Online Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 25 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and I rise to speak primarily to that. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and agree with every word she has just said. I will draw on two elements of my personal history that she reminded me of. As a journalist in country Australia in the early 1990s—pre-internet days—I worked the night shift, and at least once a week we would get a frantic phone call from a parent calling on behalf of a child along the lines of, “Do you know anything about dolphins?” A school project had just been discovered that needed to be done by the next morning, and the source of information that the parent thought of was, “The local newspaper—they might be able to tell us something!” I am slightly ashamed to say that we had a newspaper to get out and we very quickly told them to go away, so we were not a good source of information in that case. Most people in your Lordships’ House will remember—but most young people will have no recollection of—a time when there was little access to information outside the hours when the library was open or you could go to a bookshop. There were literally no other sources available. We have to consider this amendment in the light of that.

I also want to slightly disagree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, on the previous group. He suggested that it was only with the arrival of phones that the internet became primarily or significantly a children’s thing. The best I can date it is that either in 1979 or 1980 I was playing “Lemonade Stand” on one of the early Apples. This might have been considered to be a harmful game from some political perspectives, given that it very much encouraged a capitalist mindset, profit taking and indeed the Americanisation of culture—but none the less that was back in 1980, if not 1979, and children were there. If we look back over the history of the internet, we see that some of the companies started out with young people, under the age of 18 in some cases, who have been at the forefront of innovation and development of what we now think of as our social media or internet world. This is the children’s world as much as it is the adults’ world, and that is the reality.

I will pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, who suggested that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was only a guide to government and not law. It is a great pity that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, is not in her place, because she is far better equipped to deal with this angle than I am. But I will give it a go. Children’s rights are humans’ rights. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most backed and most ratified rights convention—

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

I appreciate what the noble Baroness is saying, but I made a slightly different point. I am suggesting not that what is there was not meant to be law but that it was not written in a form which should be simply directly put in as legislation. It was not drafted in that format on that basis, which is why a direct graft on to a domestic piece of legislation is not quite the way to do it. It is about using that as guidance as to what should be in the law, rather than simply a direct incorporation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for his clarification, although, speaking not as a lawyer, my understanding is that a human right is a legal right; it is a law—a most fundamental right. In addition, every country in the world has ratified this except for the United States—which is another issue. I also point out that it is particularly important that we include reference to children’s rights in this Bill, given the fact that we as a country currently treat our children very badly. There is a huge range of issues, and we should have a demonstration in this and every Bill that the rights of children are respected across all aspects of British society.

I will not get diverted into a whole range of those, but I point noble Lords to a report to the United Nations from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in February this year that highlighted a number of ways in which children’s rights are not being lived up to in the UK. The most relevant part of this letter that the EHRC sent to the UN stresses that it is crucial to preserve children’s rights to accessible information and digital connectivity. That comes from our EHRC.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Russell, who referred to the fact that we live in a global environment, and of course our social media and the internet is very much a global world. I urge everyone who has not done so to look at a big report done by UNICEF in 2019, Global Kids Online, which, crucially, involved a huge amount of surveys, consultation and consideration by young people. Later we will get to an amendment of mine which says that we should have the direct voice of young people overseeing the implementation of the Bill. I am talking not about the NGOs that represent them but specifically about children: we need to listen to the children and young people.

The UNICEF report said that it was quite easy to defend access to information and to reputable sources, but showed that accessing entertainment activities—some of the things that perhaps some grandparents in this Chamber might have trouble with—was associated with the positive development of digital skills. Furthermore, the report says:

“When parents restrict children’s internet use”—


of course, this could also apply to the Government restricting their internet use—

“this has a negative effect on children’s information-seeking and privacy skills”.

So, if you do not give children the chance to develop these skills to learn how to navigate the internet, and they suddenly go to it at age 18 and a whole lot of stuff is out there that they have not developed any skills to deal with, you are setting yourself up for a real problem. So UNICEF stresses the real need to have children’s access.

Interestingly, this report—which was a global report from UNICEF—said that

“fewer than one third of children had been exposed to”

something they had found uncomfortable or upsetting in the preceding year. That is on the global scale. Perhaps that is an important balance to some of the other debates we have had in your Lordships’ House on the Bill.

Other figures from this report that I think are worth noting—this is from 2019, so these figures will undoubtedly have gone up—include the finding that

“one in three children globally is … an internet user and …. one in three internet users is a child”.

We have been talking about this as though the internet is “the grown-ups’ thing”, but that is not the global reality. It was co-created, established and in some cases invented by people under the age of 18. I am afraid to say that your Lordships’ House is not particularly well equipped to deal with this, but we need to understand this as best we possibly can. I note that the report also said, looking at the sustainable development goals on quality of education, good jobs and reducing inequality, that internet access for children was crucial.

