Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 2 and 4 in my name. I am grateful to my co-signatories, to other noble Lords around the House and to the Citizens’ Forum for Public Service Media for supporting these amendments, particularly given the pace at which all this has come together. I am also very grateful to the Minister and the Bill team, who found time on very busy days for a helpful meeting earlier this week on these amendments. At the time, we thought we were talking about a discussion we would have in June; it turns out that we are talking about it today, but I am very grateful to him and his team for finding time for that.

These amendments are all about the underpinning ethos, values and distinctive purpose of our PSBs. In tabling them today, I have tried to respect the Government’s intention to streamline and update the overlapping requirements in the 2003 Act, to which the Minister has referred previously. I have tried to do that while addressing the very strong feelings of this House and the sector that, in the process of modernisation, too much of value has been lost.

Amendment 1 would reinstate the principle that public service broadcasting content, taken together, should inform, educate and entertain. This three-legged stool is the foundational principle on which public service broadcasting was built and on which its global and economic success stands. Removing the Reithian principle from the Bill effectively limits the definition of the public service remit to a narrow focus on market failure. It fails to uphold the fundamental principle that PSBs exist to serve society in its broadest sense, with content that is culturally, democratically and socially valuable. Its removal also means that there is no longer any mention of the word “education” in Clause 1, and that the vital role of public service broadcasting in providing content of educative value for citizens across the life-course is no longer protected. Amendment 1 would restore the underpinning philosophy that broadcasting should do more than just reflect. It should help us to imagine other ways of being; to learn about things of which we never expected to know nor care about; and to expand our interests beyond our own lives and concerns and into the lives and concerns of others. It is a principle that has never lost its currency and, in an age when misinformation and disinformation threaten our democratic processes and civic cohesion, it is a principle we cannot afford to lose.

Amendment 2 goes a little further and would clarify what Parliament believes to be content of civic, social and cultural importance, thus protecting the type of content that can so easily be under threat in the face of economic challenge and ruthless competition. Without this clear guidance on what Parliament expects to see in return for public service broadcasting status, and indeed what viewers want, I struggle to see how Ofcom can fulfil its role in holding broadcasters to account. My noble friend Lord Colville championed this point in Committee, and I am grateful to him for working with me on this streamlined amendment. Amendment 2 would also retain the requirement that public service broadcasting should stimulate and support a thriving cultural and creative sector—the very sector on which it depends for its own survival. This modest addition to the Bill enshrines the symbiotic relationship between public service broadcasting and the health and success of the creative industries—a sector that this Government have identified as key to growth and that is currently, unfortunately, at serious risk. I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State are genuinely committed to the future success of this sector. I hope that he can accept this amendment today so that the protections afforded by the 2003 Act remain in place at the time that they are most needed.

Amendment 4, my final amendment, is even more modest. It would add no more than six words requiring public service broadcasters to make available content for children and young people that is educational in nature. I have no problem with the stated ambition of the Bill that content reflect young people’s lives and concerns and help them better understand the world around them, but this is not the same as content that is educational. As I argued in Committee, education is one of the aspects of public service broadcasting that parents value most. Amendment 4 would not require all broadcasters to move into the same space as BBC Bitesize, for example—the specific detail of PSBs’ educational content would still be determined at the level of operating licences—but it would enshrine in legislation the importance of educational content for children and young people in opening up and equalising life chances, which is an aspect of PS broadcasting that licence fee payers deeply care about.

The overall aim of these amendments is to address the concerns so clearly expressed in Committee and by audiences and citizens’ groups that a better balance needs to be found between the intention to streamline and the retention of what makes our public service broadcasting so distinctive. My amendments would reinstate and protect the foundational ethos and core principles and purposes that have long defined our public service broadcasters and underpin their domestic success and the global leadership position they currently enjoy. I very much hope that the Minister might be persuaded by our arguments and be able to accept these amendments at the Dispatch Box. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1, 2 and 4 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and will speak to Amendments 3, 5 and 6 in my name.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for their support for my Amendment 6 and the Minister for our rushed discussions as we try to pull all this together. My amendment extends the same nations and regions quotas that apply to the BBC to Channel 4—the only other publicly owned public service broadcaster. It includes a two-year timeframe from the passage of the Bill for these quotas to apply.

In Committee the debate on the nations and regions production quotas attracted the largest number of speakers and support from around your Lordships’ House, for which I was very grateful. This amendment is supported by devolved Governments and industry bodies across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Committee the Minister reassured us that he and his colleagues in DCMS had heard the strength of feeling on this issue from the sector, particularly in relation to Channel 4’s “out of England” quota, which is currently set at 9% of eligible programmes and expenditure. He noted that Channel 4 has said that it would support a managed increase in its programme-making commitments in the other home nations. He also offered a further meeting with Ofcom to discuss this in detail.

I am sorry that this will clearly be one of the casualties of wash-up, but I had hoped that this revised amendment, restricted to Channel 4 and giving it two years to enable a managed increase, might have found favour with all parties. If the Government are not minded to accept my amendment, I trust that Ofcom will take note of the strong feelings expressed that the current Channel 4 quota of 9% just will not wash.

I turn to Amendments 3 and 5, which were previously tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lord Dunlop, who cannot be here today and sends his apologies. The issue is that the responsibility for Gaelic broadcasting is split. The Gaelic Media Service, MG Alba, is established under UK legislation while Ofcom is the arbiter of whether there is sufficient Gaelic language broadcasting. The funding of the Gaelic Media Service was devolved in 1998 to Scottish Ministers, who have, for the past 10 years, frozen funding to MG Alba. The SNP is posing as great supporters of Gaelic and Gaelic broadcasting. However, as ever, the support is all for show. They are all talk and no action.

