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

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is fascinating to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Astor. I will come back to some of the issues he raised. It is quite a relief, in the midst of frenetic ping-pong, to have a chance to discuss potential legislation changes and to look at something dispassionately and objectively. I appreciate that this has been a slow process for members of the committee, but it is quite nice to take a step back.

I have a few declarations. I do not gamble and have never gambled. I do not own a racecourse. Some close family members and friends have had serious issues with harmful gambling, and I have lived with the grim reality of that. I find the relentless gambling adverts everywhere we go to be tiresome, repetitive, crass and over the top. But it has to be said that even though I feel like I have seen tens of thousands of them, I have never been tempted to gamble. I do not know that we can always draw the inference that, if you see an advert, you will rush out to gamble; that is not quite the way it works.

I also think we need some proportionality and calm assessment of the facts, when considering legislating and regulating. I worry that the issue of gambling brings with it an emotive quality and some negative cultural assumptions about gambling, the portrayal of gamblers as vulnerable and a demonisation of the industry. I was glad to hear so many noble Lords say that they are not puritans—that was a great relief—but the gambling industry employs 119,000 individuals and brings billions of pounds into the Treasury. It is a legitimate industry, but it is treated as something of a pariah. The emphasis today was that it makes huge profits but, as far as I know, that is not yet considered to be completely morally reprehensible. I wish that more British businesses did the same. I sometimes think we can get ourselves into a state of confusion.

For balance, I suggest that gambling is a normal and popular activity, enjoyed by millions of people. For the vast majority, it is not a problem. The perception that problem gambling is on the rise is not based on evidence. Indeed, according to all the evidence and facts, it is statistically stable and has been for some years. We should not encourage misinformation by challenging the figures and facts that we know: 0.7% are problem gamblers.

The narrative we always hear focuses almost exclusively on the potential harms of gambling. As such, it treats everybody who gambles as being at risk. That can end up misleading us about the threat of gambling, creating a climate of fear and leading to some dangerously illiberal policy proposals designed to save people from this sort of evil. I am concerned that a paternalistic framework does not focus just on underage gamblers—I am not talking about children in any way, and completely accept that they need to be protected—but sometimes treats adult gamblers as though they are children. That worries me.

I pick up particularly the demands for affordability tests that we have heard put forward today, referenced and backed up by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in the Social Market Foundation’s affordability proposal that would limit people’s maximum spend to £100 a month, across multiple gambling operations. I hope the Government will just throw that idea out. It is notable that, in no other area of life or leisure, is there even discussion of a legislative cap on how individuals spend their own money—as I would hope.

However, if we take it out of the realm of gambling, let us take my friend Mrs Smith, who goes to the shops and decides to treat herself to a dress that she cannot really afford and then goes off for a pricey meal and even treats the family to an extravagance, such as a holiday they cannot afford without getting into debt. With the cost of living crisis, there are all sorts of decisions that will mean that all sorts of people will get into debt and there will be an affordability issue. Are we advocating that the Government put a cap on what people can spend because they cannot afford it?

I noted that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made the point that HSBC challenges the statistics because it says, “We’ve looked at your bank accounts and you’re all spending too much on gambling.” I hope HSBC does not reveal what I am spending all my money on. It might not be gambling but I am spending too much money on things I should not spend too much money on. Such is life but such is the freedom of an adult in a free society.

Of course, a small minority of gamblers can get into some terrible, escalating problems, with tragic consequences for themselves and their families—as I know too well. Yes, perhaps the gambling industry has historically been negligent in deploying common-sense intervention when alarm bells signal a problem. But we should also recognise that there is a moral dilemma here. A de facto demand that individuals open up their financial details to betting companies, casinos and so on would not, in other contexts, be something we would encourage. We warn people not to share such sensitive data. This is not just the GDPR being used as an excuse. It is legitimate to say to people, “Be careful about letting your personal financial details be harvested by outside agencies.” There is a question of privacy, and that matters, yet here we are advocating that we allow big business to use our data to control our behaviour and manage the choices of adult citizens. This sets a dangerous precedent that should at least give us pause about the expansion of corporate control over our data and our choices—or, indeed, the encouragement of state intervention in our spending habits and our individual liberty.