I will make one final point. I apologise; I am aware that I have been speaking for a while, but I am passionate about these issues. Children and young people have agency and the ability to act and engage in politics. In several nations on these islands, 16 and 17 year-olds have the vote. I very much hope that that will soon also be the case in England, and indeed I hope that soon children even younger than that that will have the vote. I was talking about that with a great audience of year nines at the Queen’s School in Bushey on Friday with Learn with the Lords. Those children would have a great opportunity—

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, we have a very full order of business to get through, so I encourage the noble Baroness to remain on topic.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I think that is on topic. If 16 and 17 year-olds are voting, they have a right to access internet information about voting. I suggest that that is on topic.

My final point—for the pleasure of the noble Lord—is that historically we have seen examples where blocks and filters have denied children and young people who identify as LGBTQI+ access to crucial information for them. That is an example of the risk if we do not allow them right of access. On the most basic children’s right of all, we have also seen examples of blocks and filters that have stopped access to breastfeeding information on the internet. Access is a crucial issue, and what could be a more obvious way to allow it than by writing in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The quip works, but political rights are not quips. Political rights have responsibilities, and so on. If we gave children rights, they would not be dependent on adults and adult society. Therefore, it is a debate; it is a row about what our rights are. Guess what. It is a philosophical row that has been going on all around the world. I am just suggesting that this is not the place—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am sorry, but I must point out that 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland and Wales have the vote. That is a political right.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

And it has been highly contentious whether the right to vote gives them independence. For example, you would still be accused of child exploitation if you did anything to a person under 18 in Scotland or Wales. In fact, if you were to tap someone and it was seen as slapping in Scotland and they were 17, you would be in trouble. Anyway, it should not be in this Bill. That is my point.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for the intervention. For those noble Lords who are not following the numbers, Amendment 285, which I support, would prevent general monitoring. Apart from anything else, I am worried about equivalence and other issues in relation to general monitoring. Apart from a principled position against it, I think to be explicit is helpful.

Ofcom needs to be very careful, and that is what Amendment 190 sets out. It asks whether the alternatives have been thought about, whether the conditions have been thought about, and whether the potential impact has been thought about. That series of questions is essential. I am probably closer to the community that wants to see more powers and more interventions, but I would like that to be in a very monitored and regulated form.

I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. Some of these amendments must be supported because it is worrying for us as a country to have—what did the noble Lord call it?—ambiguity about whether something is possible. I do not think that is a useful ambiguity.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 203 in this group, along with those of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Strathcarron and Lord Moylan. I shall speak in general terms about the nature of the group, because it is most usefully addressed through the fundamental issues that arise. I sincerely thank the noble Lord, Lord Allan, for his careful and comprehensive introduction to the group, which gave us a strong foundation. I have crossed out large amounts of what I had written down and will try not to repeat, but rather pick up some points and angles that I think need to be raised.

As was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, this debate and the range of these amendments shows that the Bill is currently extremely deficient and unclear in this area. It falls to this Committee to get some clarity and cut-through to see where we could end up and change where we are now.

I start by referring to a briefing, which I am sure many noble Lords have received, from a wide range of organisations, including Liberty, Big Brother Watch, the Open Rights Group, Article 19, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reset and Fair Vote. It is quite a range of organisations but very much in the human rights space, particularly the digital human rights space. The introduction of the briefing includes a sentence that gets to the heart of why many of us have received so many emails about this element of the Bill:

“None of us want to feel as though someone is looking over our shoulder when we are communicating”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am glad I gave the noble Baroness the opportunity for that intervention. I have a reasonable level of technical knowledge—I hand-coded my first website in 1999, so I go back some way—but given the structures we are dealing with, I question the capacity and whether it is possible to create the tools and say they will be used only in a certain way. If you break the door open, anyone can walk through the door—that is the situation we are in.

As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, said, this is a crucial part of the Bill that was not properly examined and worked through in the other place. I will conclude by saying that it is vital we have a full and proper debate in this area. I hope the Minister can reassure us that he and the department will continue to be in dialogue with noble Lords as the Bill goes forward.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 205 in my name, but like other noble Lords I will speak about the group as a whole. After the contributions so far, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, there is not a great deal left for me to add. However, I will say that we have to understand that privacy is contextual. At one extreme, I know the remarks I make in your Lordships’ House are going to be carefully preserved and cherished; for several centuries, if not millennia, people will be able to see what I said today. If I am in my sitting room, having a private conversation, I expect that not to be heard by somebody, although at the same time I am dimly aware that there might be somebody on the other side of the wall who can hear what I am saying. Similarly, I am aware that if I use the telephone, it is possible that somebody is listening to the call. Somebody may have been duly authorised to do so by reference to a tribunal, having taken all the lawful steps necessary in order to listen to that call, because there are reasons that have persuaded a competent authority that the police service, or whatever, listening to my telephone call has a reason to do so, to avoid public harm or meet some other justified objective agreed on through legislation.

Here, we are going into a sphere of encryption where one assumes privacy and feels one is entitled to some privacy. However, it is possible that the regulator could at any moment step in and demand records from the past—records up to that point—without the intervention of a tribunal, as far as I can see, or without any reference to a warrant or having to explain to anybody their basis for doing so. They would be able to step in and do it. This is the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle: unlike the telephone conversation, where it does not have to be everyone, everywhere, all the time—they are listening to just me and the person to whom I am talking—the provider has to have the capacity to go back, get all those records and be able to show Ofcom what it is that Ofcom is looking for. To do that requires them to change their encryption model fundamentally. It is not really possible to get away from everyone, everywhere, all the time, because the model has to be changed in order to do it.