I have tabled modest amendments to the Bill that would make MG Alba a PSB for the limited purpose of guiding Ofcom in the discharge of its responsibility to assess whether there is, taken together in the round, sufficient broadcasting of minority languages. It would have to look specifically at the sufficiency of Gaelic broadcasting. If it was found that there was insufficient Gaelic broadcasting, the responsibility for responding to this would fall on the BBC—it is happy to accept that as it supports these amendments—MG Alba and, by extension, its funder, the Scottish Government.

These amendments are narrowly focused to be discrete and not upset the overall balance of the Bill. For example, they do not add any new responsibilities regarding prominence requirements. They would, as we head into an election campaign, be a powerful demonstration of a unionist government’s care for all parts of the UK, including its most peripheral in the Highlands and Islands.

Turning to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, which I am pleased to support, the Minister accepted in Committee that we need to strike the right balance with a remit that gets to the heart of what it is to be a public service broadcaster. We must not dilute that. He also stated in Committee that he did not object to any of the specific genres mentioned in the revised Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness. I hope he can accept that not having this in the Bill really would be a glaring omission.

I am grateful to the Minister for his engagement. I am sorry that we have not had the time to explore some of these issues further with him and his team at DCMS, but I support him in his efforts to see that this Bill passes. I thank him and all noble Lords from across the House who have been so supportive of my efforts to ensure that the nations and regions have the best possible Bill.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 1 and 2 because it is essential that, in the first clause of this Bill, Parliament gives directed guidance to Ofcom on the content that it would hope to see created by our great broadcasters.

In Committee, the Minister said that the original list of genres and the Reithian mission statement gave “little guidance” to Ofcom on how to focus its assessment of what it is important for public service broadcasters to deliver. Amendment 1 gives a mission statement to provide content that informs and educates viewers. I hope this will ensure that the PSBs do not descend into providing only entertainment and not any information or education.

Amendment 2, which encourages broadcasters to stimulate science and the arts, among other things, is so very important. This is not a list of genres, which the Minister feared, but it does provide a metric for content against which Ofcom can measure the work of our broadcasters.

As other noble Lords have said, we are giving great privilege to broadcasters in this Bill, which I strongly welcome. However, with that must be a burden of responsibility to ensure that they should be distinctive and British. In a world dominated by streamers creating global entertainment, I hope that viewers in this country will be able in future to turn to our PSBs and find content that informs them about subjects that illuminate and bring context to their lives.

I, too, am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and my noble friend Lady Bull to discuss the changes to Clause 1. He was encouraging of the idea of extending the guidance for the public service remit, so I hope that he will support these important amendments.

I have also put my name to Amendment 6 to Clause 14 because I believe that Channel 4 is ready to increase its quota to the nations from the present 9%. The channel’s CEO, Alex Mahon, said as much in her speech to the creative industries last month. I hope that, in the present negotiations for the next licensing round of Channel 4, the Government will give guidance to the channel to increase its quota. It may not be as much as 16%, in line with the BBC, but it needs to be raised from the present 9%.

The television industry in the nations and many regions is collapsing from lack of work. Now is the time for action. I call on the Minister to accept this amendment.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

16: Clause 14, page 16, line 43, at end insert—
“(4A) After subsection (6) insert—“(6A) When determining the number of hours OFCOM consider appropriate under subsections (1) and (3), they must ensure that the number of hours would result in at least 50% of programmes broadcast, measured both by hours and expenditure, being made outside of London and 16% from the nations of the United Kingdom other than England, in proportion to their relative populations.””

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 16 and 17 in my name and in doing so I declare my interests as laid out in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, who has added her name, has asked me to apologise to the House as she cannot be here in time today due to a prior engagement in Northern Ireland, but she wanted me to indicate that the points I will be making have her strong support from a Northern Irish perspective. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for their support, which is greatly appreciated.

Never before have I stood up in this House and felt such a weight of responsibility on my shoulders. My amendments have the backing of all three devolved Administrations, the screen agencies of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, industry bodies from across the nations and regions as well as countless numbers of independent production companies. The noise outside this Chamber and outside London is deafening, and it is united.

The Media Bill is to be welcomed, and I know the Minister and the Secretary of State—and, indeed, all of us—wish it to pass quickly. However, if it passes unamended, it will have ignored the vibrant but delicately balanced screen ecologies in the nations and regions of the UK, and it risks removing the foundations upon which those thriving screen sectors have been able to build: namely, commissions from PSBs, the very channels for whom representing the lives and experiences of the nations and regions of the UK should be at their heart.

According to the Office for National Statistics, around 68 million people currently live in the UK. About 10 million people live within the M25, but, like much of our politics, our media can often be seen as being too London-centric. My amendments seek to ensure that public service broadcasters provide a suitable range of programmes for the roughly 58 million people who do not live in London, and that a proportionate share of those programmes are made outside London by the talented people who live and work all across the UK. That these should be measured by both hours and expenditure would ensure that PSBs did not simply fulfil their regional quotas with low-value daytime live discussions.