I also want to query any proposed ban on gambling sponsorship of and advertising at sports events. Despite everything, there is no evidence of an increase in problem gambling since gambling advertising was made legal by Tony Blair’s Government in 2007. I am concerned that we have become complacent about a soft form of censorship, but this is likely to cause devastating financial damage to a whole swathe of cash-strapped sports clubs.

The right reverend Prelate suggested that sports clubs should just get different sponsors. That suggests that he may not have been part of a small organisation trying to get sponsorship, but I have and, believe me, it is not easy to raise money. Lower-league football clubs face ruin if they are deprived of this revenue. We have heard that it was okay after the banning of tobacco advertising, but actually snooker nearly collapsed as a national sport. Then it was saved. Who saved it? The gambling industry and its sponsorship. While I am glad that horseracing may be protected, and I am sure that is appropriate, I wonder why it has this special measure. I want all sports clubs and all sports to be allowed that sponsorship. I do not think it is damaging.

I listened to a brilliant podcast recently on the potential huge problems all this could cause across sport, with a particular emphasis, actually, on horseracing. It is called “Wright on the Nail”, hosted by Chris Wright, and I encourage noble Lords to listen to it. It tackles this assumption that as soon as, for example, football fans see a logo on a football shirt they will rush off and place a bet, as though they are being groomed and are just one punt away from addiction. They just go to watch the sport and they want their sport funded and they see some adverts. But as one snooker fan noted, consumers can benefit from gambling advertising without ever using a product or putting a bet on, although some of them will. He said that

“those of us who actually watch the sport are delighted to have them on board, pouring in the money and keeping the tournaments rolling.”

I believe that sport matters and community sports need that support.

Just as we should trust sports fans to cope with the adverts, we should trust the millions who gamble and remember that, for them, spending leisure time at the bookies, at the races, in casinos or playing poker is enjoyable and can involve skill. Yes, there can be escapism. You want to earn some money because you are poor but there is also the thrill of risk taking. It is not all negative. In fact, the thrill of risk taking also fuels big business and entrepreneurial instincts. As gambling writer and poker player Jon Bryan notes:

“Gambling is fun. It has certainly cost me money but I would not change anything about it.”


I think this antidote is necessary. I understand the harms but it is not all harmful and it is not harmful for most people.

Digital Technology (Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Report)

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the committee for this report. While I do not agree with lots of its recommendations, it is packed full of fascinating research.

One criticism is that it puts too much faith in the forthcoming online harms legislation to restore democratic trust. If anything is likely to undermine trust, it is a lack of candour about what laws will achieve. The public are told that the Bill will mainly tackle protecting children and the vulnerable from all those nasties online: violent porn, grim suicide sites and hateful, bullying trolls. If only the Bill focused its attention on targeted, creative solutions to those issues, I would be less concerned.

On that, I record my support for the determined efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, to fast-track statutory age assurance. I hope the Minister will confirm the Government’s backing for this robust, quality child-protection model that, crucially, protects the right to privacy.

In reality, this report and the Bill are much broader and will affect adults. I fear that in the name of protecting adults from what is called legal but harmful online content, freedom of speech will be curtailed and democratic debate undermined.

Today I will explore the chilling effect of identifying misinformation as a chief culprit in damaging trust. We may all think that we agree on what constitutes misinformation—cranky 5G conspiracy theories or Russian war propaganda—but recently the term has become politically loaded: less a neutral, objective description of misleading statements and more used by those officially sanctioned as informed to suppress valid scepticism or silence dissidents who challenge official orthodoxies. The removal of what is dubbed misinformation narrows the plurality of information available in the public square.

It should at least give us pause that Putin has declared fake news illegal and is locking up Russian citizens for posting so-called misinformation about Ukraine. We must avoid emulating this propagandist approach of allowing only official versions of the truth. In the free West, we need to query the wisdom of creating new power brokers that get to arbitrate the truth, whether they are unelected regulators, big tech platforms or newly fashionable fact-checkers. I like the quote in the report from the Kofi Annan commission, which shows that it is more complicated. It said that

“there has never been a time when citizens in democracies all shared the same facts or agreed on what constitutes a fact. Democratic citizens often disagree on fundamental facts and certainly do not vote on the basis of shared truths. Democracy is needed precisely because citizens do not agree on … facts.”

