going to look at that! And that is going to change your views about sex, and girls, and what girls should look like, whether they should have pubic hair, and I just think – and so many parents think – that’s just damaging.