Section 287 of the Communications Act 2003 required Channel 3 to provide a sufficient amount and a suitable range of regional programmes, including news and current affairs, regulated by Ofcom quotas obligated by its licence. If it were not for those quotas then the plurality of news in the nations and regions provided by ITV and STV, in addition to that of the BBC, would be lost. Equivalent requirements and national and regional quotas apply to the BBC under the BBC framework agreement.

The BBC and Channel 4 have already responded to criticism that they do not reflect the public they serve by moving part of their workforce outside of London to regional centres in Salford, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow. During the debate around the proposed privatisation of Channel 4, its chief executive, Alex Mahon, speaking at the opening of the channel’s new studios in Leeds, argued that privatisation would inhibit the channel’s plans to expand outside London and help the levelling-up agenda. Ms Mahon led a campaign against privatisation by declaring that Channel 4 was “for all the UK”, and regional producers in the nations and regions stepped up to support it. However, as soon as privatisation was taken off the table, Channel 4 abruptly stopped developing its commissioning capacity outside London, recently making its most senior commissioner in Leeds redundant and losing one of its small Glasgow-based commissioning team.

Ofcom requires that the BBC must ensure that in each calendar year at least 16% of the hours of network programmes made in the UK are made outside England, and at least 16% of the BBC’s expenditure on new network programmes is applied across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is in line with the three home nations’ share of the population. My amendments would simply extend those requirements to all public service broadcasters, ensuring that these public assets deliver fairly for all the UK.

If we do not have such regional quotas then we risk not having any of the production centres of which we are so rightly proud, and in that case Amendment 54 from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, becomes somewhat academic. As much as I wish to support him in requiring Ofcom to ensure that the out of London nations and regions production criteria support inward investment in regional production centres, while encouraging the pipeline of talent from across the UK to thrive, without national and regional quotas the only option to fulfil any regional out of London production would be by brass-plating.

Channel 4 is a commercially funded but publicly owned PSB. It does not produce regional news content as ITV and STV do, but to date it has played an extremely important role in the success of the UK’s creative industries, pioneering innovation in, investing in and stimulating the production sector and acting as a world-leading accelerator. However, despite Channel 4’s “for all the UK” campaign, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming by Ofcom into accepting the rise of its out of England quota to only 9% in 2020, and it has recently argued for that 9% minimum to sustain across the next decade, on the basis that producers outside London are too small.

This Bill will remove the existing publisher/broadcaster restriction and give Channel 4 valuable new flexibility to make some of its own content. While I understand the Government’s desire to ensure that Channel 4 is able to grow and better compete in the age of streaming giants, they are giving away the very thing that makes Channel 4 unique among PSBs, at no cost to the taxpayer but of considerable importance to the regional creative economy and independent production sectors. They are doing so without demanding anything in return. As a publicly owned PSB with its own stated strong commitment to represent the whole of the UK and to stand up for diversity across the UK, surely the Government must ensure that Channel 4 fulfils this remit for the benefit of the UK as a whole, supporting the sustainable growth of the industry outside London and across all four home nations.

My amendments do nothing other than echo the voluntary commitments that Channel 4’s chairman and chief executive have already made. In November last year, Sir Ian Cheshire issued a statement saying:

“Channel 4 remains entirely committed to its presence, programme-making and impact across the Nations and Regions. This includes its commitment to regional producers, voluntary investing 50% of its commissioning budget outside of London”.


I am asking the Minister therefore to write this voluntary commitment into the Bill, along with a separate nations’ quota in line with that of the BBC. According to the independent producers’ industry body, PACT, increasing these quotas to 50% outside London and 16% outside England would cost Channel 4 only an additional £136 million over 10 years—just over 2% of its anticipated budget for new programmes across the next decade. The benefit to the creative economy across all the UK, to British audiences and to Channel 4 itself would be significantly higher.

Channel 4’s resistance to increasing national and regional quotas to match the BBC’s has caused what I can only describe as a real stushie among the independent producers, the freelance TV talent, the devolved Administrations and the screen agencies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all of whom have written to Ofcom—and I am delighted to see its chairman in his place—and made public their desire for national and regional quotas and their support of my amendments. I am grateful to the three screen agencies—Screen Scotland, Northern Ireland Screen and Creative Wales—and PACT, as well as the many independent producers who have engaged with me and many other noble Lords in preparation for this debate, and who recently felt so strongly about this that they made the effort to come to the House to brief us in person. I can only apologise to them that voting on the safety of Rwanda rather truncated our discussions on that day.

The independent producers who recently wrote a public letter to Ofcom, urging it to reconsider the lifting of the current production 91% “made in England” production quota for Channel 4, are long-term, trusted suppliers of Channel 4, ITV and the BBC, as well as Netflix, Disney+, Sky, Amazon and National Geographic among many others. They cannot be dismissed as being “too small” for the PSB broadcasters to work with. The key to fostering and safeguarding the regional TV production sector lies in securing network commissions, not just ad hoc regional talent and skills schemes.

Quotas work. Both the BBC and Channel 4 have met them regularly and this has fostered significant economic and creative growth across the UK since 2003. Quotas are critical to ensuring that the infrastructure of the thriving creative industries that have been so successfully built up over the last two decades is maintained and not jettisoned. Quotas are essential to ensuring that our PSBs truly reflect, on-screen, the voices and stories of the people they serve throughout the different parts of our United Kingdom. This is in the best long-term interests of those broadcasters. If the Minister is not minded to accept my amendments as tabled today, I ask him and his team to work with me and the regional agencies to ensure that the commitment to representation throughout the UK for public service broadcasting is reflected robustly within the provisions of this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lord, I thank everybody from around the Committee who contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, I think we have given due warning of trouble ahead to the Minister. I am grateful for that. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, reminded the Minister of the very strong feelings in the sector across the nations and the regions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, despite the rosy picture we may be able to paint, there are marked inequalities in the system. To ensure that this moves in the right direction we need intentionality, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned.