Covid brought a lot of these tensions to the fore. The report notes that the pandemic means that

“online misinformation poses not only a real and present danger to our democracy but also to our lives.”

When misinformation is so darkly posed as a life-or-death danger, it gives a green light, as it did, to active censorship by big tech of a range of interviews, articles and YouTube films, and to the cancelling and reputational destruction of many individuals. But how reliable was this online public health war on misinformation? For example, the report congratulates government statisticians on their high-quality statistics, which helped the public to scrutinise policy. However, since the report was written, many of those statistics have been exposed as misleading or revealed as inaccurate conflations with projections—or, even worse, as using worst-case scenarios as a form of behaviour-change policy—yet anyone who raised queries about the data at the time was dubbed a dangerous spreader of misinformation.

Then there is the Wuhan lab leak theory. For many months, the likes of Ofcom, social media platforms and the scientific establishment called that dangerous misinformation. But now we know better—in part thanks to Viral by Viscount Ridley. We know about the WHO’s whitewashed 2021 report on Covid’s origins. We have read the emails between the Wellcome Trust’s Sir Jeremy Farrar and Dr Ron Fouchier, admitting that the leak theory was plausible but, if known publicly, might harm science so should be suppressed. Yet, even now, none of this is dubbed misinformation.

These double standards, and the censorship of material branded as misinformation, contribute to a climate of mistrust. People say, “Why was it removed? What have they got to hide?” There is growing cynicism about the motives of those in power to decide what is the truth and what the public are allowed to see, hear and say. I turn all this on its head. If there is a trust deficit, perhaps it is a top-down loss of trust in the public, and a default assumption that the public are hapless and hopeless citizens, easily duped by malevolent agendas, passively imbibing what they see and read uncritically and incapable of evaluating information.

I urge the committee and the Government to rediscover earlier optimism and focus on technology as a democratising force. As the report notes, anyone with a mobile phone has a printing press, a broadcast station and a library in their pocket. That allows the previously marginalised to challenge traditional gatekeepers. Let us be careful that a moral panic about misinformation does not create a new cast of censorious gatekeepers, at the expense of trust in the public and at the expense of free speech.

Freedom of Speech

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, has, through using some very challenging and hard-hitting ideas, just illustrated the value of free speech, because we learned something. I was a bit offended, I agreed with some of it—but it had my attention, and that is what it is all about.

Like other noble Lords, I commend the most reverend Primate for holding this debate, because many of us who raise concerns about attacks on free speech have sometimes been accused, including recently, of confecting the problem in order to stir up culture wars or even to cover up our own bigotry. In a bestselling book in the United States, the author Gavan Titley states that freedom of speech

“has been adopted as a primary mechanism for validating and re-animating racist ideas.”

In other words, even arguing for free speech has been turned into a toxic idea.

This hints at one contemporary challenge. Although everyone says they believe in free speech, it is often caveated. How often do I hear, “I believe in free speech, but …”? Often, after the “but” people will say “not for hate speech”, or “not for bigotry”. I appeal to noble Lords: when you hear the “but” after “free speech”, watch out for censorship. I also appeal that we do not take the demonising labels of hate and bigot at face value. Hate is a nebulous concept that even in hate-crime legislation is based on perception rather than objective criteria.

In this way, the subjective label of “hate” can be used to delegitimise a wide range of opinions and can be used cynically to discredit political opponents. For example, LGB Alliance, the fastest-growing campaigning charity for the rights of lesbians, bisexual people and gay men, has been maliciously and erroneously dubbed a hate group on a par with far-right extremists. Or what about the police arresting a number of street preachers for allegedly homophobic hate speech, when what they were actually doing was—wait for it—quoting the Bible? They would have a field day in here. We should note that religious freedom, the bedrock of a secular society, is very much at risk under the auspices of hate speech. Nottingham University recently initially blocked the appointment of a Catholic chaplain for explaining his—well—Catholic views on social media, which were depicted as hate-fuelled. Hate speech, I would say, is often the free speech of those views that we hate.