That is why this is such an astonishing thing for the Government to insert in this Bill. I can understand why the security services and so forth want this power, and this is a vehicle to achieve something they have been trying to achieve for a long time. But there is very strong public resistance to it, and it is entirely understood, and to do it in this space is completely at odds with the way in which we felt it appropriate to authorise listening in on private conversations in the past—specific conversations, with the authority of a tribunal. To do it this way is a very radical change and one that needs to be considered almost apart from the Bill, not slipped in as a mere clause and administrative adjunct to it.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin with a brief refection on my 26 years or thereabouts on the internet, which saw me hand-coding my first website in 1999 and sees me now, I believe, as one of the few Members of your Lordships’ House with a TikTok account. I have had a lot of good times on the internet; I have learned a lot, made a lot of friends and built political communities that stretch around the world in ways that were entirely impossible before it arrived. That tells you, perhaps, that I think we should be careful in this debate about the diagnosis of the source of undoubted issues that the Bill seeks to address. It appears that some would like to wave a magic wand and shut it all down if they could—to return to some imagined golden age of the past, perhaps when your Lordships’ House was harrumphing loudly about the damaging effects of this new-fangled television.

While we are talking about young people, I have serious questions about the capacity of this House to engage with this debate. Yes, we did well in getting online during lockdown, even if we sometimes caught a glimpse of the grandchildren or great-grandchildren pressing the buttons so that their elders could speak in the House. They are the same generation; we are looking to take control over what they are doing right now. I invite noble Lords to keep that in mind as this debate proceeds.

I put it very seriously to your Lordships’ House that before we proceed further, we should invite a youth parliament into this very Chamber. We should listen to that debate on this Bill very carefully. On few subjects is the obvious need for votes at 16, or even younger, more obvious—the need for the experts by experience to be heard. They have the capacity to be the agents and to shape their own world, if their elders get out of the road.

I have no doubt that those young people would tell us that they suffer harm on the internet, with awful violent pornography and dangerous encouragements to self-harm and suicide. There need to be protections, while acknowledging that young people cannot be walled off into a little garden of their own. But I am sure young people would also say we need to address much wider issues, to build resilience and provide an education that encourages critical thinking rather than polished regurgitation of the facts. I would associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, among others, about the need for media education. But how do we encourage critical thinking about the media when we are also encouraging regurgitation of the right results for the exam—that you have to repeat these 10 points? The two things do not fit together.

In a stairwell discussion with a Member of your Lordships’ House who is not a digital native—and I point out that nobody in this debate is a digital native—but is certainly someone with much experience over decades, they reflected on the early hopes of the internet for democracy, for access to information and for community. They suggested it was inevitably a lost age; I do not agree. Political decisions and choices allowed a handful of multinational companies—mostly tax dodging, unaccountable to shareholders, now immensely rich—to dominate. That is not unique to the internet; that is what the political decisions of neoliberalism over the past decades have done to our food supplies, our retailing systems, our energy, our medicines and, increasingly, our education system. Far right, misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic voices have been allowed to take hold and operate without challenge in our mainstream media, our communities, our politics and on the internet.

Financial fraud is a huge problem on the internet and, hopefully, this Bill might address it; but financial fraud and corruption is a huge problem across our financial sector, as indeed is the all-pervading one of gambling. The internet is a mirror to our society, as well as a theatre of interaction. The idea that we can fix our societies by fixing the internet is a fallacy; for many with commercial and political interests, it is a comfortable one that deflects political challenges they would rather not face.

Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for securing this debate and for his superb introduction. I agree with every word he said about the Government’s ideologically driven, utterly nonsensical proposed sale of Channel 4. I also echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, on the importance of that. I would join everyone in welcoming the Minister back, but, wary of setting off that ministerial carousel the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, referred to, I will not in case it might not do him any good.

On Tuesday I had an Oral Question about the teaching of philosophy in our education system. My supplementary question was about whether this could help to improve the quality of public debate and the state of the public sphere. It is interesting that I got the loudest intimations of support, from every corner of your Lordships’ House, that I have ever enjoyed when I asked that question. We know that the quality of our public discourse and political debate needs to be much better. However, it could be much worse, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, pointing to Fox News in the United States. The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, said that the Government have to answer the question, “What is public service broadcasting for?” My answer to that question is: to ensure there is a clear, funded voice expressing ideas, encouraging creativity and allowing the public to speak for the public good—not voices driven entirely by private profit and interests. I will come back to who owns the private broadcasters.

To be fair, as we are talking about public service broadcasting, I acknowledge that I have sometimes been a critic, particularly of the BBC. If the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, thinks that the BBC is too liberal, I invite him to consider the number of appearances of Green Party representatives on “Question Time” compared with UKIP, the Brexit party and their ilk. The maths is quite astonishing. We have seen a BBC that has been “small c” conservative; it kept giving a platform to climate change deniers long after most other international media outlets had given that up and were astonished that the BBC was still doing so. In a story in the New Statesman only this week, looking at the BBC’s economic coverage, economists express concern that the national budget/household budget analogy is utterly false and misleading for the public.