I note that the Minister mentioned figures up to 2022 and the creative hubs in the regions, but they are no good if the commissioning relationships are not made from those hubs. I put to my noble friend that that is what the sector has been concerned about since 2022. Frankly, Channel 4 sees quotas as a target, not as a minimum—the figures from PACT show that it is just making it, year on year—so they do work and it is important that we build on what is there and do not jettison it.

I am very grateful to the Minister for his offer of further discussions with us and Ofcom, but I am mindful of the question from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam: where is the parliamentary scrutiny and where are we setting this? We have heard the strength of feeling. Do we really want to leave it to Ofcom yet again? As many Peers said, we need to ensure that the spirit, not just the letter, is setting the right direction. I thank the Minister for his offer of further talks. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 13 in my name hopes to force a discussion raised by these Benches and by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. The amendment seeks to introduce a safeguard so that, if Ofcom believes that delivery of PSB content on broadcast linear services is less than satisfactory, it will have the powers needed to set a quota to ensure that a certain proportion of public service content remains available to linear audiences through a broadcast signal. In short, quality should remain available to those families up and down the country who rely on their TV rather than watch online content.

This new clause makes no prescriptive requirements on how that should be achieved, nor does it set a specific figure on how many programmes might be available; it simply allows Ofcom to monitor the effects of the Bill. There is, and there is likely to remain, a section of the population for whom a broadcast signal is their sole connection to media, news, entertainment and information. Therefore, it is important that those people— some of whom more likely to be older citizens, families in rural areas and those struggling with bills as a result of the cost of living—are able to access their media. My husband regularly updates, as I told the House before, so I have ended up with an enormous television screen and lots and lots of choice willy-nilly, but I know that that is something that lots of families may not be able to afford.

This case has been argued extensively by the campaign group Broadcast 2040+, which is made up of a number of concerned organisations. We recognise that the direction of travel is that people are watching content online more than ever, but that does not mean there should be diminishing content on broadcast linear services, especially where that content caters to a local audience. That belief goes beyond the Bill and into wider worries about the impact that a digital-first strategy would have on traditional means of broadcasting, and, as a result, on audiences.

My new clause, therefore, introduces this safeguard and gives Ofcom the power to take action and monitor the effects of the Bill. As well as encouraging the Minister to accept this new clause, I also ask him to update us on whether the Government intend to support linear broadcasting beyond 2034, and, if they do not, what plans they are putting in place to manage possible transition away from linear services. This is just the beginning of the conversation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 32, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for her support and for adding her name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interest in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland.

My Amendment 32 seeks to protect the provision of digital terrestrial television—DTT. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, outlined, the current provision of DTT is due to run out in 2034. Without this amendment, we could see a decline in the universality of free-to-air public service broadcasting and the further exclusion of vulnerable parts of our population who are already digitally excluded. This amendment safeguards the long-term future of these services to ensure that broadcast TV and radio that is free at the point of consumption will continue to be available across the UK.

The recent World Radiocommunication Conference in Dubai secured digital terrestrial television’s place as the exclusive primary service in the crucial 470 to 694 megahertz frequency band across ITU region 1. This has secured reliable access to the radio frequency spectrum and regulatory conditions needed to deliver broadcast services such as DTT across the UK, and it solidifies their central role in the broadcasting landscape. However, I note that a further debate on spectrum use and future needs is scheduled for 2031, meaning that the call for certainty to 2040 and beyond is even more vital.

Let me be clear that I am not trying to act against the tide of progress towards IP delivery of television. However, I have spent far too much time looking at digital exclusion—most recently as a member of the Communications and Digital Committee of your Lordships’ House—not to understand the fatal flaws in believing that broadband provision will be the universal answer within 10 years. Our committee’s recent Digital Exclusion report noted that, even if rollout continues across the UK, take-up would not necessarily follow. Social broadband tariffs are still expensive; they are an additional monthly cost for the financially vulnerable—often with half the speed—and far too many people who could benefit from them do not even know that they exist.

Living in Scotland, I appreciate the fragility of the broadband network: how easily it is adversely affected by the weather and how so many parts of the country do not receive the speeds that are advertised by the providers. In fact, just this afternoon, I picked up on an email from a colleague from Alzheimer Scotland who has just done a piece of work on the impact on the elderly and vulnerable of BT moving all the telephone lines to digital. It is a shocking piece of work, looking at how this group has been left behind and how the telecom companies’ assurances about addressing the needs of vulnerable people have not been fully acted on.

A recent study by EY predicted that, regardless of rollout, more than 5.5 million properties in the UK will not have a high-speed broadband subscription in 2040. In contrast, DTT is free if you pay your licence fee. Yet, currently, these services, which the Digital Poverty Alliance describes as a “lifeline”, have no guarantee of a secure future. The Ofcom Online Nation report confirms that 6% of UK adults lack an internet connection at home. This is higher in Wales and Scotland, higher among older audiences—20% of people over 65 do not have an internet connection at home—and higher among people with disability, 11% of whom do not have one. As things stand, these populations face the threat of terrestrial TV being switched off forever within a decade, and many of the most vulnerable and excluded are in danger of being left further isolated.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

I hope that the Minister might be persuaded by my arguments and those of other noble Lords, and that he might agree to work with us to find the right balance between baby and bathwater before Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 1 to 3 and 7, to which I have added my name, and in doing so, I declare my interest as laid out in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland.