More generally, we have seen the ratcheting up of sensationalised labels to the level of hate in order to silence opinions which are deemed beyond the pale. For example, everyday sexism, however boorish, is now routinely exaggerated and described as misogyny or hatred of women, and we promiscuously stigmatise ever-growing numbers of people as fascists, Nazis, extremists or fundamentalists. I did a study post 2016 of the various variations of “Brexity, knuckle-dragging gammon”—I was often included in them—and there were thousands of versions of that.

While some noble Lords here suggest that we need to curtail free speech, perhaps to protect marginalised groups, in the name of social justice—although I worry that is a little condescending—many of the least powerful in society are excluded from debate by being labelled as beyond the pale by new powerbrokers, especially around identity politics, who basically describe people as not being worth debating with by using stigmatising labels such as “knuckle-dragging gammon”.

I am also worried when sceptics who wish to query political or scientific orthodoxies are similarly marginalised. In 2019, the Guardian updated its style guide, instructing that climate sceptics should be referred to as “climate change deniers”. The same rhetorical strategy was applied to those sceptical of some lockdown restrictions or who asked questions about the science, who have been labelled “Covid deniers”. This gross exploitation of the legacy of the Holocaust as a way of demeaning individuals and views as so morally reprehensible that they can be banned without qualm is dangerous.

Of course, some people do have repellent and bigoted ideas, and some, even if only a few, are indeed Holocaust deniers. I do not want to duck out of the hard argument. One of the most tricky issues if, like me, you adhere to the principle of free speech is having to defend the indefensible. This is made more difficult by the fashion for falsely conflating the defence of the free speech rights of bigots with endorsing those views. Indeed, this form of guilt by association is used to get people cancelled. For me, it is important not to concede the principle of free speech, which is so foundational to democracy that we should not become squeamish about defending the right of a racist to spout garbage. I think we should answer it with more speech and—yes—sunshine. Also, as Thomas Paine explained centuries ago:

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”


Another contemporary challenge is that we live in a period in which we have institutionalised the idea that safety trumps liberty, brought so viscerally alive when we consider the ease with which civil liberties were suspended and online censorship officially endorsed under the heading of “misinformation” to keep us safe during the Covid virus. On this, I disagree with the most reverend Primate because I think that free speech is increasingly seen as too dangerous to go unchecked by endless regulations. JS Mill’s harm principle has now expanded in our therapeutic times.

The online safety Bill, which I think is a frightening legislative threat to free speech—but I will wait for Second Reading—proposes censoring lawful but harmful speech if it is deemed to cause harm, even psychological harm. When University of Sussex activists targeted Professor Kathleen Stock, the posters read “Kathleen Stock makes trans students unsafe”—as though a fine, reasoned, philosophical exploration of the material reality of biological sex was the equivalent of a gun or a knife. At the University of Exeter, 100,000 people have signed a petition opposing the very existence of the Students for Life society because it is argued that the pro-life group

“threatens the safety and well-being of women”.

Instead of challenging the society to a debate that they then win, my side, the feminists who are pro-choice, have the instinct to retreat, act as victims and call for a ban.

Another contemporary challenge is cancel culture, and this goes way beyond no-platforming, as noble Lords have noted today. It is a tactic of public shaming and humiliation, often targeting individual employers and demanding that people are disciplined. On the advice, one of the problems is that too many in power are cowardly in the face of cancel culture. I call for courage in facing down the cancelers.

BBC: Government Support

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the BBC’s value as a beacon of excellence has always rested on the impartiality of its news output, but internationally and certainly domestically, that impartiality is under strain. Ofcom tells us that audiences consistently rate the BBC less favourably than other channels for impartiality, and complaints have trebled over four years. Even the BBC itself has now initiated new impartiality training, as it is worried that its staff do not understand it, which is worrying. Indeed, the BBC head of news, Fran Unsworth, recently had to explain to one staff team that they would have to hear and see ideas and people that they did not personally like. That such “journalism 101” lessons were needed should concern us all.