I speak as a former newspaper editor, so I know that editors have enormous pressures on them. A number of noble Lords have referred to the enormous pressures placed on the BBC in recent years. Those pressures have come from right-wing, profit-driven commercial forces. The media tycoons I referred to earlier have commercial and political interests in squashing the BBC. In recent years, sadly, their voices have been backed by the Government. They have often seemed to be joint voices, the two working together to attack the BBC and our other public service broadcasters. It is crucial that there is an alternative voice saying that we want a genuinely critical BBC which acknowledges that there are lots of different voices and approaches.

Particularly on that basis, a number of noble Lords have referred to the importance of local media outlets. Local BBC radio in particular is crucial—I appear on it quite often because I travel around the country a lot. It is so valued by local communities, particularly in times of crisis, of which we are seeing so many now. I would like there to be thinking about how we can fund more local public sector broadcasting and media.

The reality of broadcasting now is that everything is merged together: people often get what is called broadcasting, what used to be called newspapers, and social media through one device, and they do not necessarily make much of a distinction between them. Along those lines, I return to the issue of ownership and voices. The latest Media Reform Coalition report, from 2021, pointed out that 90% of national newspaper circulation is now owned by three companies. These voices are competing with the broadcasters. DMG Media, owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, has 38% of weekly newspaper circulation, and News UK has 32%. We need balance.

Speaking as someone with a degree in communication studies, I say that we have to start thinking about all of this as an interactive process. We are talking about broadcasting and audiences sitting there receiving the content, but we need to think much more about content created by individuals to whom technology is now available, with broadcasters picking some of that up and sharing it around. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I am probably one of the few Members of your Lordships’ House with a TikTok account. I would be interested to know who else has one; I will follow them.

We have to think from the perspective of young people today and make sure that they have a voice in mainstream sources, such as public sector broadcasting. We have to make sure that they are not drowned out by a few loud—inevitably right-wing—media tycoon voices.

National Heritage Act 1983

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for securing this debate, which has predictably been very interesting and enjoyable. In the previous debate, secured by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, defined corruption as being about the misuse of entrusted power. Of course, colonial power was not entrusted by those who were colonised to us—the powers—but was imposed on people at the point of a gun, bayonet or a gunboat. This is how we come to have the kind of objects that we are talking about.

It is sometimes a very direct and clear case of theft, even under the laws of the time, but there are much broader issues as well about all the objects from colonial backgrounds in our museums. I am reminded of the fact that the first time I went to the Foreign Office and looked around at the glorious surroundings, I thought “Ah, this is where the wealth of India went”. It was a little simplistic, but you get the idea.

I should make a personal statement here. I come from a white settler background in Australia, and grew up on land that was stolen from the Wallumettagal people. I acknowledge that I benefited from that. Perhaps influenced by that background, unsurprisingly I would go further than the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey: it would be a step forward to empower trustees and directors to make decisions, but here there is a moral responsibility for the British Government to make decisions about these objects, which were often stolen in their name. The noble Lord set out what is happening in Belgium, Germany, France and many other places and in institutions in the UK where we are seeing those returns.

The moral case here is overwhelming. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, referred to short-term political pressures, but basic morality is not subject to short-term pressures. If something was stolen, you give it back; that is a universal, long-term value. I make a practical point, too, about the geopolitics of today. If we look at the global view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in most of the global north there is a clear understanding that Russia is in the wrong and Ukraine has been attacked. If we look at the global south, particularly among the public in the global south, the view is not nearly so clear. A lot of that comes from a kind of distrust of the global north—countries such as the UK—and the long-term impacts they feel about being victimised for so long.

On that point, I will finish by referring to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine. She said that history cannot be unwound and that it would take more than returning these objects to undo the damages of the past. I absolutely agree with her on that. Loss and damage in the global climate talks is a related and much larger issue in scale, but this would at least be a start of us doing the right thing. In terms of global politics, making restitution for some of the damage we have done in the past would take us in the right direction.

Youth Sport Trust Report

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

We are working across government on this. With DfE, we are looking at opening up existing sports and leisure facilities, including schools. We have to work with schools to work out what works for them and how we share the cost, to make sure they do not have an unfair burden on them. We are now working on the third phase of the opening school facilities programme to meet those needs. This phase will look at consistency in the school system and how to connect schools to national and local sporting activities and providers, as well as making sure that children get access to extra-curricular activities, whether at school or local sports clubs.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister referred to the importance of making use of existing systems and spaces. He may be aware that 80% of public space in London is made up of streets, a figure that is reflected in many other cities around the country. He may be aware of the play streets scheme, whereby neighbours get together and close streets to allow children to play out in them—and adults to get together and mix. There is also the school streets scheme. As part of Learn with the Lords, I recently visited Challney boys’ school in Luton. It is desperate to get a school street outside it so that pupils can walk and cycle to school more often. Should we not ensure that those streets are far more often spaces where children can take physical exercise and play informal sports?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point about the use of streets. A number of countries do this across the world. I remember going to Guyana as a young boy in 1976 and playing cricket in the street. That was the culture of sport in those days. There are also a number of existing playing fields and facilities that we want to take advantage of, but I would be far more interested in play streets. If the noble Baroness could write to me or meet me to give me more details, I would be very interested in learning more.