The Bill will set the standard for public service broadcasting and is much welcomed. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has spotted that currently the Bill removes any overarching principles for public service broadcasting, which I believe is a glaring omission.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has just excellently introduced, the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain have been at the foundation of our public service broadcasting for over 100 years. These overarching principles mean that the values, objectives and practices of public service broadcasters are very different from those in the private sector.

A 2022 report by the Ada Lovelace Institute highlighted the importance of the Reithian principles that guided public service broadcasters in what stories they chose to tell, how they were told and presented, and what programmes were commissioned. By extension, they reflect, support and stimulate the nation of the UK in all its diversity and creativity, and therefore support our world-leading creative industries.

Public service broadcasters already face criticism that they do not sufficiently reflect the public whom they serve, which is why the BBC and Channel 4 attempted to address that by moving parts of their workforce and commissioning outside London—but more of that in amendments to come. In contrast, private organisations such as Netflix are designed to maximise market share and shareholder revenue. They use recommendation systems to drive user engagement with their content. They may have some consideration of social values, but public service organisations are currently legally mandated to operate with a particular set of public interest values at their core. Without these amendments, we would lose that. PSBs are building their own recommendation systems to compete in this new digital age but, as the Ada Lovelace Institute report highlights, they will not work unless public service broadcasters are clear about their own identity and purpose.

Amendment 3 reinstates the role of PSBs in supporting our creative industries in all their diversity. The regional production of drama, comedy, music and other visual and performing arts programming plays a vital role in enabling new talent to be heard, local creative economies to be sustained and regional culture to be supported. The UK’s network of PSBs provides a platform for artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, composers and choreographers, enabling them to reach a wider audience and to gain exposure. For example, many people’s first experience of ballet is only through the Christmas Day ballet production. It is a two-way relationship: as government and funding bodies encourage live performing arts companies to make the most of digital viewing opportunities, it is in partnership with the broadcasters that those skills can be developed.

Amendment 7 recognises that education is not solely the preserve of children and children’s broadcasting. Education is a crucial part of the public service broad- casting requirements. Several of the statutory requirements set out in Section 264 of the Communications Act 2003 relate to educational objectives. The noble Baroness’s amendment picks up on them and ensures that PSBs continue to have a role in lifelong learning.

Engaging adults in lifelong learning, to ensure that we continue to invest in the development of crucial skills, is a theme that emerges from numerous Select Committee reports from your Lordships’ House. Lifelong learning is vital to the success of the UK economy. Broadcast media has a unique power and reach as a medium for inspiring adults to take advantage of learning opportunities and can engage unconfident learners who would not normally consider the possibility of lifelong learning. It is therefore essential that requirements are in place that encourage broadcasters to produce high-quality educational programmes and to give them sufficient prominence to attract viewers.

This is our opportunity to ensure that we clearly define public service values for the digital age. Public service broadcasters are already delivering against the Reithian principles and—as far as I understand from my conversations with some of them, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said—we believe that they have no objections to these amendments. As a group, the amendments seek to ensure that PSBs continue to provide content considered of value to society, if not to the shareholders. I wholeheartedly support them and hope that the Minister will too.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I support the first four amendments in this group—Amendments 1 to 3 and 7—and will not repeat what has been said so far in the excellent two speeches. However, I support them for a different reason: I think that they lay the ground for later amendments, particularly Amendments 9, 13 and 32. I will make a serious point about those amendments now, partly because I may have to be on a train when the Committee gets to them.

If we take seriously the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain, it means doing what the inscription from George Orwell outside the BBC spells out: that people are enabled to be confronted by, or to hear and see things, that

“they do not want to hear”.

That is essential to public service broadcasting and democratic education. That is also why, when we get to Amendments 9, 13 and 32, it becomes so important to cite in the Bill some of the genres that need to be not just glossed over or assumed but recognised as essential to inform, educate and broadcast in an entertaining way. As was said earlier, not everything has to be serious; often we are informed and educated by being entertained. The reference to “EastEnders” was pertinent: we gauge the public conversation by what we see being conversed about in things such as soap operas.

That is why—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—portrayal of religion is so important and needs to be named, as well as children, the arts, science, and so on. These are often called minority interests but in fact, because something is of interest to minorities does not mean that the majority should not be aware of what those interests are. Whenever we talk about religious broadcasting —I refer to my previous interest as the chairman of the Sandford St Martin Trust for nine years—it is not about proselytism or propagating a particular world view; it is recognising that you cannot live in the world and understand it if you do not understand religion. That should be obvious, given what is going on in the world at the moment. We cannot understand the Sunni/Shia divide and how that impacts on politics in the United Kingdom if we do not get informed and educated about that. So it is not about proselytism; it is about education, social cohesion and so on.