I will make some remarks as a critical friend—much as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, commented—and as a contributor, particularly to Radio 4, and a listener for decades. As an educator, I regularly introduced teenagers to the archive of the “In Our Time” programme of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg—that is why I am rather nervous speaking in front of him. By the way, I introduced those programmes against advice from other people at the BBC, who told me that their discussions with academics were a bit too highbrow for teenagers and would alienate urban youth—that was a kind of soft bigotry of low expectations that assumes that only Stormzy and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” will capture young hearts and minds.

But, at the risk of being slightly at odds with the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, I think that criticising the BBC is actually a duty. I appreciate that any criticism of the BBC in 2021 can easily be dismissed as, variously, a Daily Mail plot, a Tory coup against the licence fee and a Rupert Murdoch-driven attempt at stirring up the culture wars—

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It is.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord agrees with me; how brilliant. But, if the BBC is to be of value in the UK, we—its supporters—need to stop being defensive and accept that all grievances are not whipped up by devious political ideologues but arise from perfectly legitimate concerns from the public about impartiality.

Traditionally, a way of judging impartiality was the pride with which impartial broadcasters could boast that no one would know how they voted—their opinions were kept under wraps. But, today, the sense of compromised impartiality is the perception of groupthink at the BBC—not from party politics but from the embrace of values assumed to be incontestable but actually politically partisan and ideologically contentious, such as the BBC’s internalisation of identity politics.

Recently, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, earning a cool £250,000 a year, introduced an allyship training scheme and stated on the BBC website:

“build back better to ensure diversity and inclusion is baked into the ‘new normal’ once the crisis has passed.”

I emphasise the phrases “baked in” and “new normal”. Imagine, then, trying to be staff member in that BBC department who wanted to challenge its decision to spend £100 million on a drive for diversity and inclusion in response to the Black Lives Matter protest. Such an approach does not include but excludes those who disagree—diversity is never diversity of opinion. Try also being a gender-critical feminist working at the BBC—there are many, but they know to keep schtum. I even know people who work at the BBC who voted to leave the European Union, but they could not come out and remain secret Brexiteers to this day. That is how groupthink works: not everyone agrees, but everyone knows the narrative that you are expected to follow.

The embrace of such orthodoxies is rarely spotted as a threat to the impartiality of BBC output, but it is a new and very present danger. Why did no one at the BBC notice the danger to editorial independence when the corporation signed up to a partisan lobbying NGO such as Stonewall? This was so well documented and eventually revealed, despite pressure to drop it, by the Stephen Nolan podcast series—an example of BBC investigative journalism at its finest.

Yet, even now, BBC senior management has announced that it is working with another external organisation—Involve—on trans-inclusive policies, although Maya Forstater, co-founder of Sex Matters, has warned that it might be

“Stonewall in all but name”.

Kate Harris from the LGB Alliance has cautioned:

“For the sake of the BBC, its reputation and its audience, it must be open about the exact nature of the relationship and how it will safeguard its editorial independence.”


On another issue, do not alarm bells sound when we see a corporate logo for Albert pasted at the end of current affairs programmes, such as “Newsnight”? I was intrigued and looked it up, and I found out that the BBC has signed up to an initiative in which media organisations pledge to use their content to help audiences tackle climate change and inform sustainable choices. Tim Davie is quoted on Albert’s website, saying:

“At the BBC we will continue to tell the stories that matter ... or help audiences consider greener choices through our best loved shows like EastEnders”.


Is it any wonder that sections of the public will feel patronised, denied choice, lectured and nudged to embrace one true political outlook? That is not impartiality in my book.

To conclude: like the right reverend Prelate, who I welcome here and who gave an excellent, original and thoughtful contribution to today’s debate, I worry about some of the toxic trends in the public square. However, I worry that it is identity politics that is so tearing apart the public square and that it is the groupthink approach to fashionable political causes that threatens diversity of opinion. I hope the BBC will stop succumbing to both.

Ofcom: Appointment of Chair

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, regardless of his suitability for the job, Paul Dacre’s stinging critique of the blob rang true with many of us, especially as only yesterday Dame Kate Bingham accused the Civil Service of groupthink and risk aversion. Does the Minister agree that, whoever is recruited, they will need to be sufficiently independent of mind to face down the blob? They should break Ofcom out of any sort of groupthink—the sort that led one of the most powerful regulators in the land to so unwisely be captured by the gender ID lobbying group Stonewall, perilously threatening impartiality in the media in the coverage of women’s sex-based rights.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

On the first part of the noble Baroness’s question, yes, this underlines the importance of having independent people appointed to oversee such important regulators. It also underlines the need for boards with a broad and diverse range of views. All government departments and regulators such as Ofcom benefit from that breadth of experience and views.