Gambling Harm (Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. I agree with everything he said on both loot boxes and unconventional games that are currently not classified as gambling. I will not repeat any of it, but I agree with pretty much everything he said on those issues.

I declare my membership of Peers for Gambling Reform. I am also a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC.

I begin, as I think everyone has, by welcoming this important report and the clear and powerful introduction from the noble Lord, Lord Grade. As everyone has noted, this was published two years ago and yet we are here today. Often, when we talk about reports, we say that things have moved on, but none of the issues covered by this report has got any better in the last two years.

Those are two lost years during which, as we have discussed, so many individuals and families have suffered so much, but communities have also suffered. I want to focus on those communities—the place-based damage which is highlighted in the report—but the Government’s response is sadly lacking in acknowledgement of the damage done to communities; it acknowledges the individual but not the community damage.

When we think about what has moved on since then, the focus in the past few months has been the cost of living crisis. We have heard a lot of talk about gambling as a leisure activity, an optional thing, so one might expect that the gambling industry would be seeing a big collapse when there are reports out just today that more than 2 million meals have been handed out at food banks in the past year and almost one in 10 parents expects to go to a food bank in the next three months. You might think, “Well, people won’t have money for gambling.”

However, we need to think about what gambling is for very many people. It is not a pleasure or a leisure activity; it is a tax on desperation, on people’s desire for some kind of hope. They cannot see anything improving in their day-to-day life, with their zero-hours contract, gig economy job, low wages and costs going up and up. In that moment when you put down a bet, you think, “This could really make a difference, things could change.” You know that the chances of that happening are vanishingly small, but you really need that moment of hope. It is a very human need to think, “Suddenly things could be much better for me.” That is a tax on the state of our society.

I agree with many things that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said in his powerful speech, but the report powerfully highlights the link between sport and gambling. We have seen a perversion of sport: it has become a vehicle for gambling. We talk about gambling being a leisure activity. How many other leisure activities have effectively been denied to people? We think about sport. We might hope that people might have watched that Premier League football game and then gone out to the local football pitch, had a kickaround and tried to recreate the brilliant free kick they had just seen, but, very likely, that local football pitch has been privatised and now has a significant charge for access to it. So many other leisure alternatives have been closed off.

Again, picking up on what the right reverend Prelate said, paragraph 524 of the report is worth highlighting. It is the report of a carefully considered, evidence-based Select Committee investigation. It says:

“Gambling operators should no longer be allowed to advertise on the shirts of sports teams or any other part of their kit. There should be no gambling advertising in or near any sports grounds or sports venues, including sports programmes.”


That is the carefully considered recommendation of a committee of your Lordships’ House. The right reverend Prelate’s comparison with tobacco is interesting. There was a huge row and expressions of concern when tobacco was banned from such advertising, and from all the advertising, but no one would go back now. We have in view the idea of zero tobacco: think of what social progress that is.

The Gambling Commission’s chief executive Andrew Rhodes gave a speech this month which pointed out that the gross yield for the gambling industry equates to taking £450 a second off customers in the UK. That is a lot of money. He made a very interesting comparison. He said that the industry is worth some £14 billion, which is roughly the same size as the agriculture industry. Elsewhere in your Lordships’ House, we are rightly having lots of debates about food security. We have an industry that is the same size as the industry feeding us, but it is the gambling industry.

When I was putting this speech together, I thought, “I’m going to come out here sounding like a real radical by saying, ‘Let’s shape our society according to what kind of society we’d like to have’”. But I had some unexpected support earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who in our previous debates has identified himself as a Treasury man. We heard the Treasury man say, “We want to think about and shape the size of gambling in our economy, and how we might better allocate the resources to see that capital used to create more and better jobs”. I thank him for that support; I was very pleased to hear it.

Coming to the point of not just the broader issue of the general economy, in paragraph 112 this report clearly focuses on how the damage done by the industry is not evenly spread across the country. Go down to Chelsea, or up to some of the posh bits of Manchester, and you will not find very much sign of the gambling industry. The report cites evidence that

“‘more than half of the nation’s 6,000 bookies are in the UK’s most deprived areas’, and that 56% of all the big four’s betting shops are … in the top 30% most deprived areas in England”.

I put it to the Minister that if we are, as I believe, to expect a levelling-up Bill in the Queen’s Speech then action to address gambling, particularly place-based gambling, should surely be in that Bill.

Looking at the time I have spoken already, I am not going to go through this report in great detail, but I want to go back to the Local Government Association and highlight a couple of points made in the detailed briefing that it released on this debate. If people have not looked at that, I really urge them to do so because it very much addresses how concerned our local authorities are about their lack of powers, or inadequate powers, to deal with this place-based situation. Although we often focus on what is happening on the internet, a lot of this damage is still very place-based. The Local Government Association is calling for more flexible powers for councils to determine the number and location of local gambling premises in their area, and the levelling-up Bill might very well help with that.