That raises another question that I wish to put at this point. How is Ofcom supposed to be able to report on whether PSBs are fulfilling their remit if there are no metrics in the Bill to say what fulfilment of the remit might be? At Second Reading we were told that it will be left to “flexibility”. Flexibility is as flexible as you want it to be, but it is quite possible to go through a whole year and just have a subjective account of what constitutes, for example, religious broadcasting or children’s broadcasting, which puts it into a narrow silo and which, for example, counts out entertainment as a medium for these things. If there are no metrics, how are we and Ofcom to know whether the remit has been fulfilled? I have been told that it cannot be the number of hours you allot to a particular genre, or a percentage quota. I am very happy with that, but what are the metrics going to be? There have to be some; otherwise, it is totally subjective.

We can speak nobly about creative industries, the creative process and what ought to constitute public service broadcasting, but if we do not put some detail in and nail down those things, name the genres and say something about metrics other than flexibility, we cannot guarantee that the remit is being fulfilled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

Well, I hasten to add that I have no intention of going beyond that time. If that is a new rule, of which I was unaware, I certainly think it is a highly retrograde step because in Committee we should be exploring all the implications of all amendments. That is something we will no doubt return to at another time.

I welcome this debate and these amendments, particularly the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, moved his amendment and made reference to Wales as well as Scotland. I do not intend to go in depth into the Scottish context. I welcome the fact that amendments have come from that side of the Committee, with their intentions shared in other parts of the Committee, no doubt. I discussed some of these matters with friends in the Scottish National Party but, quite frankly, I feel incapable of addressing the Scottish context, which is very different from the Welsh context in terms of structure and the location and strength of the language in the country as a whole.

I would like to make this point at the beginning of my remarks. On page 6 of the Bill, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, it says

“‘recognised regional or minority language’ means Welsh” ,

et cetera. But Welsh is not a minority language. Welsh is a national language in Wales and is officially recognised as such in statutes passed by Westminster. Therefore, it is inappropriate for that terminology to be used in this context.

In saying that, I should perhaps clarify, in case there is some uncertainty about it, that I come from a very different background to most Members in this House. Welsh is my first language; Welsh is the language that I speak almost all the time at home; Welsh is the language of 90% of my community and village, and 70% in the county in which I live. I have two children and six grandchildren. All six grandchildren speak Welsh as a first language; those six grandchildren have two grandparents who are Welsh-speaking and four who are not Welsh-speaking. That is the reality in Wales today: Welsh is a language that has been grasped by people of Wales, in Wales, but also by people have also moved into Wales. It is part of their heritage. In fact, there are 20 Welsh-medium schools in Cardiff now, teaching through the medium of Welsh. That is the reality.

Welsh is a language that has a diversity within it as well. People come on holiday to Wales and they see Jason Mohammad on Welsh television. The sound is off in the pub, so they turn it up to hear what he is saying. They are amazed when they find that Jason Mohammad is, of course, speaking in Welsh. He is one of the Welsh community, a fluent Welsh speaker, and he learned it as a second language. We have rappers, such as Sage Todz, who raps in Welsh and in English. There is no problem with that. They are an ethnic part of the Welsh community, and the language belongs to the whole of Wales. It belongs to those who speak Welsh and to those who do not speak Welsh, because it is part of our culture.

There have been changes in places such as Merthyr Tydfil, where I lived before I entered Parliament. The language was almost dead when I was there. It is partly thanks to television and partly thanks to education that things have changed since then. We will be coming on to some of these aspects in a later bank of amendments. However, I want to make the point as strongly as I can that the context of the Welsh language is a very different one to being treated as a minority language or a regional language.

This does raise questions in relations to Welsh and to Gaelic, whether they should be seen just in a Scottish context—or in a part-of-Scotland context for Gaelic—or in a Welsh context—the whole of Wales, as far as Welsh is concerned, where it is an official language throughout the whole of Wales—or should they be seen in a British context? That is the implication in some of these amendments. If they are being seen in a British context, do they have a claim to existence, in respect and with regard to nurturing, within England itself?

There was a time when I was on the board of S4C —the Welsh language television service—where some of our programmes were being picked up in England, particularly things like rugby, understandably, where there were audiences of 100,000 and more from within England. That raises the question: how many people in England actually speak Welsh? We do not know that, because in successive censuses—in 2001, 2011 and 2021—there has been a refusal to ask that question in England. It may be 100,000; it may be 200,000; it may even be half a million. We do not know.

We know that many, many young people leave Wales to look for work, and they live in England. They tune into S4C, and, of course, it is very much easier to do that now than when I was on the board in earlier times. The fact that there can be audiences of that scale indicates that a question must arise if you are talking about minority languages. What is the position of minority languages such as the Gaelic language and the Welsh language in England? What intentions will there be to find out how many speakers there are? What are the appropriate requests and demands of those? In terms of television, which we are discussing, there is now no problem: television knows no boundaries, and Welsh-language television can be seen in the United States, in Patagonia or wherever, because of the facility technology affords to it.

There are a number of questions that arise in that context. This is not the time to follow this through, but they run through to questions as to whether the Welsh language and the Gaelic language should be available, in some schools at least, in conurbations in England if we are saying that the Welsh and Gaelic languages are British languages. I just assume that this is the position from which the Government come on such matters. In which case, what are the Government going to be doing about it?

I am grateful for these amendments being tabled because it puts into context our interpretation of the words “regional or minority language”, which are on the face of the Bill. I suggest that this needs to be thought through again, in order for it to have a respect, or even a meaning, as far as we in Wales are concerned.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Creative Scotland. I thank my noble friend Lord Dunlop for his work to champion the Gaelic Media Service and add my support to his amendment.