Sport: Transgender Inclusion

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes, increasing everybody’s participation in sport is the main aim of the Government’s strategy, Sporting Future, so I certainly support the message from the sports councils to individual governing bodies to think in innovative and creative ways to ensure that no one is left out. As the noble Baroness says, that might involve novel or modified versions of their sport. Creating the right environment is important so that everybody, whoever they are, can take part and get active.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is clear that trans women cannot belong in the female sports category because they have a male performative advantage, however they identify, which is inherently unfair. Obviously, trans women should be able to compete fairly in sport. Will the Minister meet Dr Nicola Williams and colleagues from Fair Play for Women, which has some excellent, detailed proposals for including trans people in sport without disadvantaging women, and is courageous enough to open up the debate, not close it down?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, this varies from sport to sport. I took part in your Lordships’ full-bore rifle shooting match against the other place, which I regret to say that we lost. That is a sport on which men and women already compete on an equal basis. Some sports are games of skill, some of stamina and some of strength. That is why it is right that there is a case-by-case approach for each sport. I will take forward the meeting suggestion, as I did for the noble Lord, Lord Triesman.

Ofcom: Appointment of Chair

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

Now that I have my glasses on, I offer my sincere apologies to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord McNally. Now I am sure that it is the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Will the Minister note that one specific issue that the new Ofcom chair needs to urgently address is an egregious example of compromised media impartiality due to the powerful lobby group Stonewall, as revealed by the superb BBC Sounds 10-part podcast series “Stephen Nolan Investigates” on the influence of Stonewall’s gender identity on the output of the BBC, skewing impartiality? Perhaps the Minister can comment on the content of episode 9 revealing that Ofcom itself was using its judgments on audience complaints as evidence to Stonewall, as though it was judge and jury, to prove its LGBT credentials. That is not comforting from a neutral regulator.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I have not heard that episode but the example that the noble Baroness points to underlines the importance of a free and fair media that scrutinises everyone in power, whether that is those in government or in lobby groups. It also reflects the importance of the BBC broadcasting a range of views in fulfilling that important role.

UK Journalism (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this report is packed full of useful insights into the challenges facing contemporary journalism. I am especially pleased to see that at last—if rather belatedly—the problem of lack of diversity has been expanded beyond representation to include the urgent need for diversity of opinion. The problem of groupthink for journalistic impartiality is well described in the report. I agree with Sir Robbie Gibb that too often journalists are stuck in echo chambers and therefore misread the mood of the country, as they did with Brexit, too often mistaking Twitter for public opinion.

I am glad that the report notes the problem of confirmation bias. However, identifying a problem does not solve it. I am not so convinced by the proposed solution of getting Ofcom to collect data on a larger number of demographic characteristics of staff, such as socioeconomic background, because it seems to me that that is just another version of representational identity head counting that misses the point.

I am more persuaded by the report’s focus on the problem of an over-academicised journalistic profession. The tried and tested tradition of school leavers joining local newspapers as apprentices in the heart of communities, learning their trade by covering, for example, court cases and council meetings, would do more than valuably restore journalism’s key role of holding all public bodies to account. It might also drag journalism out of its rarefied ivory tower—and it might save us from the cack-handed reportage of the London media venturing into red wall areas like anthropologists discovering new exotic tribes.

One key area I do have qualms about is the treatment of the public’s mistrust of media institutions. I am squeamish about the seeming assumption that the problem here is one of the public’s ignorance. The disproportionate emphasis in the report on media literacy as a vehicle for restoring trust implies that it is the public who need educating—as though the media were blameless.

This becomes clearer in the discussion on how to train citizens to detect misinformation. Surely it is more complicated than that—especially as the term “misinformation” has increasingly little to do with factual accuracy and is regularly weaponised to delegitimise opinions that journalists and politicians deem dangerous or offensive, or which simply do not fit into a narrow official narrative.