I have focused mostly on area-based issues but also want briefly to address problem gambling and the need for treatment for gambling addiction. Again, the Local Government Association is calling for the mandatory levy. We saw this on big tobacco, and the “polluter pays” principle has become a big thing, given Grenfell and the Building Safety Bill that we were debating yesterday. Surely, we need “big bet” to pay its way for the damage that it is causing.

My final thought is that, as I think the right reverend Prelate and several other speakers referred to, we saw a huge change to and growth in gambling after 2005. That was a result of policy choices and decisions made by government that gave us the position we have today. Very often we are told, “Oh, we can’t regulate or control—we can’t create new rules. That’s restrictive and anti-liberty”. But choices were made that allowed the situation we have today, and they allowed the industry to operate at vast profit without paying taxes or for the damage it is causing. It is not a case of acting or not acting; we have acted and created where we are now. We can act to create a different kind of model for society.

Gambling Act 2005

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Government have always been clear, as I said, that we will look at the case for alternative funding mechanisms and all options remain on the table. Of course, we are taking views from industry, as we are from everybody with an interest in this area. We will take all those views into account as we prepare the White Paper.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform. In Washwood Heath Road in Ward End, Birmingham, there are three bookmakers next to each other and another a few metres away. It is known to the locals as the bookie belt. We know from studies last year that bookmakers are 10 times more likely to be in the poorest areas of the country than the richest. This takes away choice in food and other essential shops. Should not the Government’s levelling-up White Paper have dealt with this issue of place-based gambling dominance?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, it is also important to remember that a great number of people gamble legally and enjoy doing so without harm. We want to strike the right balance to make sure that people can conduct this legal activity, while addressing questions of regional disparities. That is why we have put out our call for evidence. We are glad to have received so many submissions and are considering them carefully.

BBC: Government Support

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, for securing this debate and introducing it so beautifully, even if, when I hear his mellifluous tones, I cannot help thinking we are about to venture off into the life of the astronomer Caroline Herschel or, as in a recent favourite episode of “In Our Time”, the evolution of crocodiles.

The noble Lord set out very clearly two of the gigantic threats faced by the BBC, which, although many might like to grumble about this piece of output or that, is, as an institution, a public service hugely valued by the public. Apparently, if you read the integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, it is also valued by the Government for its place in international soft power, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, referred.

The first threat is the squeezing of funding. As the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, said, it seems that the Government are bent on making the BBC weaker. The second threat is what the noble Lord again so clearly explained as the “jumbo bombers coming across the Atlantic”. The great parasite Amazon, Netflix and other global monoliths are clearly something we need an institution to stand against.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, outlined some of the many ways in which the BBC has been cut away at. Unlike him, I am not going to celebrate the loss of free educational resources; nor, I suggest, should the Government, given their often-avowed attachment to lifelong learning.

Like others, the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, spoke about our “broadcasting landscape”. The word “ecosystem” has also been used. The BBC is still a big part of that landscape, but is not, as some with certain ideological attachments often like to claim, a part that squeezes out the small, new and innovative. Rather, the BBC is a crucial part of nurturing talent and innovation from such sources.

The BBC is a bulwark. Think of it perhaps as a giant sequoia tree that stands against the threat of not many but a few giants; namely, a handful of multimedia tycoons and giant multinational companies—you might think of them as wildfire and raging flood, as they are certainly equally destructive. As the Media Reform Coalition, working in co-operation with the Center for Media, Data and Society, again highlights in its 2021 report on media ownership, concentration is endemic. Three firms control 90% of the national media newspaper market, up from 83% in 2019—a seven percentage point increase. Three local publishers each control one-fifth of the local press market. Facebook controls three of the top five social media services used to access online news. Two companies own 70% of the 279 local commercial radio stations—a 20% increase since 2018. That is not a healthy ecosystem. If the size of the BBC is reduced, the fat cats of the oligopoly only get fatter.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on something: the licence fee is a poll tax and should be replaced by a hypothecated share of progressive income tax—far more progressive than it is now—with a level of funding at least restored to 2010 levels in real terms. Changing technological demands will require that.

I also agree very strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about the importance of local channels and stations at the BBC and—in another failure of regulation, of which we see so many—the total failure of regulators to ensure that what are supposed to be local commercial radio stations actually serve those audiences. I should perhaps declare that, a long time ago and in another country, I spent some time working as a producer on a local ABC radio station. That feeds my great respect for the local teams that continue to produce brilliant local content for the BBC under extremely straitened funding conditions.

I think of a young woman who covered the roles of reporter, camerawoman, soundwoman and social media outputter when she interviewed me in North Yorkshire. She was so slick, she was practically juggling the multiple digital tools of those various trades as she deployed them in the hasty 10 minutes she had with me before travelling on to her next job. We are getting very good value for money from that young woman and many like her. Communities value and rely on that output.

Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in support of the amendment. As Committee was quite a long time ago, I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I repeat some arguments.