I just want to respond a little bit to the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, that the Welsh and Scottish situations are not the same. No, they are not, and we feel rather hard done by because, as the noble Lord said, the two pillars of education and broadcasting have done much to support the Welsh language. I think that my noble friend Lord Dunlop’s amendments are just trying to reverse what I call the devolution deficit that has done no favours to the Gaelic Media Service.

We heard at Second Reading about the economic benefits of MG Alba. It sustains 340 jobs in the Highlands and Islands and produces gross value added of over £17 million. It is very interesting today that the Scottish Government’s new Deputy First Minister is not only a fluent Gaelic speaker and the first-ever Scottish Minister for Gaelic, as my noble friend said, but she also has responsibility for the economy. Despite its impressive economic record, however, MG Alba is facing a huge generational challenge at this very moment of having to transition to a digital service on its existing funding.

My noble friend Lord Dunlop has already set out that Scottish Government Ministers have been very vocal about their so-called strong and consistent support for the Gaelic language service. What I support about my noble friend’s amendments is that, by denominating the Gaelic Media Service as a public broadcaster, they are not committing the UK Government to funding, but they could ensure that the Scottish Government are held more accountable for their—in real terms—dwindling support for MG Alba.

If the Minister is minded in his reply to say that this issue should wait for the BBC charter review, I respectfully warn him that he is in danger of conflating two issues. The Media Bill is the appropriate place to confirm that there should be a Gaelic broadcaster. It is the place that confirms again that there should be a Welsh language public broadcaster, so why not Gaelic? The charter review would simply be a mechanism for the delivery of this. Frankly, if MG Alba has to wait another two years, it may be too late for the future of the Gaelic Media Service.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise humbly to take part in what has been a very rich and informative debate. I would particularly single out the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I apologise that I did not take part in the Second Reading of this Bill due to other commitments. I declare for general purposes for the whole of this Bill that I was formerly an editor of the Guardian Weekly and spent 20 years as a journalist, so that is the background that I bring into this.

We have uncovered some important technical drafting detail here, both from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I hope that we will certainly be seeing some government amendments on Report addressing those issues. However, I really just wanted to offer general Green support for the importance of having linguistic diversity broadcast across these islands, and I really wanted to stress that this is a terribly important issue.

We were talking in the last group about the British broadcasting ecosystem having a general claim to being world-leading. I am afraid that English characteristic monolingualism is something of a global joke. It is really important that we acknowledge that there is multilingualism on these islands, and it needs to be supported and encouraged.

I experienced a monolingual environment in the Australia of my childhood. Having exposure to only a single language impoverished my youth. Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Irish and Cornish are treasures of these islands, and they need support. They preserve tradition and knowledge, and they contribute to cultural diversity.

I note that, last week, the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee heard evidence on the proposed Scottish Languages Bill, which aims to establish official status and improve educational support for languages. The chair of the professional association for Gaelic secondary teachers noted that Gaelic-medium education is, in effect, now stopping at S1 or S2. In 2023, only 1% of primary school pupils were in GM education, but 46% of primary school pupils in the Western Isles, for example, are in Gaelic-medium education and 54% study Gaelic. If we are going to have broadcasters that truly serve across these islands, we clearly need to see the delivery of all these languages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I hope it was fairly clear from what I said at Second Reading that I would be very likely to support the amendments that we heard in the first group and, in particular, to support Amendment 9, which has just been so powerfully introduced by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.

Many of us at Second Reading, as has been reiterated already today, believed that we had a very good understanding of what a PSB was from the Communications Act 2003. Our fear is that the Bill that is now before us is much less clear because of the changes that have been made to that Act, removing the Reithian values and removing the list of genres—from music to the arts, from science to religion. All we now have is a vague requirement of a range of appropriate genres.

These points have already been well made in our deliberations today, so I will not repeat the arguments for them. I wish to pick up just one point: namely, where does Parliament have any say in the future in what will happen to our public service broadcasters? From the debates that have taken place both in this House, at Second Reading, and in the other place, we know that one of the Government’s arguments about this streamlined arrangement for PSBs is that we should not be worried because, as far as the BBC is concerned, much more detail will be provided within the royal charter and, for the other public service broadcasters, it will be provided for within the licences. However, I asked a question at Second Reading to which I did not get an answer. It was a simple one: does Parliament have any say whatever in the royal charter or the licence agreement? My understanding is that the answer is no. I hope that, when the Minister responds on this group, he will confirm that I am correct, and I hope that, in doing so, he will acknowledge that that argument means, therefore, that there is no opportunity for Parliament to have a say on this important issue.

In response to the first group of amendments, the Minister told us that there was a second way in which we need not be concerned. He told us about the rather pointless, as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, pointed out, five-yearly “high-level”—as the Minister called it—review, because so much would have changed. He pointed quite rightly, however, to the annual report that Ofcom would have to do, collecting the annual statistics on the genres covered. We should get some confidence from that, because he pointed out that that is contained in Section 358 of the Communications Act, which will be continued.

Well, I had a look at Section 358, which talks about annual reports with statistics on the genres covered, but I noted that, very interestingly, that Section 358(3) states:

“In carrying out a review … OFCOM must consider, in particular, each of the following”—


and the first is

“(a) the extent to which programmes included during that period in television and radio services are representative of what OFCOM consider to be the principal genres for such programmes”.

So Parliament is not going to have a say there, either.