Although the report, and the Government’s response, reassuringly stress the importance of a free press, I would say that media freedom has rarely confronted so many censorious trends. Those often come in the guise of fighting misinformation and fake news, and that is where we see the real threat to free media.

Ofcom’s coronavirus guidance heavy-handedly instructed broadcasters not to feature stories that, first, undermined people’s trust in the advice of mainstream sources, or, secondly, would deter audiences from following official rules. Surely, this veers close to state-endorsed suppression of dissent—as though the science were settled, and that was it. It turns the media into a behaviour-modification scheme.

As MP Steve Baker noted, Ofcom effectively labelled any kind of rational criticism as unscientific misinformation. This may explain a conformity of narrative, throughout the pandemic, from media outlets that differed from one another only in the levels of fear and anxiety they whipped up.

Meanwhile, the Government have encouraged big tech to become a “Truthfinder General” in recent months, in relation to alleged misinformation—at great cost to free speech and transparency. Ultimately, that denied access to a wide range of opinions and evidence, which were not made available to the public—or, indeed, to journalists.

Look at how those who tried to raise the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak had their social media accounts suspended, and how respected experts were lumped together with cranky 5G obsessives as agents of misinformation. Interviews and evidence were removed by Facebook. This in turn stopped journalists investigating what is now considered a crucial line of inquiry—but rather too late; the evidence has gone. Then there was the infamous removal of Talk Radio’s channel by YouTube. When digital giants feel emboldened by government to shut down and censor MSM, there is surely no room for complacency about freedom of the press.

In this context, I am less than reassured by the constant references to the online safety Bill as a protector of media freedom—hardly, when the Bill would mandate, and therefore empower, big tech to remove so-called misinformation, all enforced by Ofcom. This is a recipe for censorship.

Finally, there are new threats to a free press on the horizon. The media itself can be a victim of cancel culture. For example, the strategy of the online Twitter mobs unleashed by the NGO Stop Funding Hunt—sorry, I mean Stop Funding Hate—is to bully a variety of businesses to cancel advertising in certain media outlets, usually tabloids, but more recently GB News. The idea is to punish financially editorial “wrongthink”, and that is chilling. So I hope the committee will look into new threats to media freedom. I regret that, when it does that, one of the greatest threats it will have to consider is the forthcoming online safety Bill—unless some of us can stop it.

European Football Championships: Travel

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel)]

I am so sorry. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am thrown now, my Lords. Anyway, congratulations to Wales—it is the hope that kills you—and to the Scottish football fans for having a good time. On this cancelled “freedom day”, does the Minister understand that these apparent double standards and exemptions for the few, similar to those we saw at the G7 and Royal Ascot, are creating cynicism about whether policies are really based on evidence, not just among the protesters outside today but among the most lockdown-compliant citizens? Perhaps UEFA and FIFA saw the viral thread of tweets describing the risible conditions in an official quarantine hotel: for example, paltry amounts of food served at 9 pm and children and the elderly incarcerated and actually going hungry. Can the Minister assure the House that, rather than tightening up quarantine, the Government might look at lessening it for the many rather than just for the few?

Public Representatives: Online Abuse

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government aim to make sure that people can operate in the public sphere safely at all levels, as the noble Lord rightly highlights. We expect the Bill to make a great difference to that when it becomes law. It is clear that, when the police use their existing powers, particularly under the Investigatory Powers Act, they are successful in identifying anonymous users online in particular.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as someone whose receipt of online abuse is somewhat off the scale but who feels uncomfortable with public figures playing the victim card on this. I feel even more uncomfortable with the implicit conflation of a brutal murder with a Twitter pile-on. Does the Minister agree that there is a danger in principle of confusing physical harassment, such as was horribly meted out to the BBC journalist Nick Watt, with online trolling, however unpleasant it may be? Does she note free speech activists’ concern that online abuse is being used to justify censoring lawful content? My fears about the online safety Bill outweigh any fear of harassment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to raise the unacceptable abuse that Nick Watt received the other day. I highlight that we have just published our National Action Plan for the Safety of Journalists and a call for evidence is live at the moment. I encourage your Lordships to contribute to that as appropriate.