We are all committed to building back better—to coin a phrase—and the proposed community wealth fund or funds could be a valuable foundation, enabling us to tackle a range of inequalities and improve outcomes for the residents of our most disadvantaged areas. As such, they potentially have a key role to play in the levelling-up agenda, as already noted, as increasingly it is recognised that levelling up must involve not just physical but social infrastructure, as the right reverend Prelate has said. As the report from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy argues, social infrastructure brings

“economic, social and civic value”

—and, we might add, cultural value—to areas where such assets may be weak. According to the British Academy, of which I am a fellow, the pandemic has shown:

“National capacity to respond to changing circumstances and challenges requires effort to sustain a strong web of communities and community engagement at local levels.”


Community-led networks are vital for combating inequalities over the long-term and must be at the centre of plans to build back better.

Social infrastructure matters to people. There is a lot of evidence that the presence or absence of it makes a big difference to how people feel about their neighbourhoods and their satisfaction with them. In areas with strong social infrastructure—particularly places and spaces to meet, and community organisations—people feel a greater sense of community, civic pride and belonging. These areas are more neighbourly and more cohesive. They also have better health and employment outcomes.

The Minister may have seen the recent report from Onward, a right-of-centre think tank, entitled Turnaround. It draws a number of positive lessons from the Labour Government’s new deal for communities, one of which is that

“the most significant sustained improvements are those with the strongest base of civic assets and most engaged communities. This suggests that the government should pay much more attention to nurturing the social fabric of a place alongside economic interventions.”

It also emphasises the importance of

“social infrastructure within local places”.

If we are to build back better, we need to invest in social infrastructure in these deprived neighbourhoods. We need—as is the case with the proposed community wealth funds—this investment to be long-term so that it provides continuity. Crucially, as my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton said, we need it to be community- led, albeit with communities receiving appropriate support to build community confidence and capacity. Again, to quote the Onward report, one of the lessons from previous regeneration policies is that

“communities must have a stake in regeneration, not merely be consulted … community involvement is essential, but many are capacity constrained”.

I realise that the Government are reluctant for the Bill to be amended to specify the distribution of dormant assets—and I am supportive of the intended consultation which will be the subject of later amendments —but, as has already been explained, this is a permissive amendment. I can see no reason for the Government not to support it.

One of the reasons I am speaking in support of this amendment is because it has such widespread support, as has already been said by the right reverend Prelate. Those 450 organisations to which he referred are part of a growing alliance advocating for the fund. This includes 40 local and combined authorities, most of the major independent charitable funders and all the main civil society umbrella groups, including the NCVO.

Polling research by Local Trust—and I express my appreciation for the briefing that it provided—demonstrates that the proposal would have the support of senior leaders in the financial services industry.

The community wealth fund has also been recommended in reports from a large number of think tanks and inquiries, including Localis, the Centre for Cities, the Fabian Society, New Local, the No Place Left Behind commission and the Civil Society Futures inquiry. It has also been endorsed by the APPG for “Left Behind” Neighbourhoods, of which I am a member.

I acknowledge concerns expressed by those who use dormant asset funding for the work that they already do. However, I see no reason why they should not continue to do that work and receive funds because these are new funds and no one is arguing that the whole of them should be used for community wealth funds. Again, this is a permissive amendment, not one that requires specific action. Such a strong case has been made by so many civil society groups. There is a growing consensus that a community wealth fund, or funds, is much needed and that investment should come from dormant assets. I therefore urge the Government to listen to civil society and accept this modest amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I think the case for this amendment has been powerfully made and I want to show the breadth of support for it.

Last night in the policing Bill we were debating how we saw a grass-roots-up initiative starting from Nottingham that saw the practice of recording misogyny as a hate crime. So many new ideas and innovations start with the local and start in local areas. Yet we live in one of the most centralised nations on this planet, certainly in Europe, with power and resources concentrated here in Westminster. This amendment very modestly puts power and resources out into places that desperately need them.

Often, we are talking about places that no longer have a place to meet—even the pubs have closed in many of the poorest communities that I see. Lots of housing has recently been built without any public meeting places and places for people to gather at all. What we are talking about here is giving power to local communities that are really struggling, to let them decide for themselves what they need to do. I think we could see some truly wonderful innovations starting from the community wealth fund that then could spread far more widely. Perhaps appropriately for a Green, let us think about throwing out some seeds and seeing some wonderful plants flourishing, flowering and growing.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, when I initially heard about community wealth funds, I was rather sceptical, and I perhaps remain on the more sceptical end of the spectrum in your Lordships’ House. But during discussions on the Bill, I have become less sceptical about the idea, as the noble Lords, Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, have talked to me, along with the groups mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely.

Two things in particular have caused me to think again. The first is the experience of the pandemic and how everybody’s sense of locality and place has changed. I happen to live in south London, and one of the many things that got me through the toughest of times was discovering local parks that I had never come across before. Watching other people having to live their lives in a much more geographically restricted scope has made a new sense of place. I now understand —in a way that I perhaps did not before—that being able to appreciate and develop your community space will be a very important part of people’s physical, economic and mental well-being in future.

The second reason why I have changed my mind is this. The noble Baroness gave a long list of community initiatives that have flowed out over the past 30 years, many of them from the National Lottery, the new deal for communities and so on. Pretty much all of them were the release of resources into a community, with varying degrees of restriction on how they could be spent—but they were resources to be spent in poor communities.

This is about something different. It is about an investment fund that has to generate wealth within those communities. To do that, the people who will be managing it locally will have to learn and display economic development skills themselves. That is a different proposal from the ones before. The noble Baroness is right that, as we move through a huge period of economic change—green development and the green economy—if we get away from the old idea of development solely in buildings and talk about investment in economic skills and new jobs, managed in a much more local way, that has the potential to be different.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, was absolutely right: we had to grab a passing Bill and shove something on to it. But the very purpose of this Bill is to take assets that are lying dormant and put them into communities where people are financially excluded, do not have business skills or need some help with the generation of wealth and well-being. This is about doing that with people in their community, not yet another building. So I have changed my mind and think this is something different, and therefore I now think it is worthy of support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment was triggered by remarks made in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who was the very capable Minister then who was replaced by another very capable Minister. She was very open in response to a question that had been asked quite innocently. We wanted to put in an amendment in Committee a requirement to confirm that the dormant asset money would flow to charities or recognised and formalised social enterprises.

In her response, the noble Baroness said no, that the Government wanted to make sure that the money was also available to mission-focused for-profit companies. There was general shock around the Committee, as everyone talked about the Dormant Assets Bill as providing money to charity and social enterprises, and it sent me away to Google. Perhaps others in your Lordships’ House were far less naive than I, but there is a massive business growing in the social impact arena these days, which has become very attractive to the private sector.

To give your Lordships an idea of who is coming to play in this particular arena, I will refer to one of endless websites that contain copies of similar discussions: “Mainstream venture capital … funds”—we are talking about VC funds—

“are beginning to look for a new kind of unicorn—companies that will not only provide huge financial returns”—

we are talking here about 12% returns for modest venture capital, perhaps with earlier-stage money 20% returns—

“but also create huge social impact.”

It notes London and San Francisco as two of the leading hubs for these kinds of investments.

I have no argument with a venture capitalist who puts money into social good. That is absolutely fine as far as I am concerned. But I am very concerned if that entity is seeking grants from the dormant asset fund and turning that around to enhance the returns to its investor, who is expecting a return around the 12% to 20% mark. I can see why it is extremely attractive to the for-profit company; after all, it is very hard in most circumstances for social impact to generate returns of that extraordinary size. But if there is a very significant grant coming from the dormant asset fund, one can achieve those kinds of benchmarks easily. I do not think that is the purpose that was embedded in the original Bill or the purpose which most of us who are associated with this have in mind.

The amendment is not an attempt to exclude all for-profit companies, because I understand that there are some areas where they have been very useful, for example in teaching financial literacy. It is to make sure that they are not plucking extraordinary returns as a consequence of grants from the dormant assets fund. Charities and social enterprises seeking funds and grant money may indeed find that they have some excess over the particular project that they have been working with, but their whole constitutional structure requires them to make sure that money flows back into good causes. I do not want this to turn into an opportunity for that money to flow back to large-scale investors.

As we all know, the oversight process in the Dormant Assets Bill—we will talk about this on the very last amendment—is very weak, because in the original concept the end users were going to be charities and social enterprises that were under constraint and governance of various different kinds. Therefore, an additional level of scrutiny was not a matter of significant concern. With this big expansion, and with the purposes to which the fund can be applied being essentially in the gift of the Secretary of State, this becomes a major concern.

We are all concerned about money being spent inappropriately. Nothing would be more damning to this whole process than a major scandal in which we suddenly have a newspaper describing circumstances in which money from the dormant assets fund has gone to an investor seeking very large returns. This could compromise not just that particular project but the whole programme. Frankly, I do not think that is a principle that should be allowed to proceed in this Bill, which is why I have moved this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to commend the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on her alertness in uncovering this issue, and to make a very simple comparison with something that has occupied a great deal of time in your Lordships’ House lately: the water companies, and what we have seen happen with them, with, very often, hedge fund owners involved, massive profits being taken out and massive loads of debt. This is a terribly important amendment. I regret not attaching my name to it. I certainly would have done had I been alerted to it earlier. This is terribly important, and I encourage the noble Baroness to keep pushing.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not have a great deal to add. The argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is very sound and was well made and well researched. We had an interesting debate on this topic in Grand Committee, and I am grateful to our colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches for allowing us to return to it through this reformulated amendment.

During the previous debate, examples were raised of organisations that are not social enterprises or charities, but which nevertheless deliver public good through the use of dormant assets funding. This new amendment captures that reality, while introducing the safeguard that these funds, which are finite and will be highly sought after, are not used to enhance investors’ returns, where that may be a concern.

I do not really understand why the Government should not write this kind of safeguard into the Bill. Failing that, will the Minister put something on the record that will provide us with some comfort? We need that reassurance, protection and level of accountability.