We look to the Bill itself, which also talks about the new streamlined way in which the whole approach to PSBs is set out and how Ofcom will review it. Clause 1(5)(b) states that the requirements of this subsection are

“that the audiovisual content made available by the public service broadcasters (taken together) includes what appears to OFCOM to be … a sufficient quantity of audiovisual content that reflects the lives and concerns of different communities”—

and so on. So, yet again, we have a Bill before us that refers back to a previous Bill and also to something where Ofcom is making decisions on issues in which Parliament has not had the opportunity to be involved.

These amendments are the only opportunity for Parliament to have its say. I, for one, strongly believe that we need to give very clear guidance to Ofcom on what Parliament believes is the appropriate role for a for a public service broadcaster. This amendment gives that very clearly. It would reinstate what was contained within the Communications Act 2003. I very much hope, therefore, that the Minister will accept not only the amendment but the legitimate role that Parliament has in saying what it believes should be the guidance given to Ofcom for the review that it carries out into the nature of our public service broadcasters.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I too have added my name to Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, which, as he has explained, seeks to define what an “appropriate range of genres” actually is. What worries me is that his amendment has a list and, without that, I do not think that there is any definition of what we think an appropriate range should be.

We are not alone in believing that new subsection (6) is inadequate in its lack of clarity over both what an appropriate range of genres is and how it is going to be monitored by Ofcom. Concerns have been expressed through briefings to noble Lords from the Citizens’ PSM Forum, which welcomes and endorses these amendments. The only change that I suggest is that instead of “religion and other beliefs”, I would prefer “religion and other faiths”, as I think that will ensure that conspiracy theories and the like are not accidently captured by this.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I think that we can all agree that the Media Bill is warmly welcomed and that the sooner we can get it on to the statute books, the better. My remarks, surprisingly, are offered from a Scottish perspective, and I declare an interest as a board member of Creative Scotland.

I hope that the Minister will ensure that this Bill does not inadvertently upset the finely balanced infrastructure of the screen sector in Scotland or ignore the best interests of the Scottish consumer. Many noble Lords, including the Minister, joined me the other day at a lunch with STV, which was were very supportive of the Bill. Prominence for PSBs across all user interfaces is essential for smaller PSBs such as STV. This is important on linear and on-demand services, so that STV Player is available and easy to find across a range of platforms. I welcome these protections in the Bill.

Like other noble Lords, I am not sure that I fully appreciate the differences between “significant” and “appropriate” prominence. MG Alba and Gaelic broadcasting, as we have just heard, would, I am sure, be content with either. I join fellow noble Lords in being concerned that the only mention of Gaelic—note that it is “GAL-ick” if talking in a Scottish perspective, please, not “GAY-lick”—is within Part 1 of the Bill, which asks Ofcom to adjudicate on whether there is sufficient minority language content. This feels inadequate compared with the protections for S4C.

I want to highlight my concerns for the Scottish independent sector of the proposed changes to Channel 4’s remit. Channel 4 has a strong commitment to representing the whole of the UK. It has a long-established role as an innovator in the creative industries and its purpose is to be different. The arguments against privatising Channel 4 rested on its unique model. Channel 4’s own website says:

“Our content is the key to Channel 4’s success. As a publisher broadcaster we don’t produce content in-house, we commission it – helping independent production companies across the UK grow and nurturing new and existing talent”.


At the moment, we are being asked to rely on safeguards from Channel 4 that any move into in-house production will be a gradual one. Compare this to the BBC, where 16% of its content is from the nations and regions. At the moment, only 9% of Channel 4’s current content meets this level, so just giving Channel 4 the power to produce programmes, uncapped and without measurable quotas on the level of, for example, locally produced content required on PSBs, risks undermining the independent production and distribution sector which Channel 4 itself acknowledges is the key to its success. I hope therefore that we can give this issue some further thought as the Bill progresses through this House.

I also have concerns that the Bill does not serve the best interests of the Scottish consumer in what it does not cover. The Scottish Affairs Committee reported that almost a third of households in Scotland used only digital terrestrial television—DTT—services. Currently, these services are only guaranteed until 2034. The universality belief that lies behind public service broadcasting in the UK should hold true in any future model, as no one must be left behind.

A recent study by EY predicted that, regardless of rollout, more than 5.5 million properties in the UK will not have a high-speed broadband subscription in 2040. The one report that the Minister did not mention from the Communications and Digital Committee, the recently published Digital Exclusion, which I was privileged to be a part of, noted that even if rollout continues across the UK, many of the most vulnerable in our population will remain unable to access good-quality broadband services.

DTT is free if you pay your licence fee, yet currently these services, described by the Digital Poverty Alliance as “a lifeline”, have no guarantee of certainty to ensure that people are not left further isolated. I appreciate that DCMS has a broadcast framing, but our committee’s report highlighted the lack of a joined-up strategy for digital inclusion across government. Can the Minister say whether research on network rollout, take-up rates, gigabit provision and providing IP connectivity to geographically hard-to-reach households has been considered before rejecting a commitment to supporting DTT? I hope that the Government can reconsider, so that the commercial viability of the Freeview service is not lost while millions are still relying on it.

Many Scottish Members in the other place have lamented the omission of Scottish national sporting events in the proposed listed events regime in the Bill. I suspect that this is partly because, miracle of all miracles, our national football team has qualified for the Euros this summer. However, on a more serious note, the Bill’s removal of existing obligations for PSBs to provide socially valuable but perhaps not so commercially valuable content—for example, about religion and belief or science and technology—could have very negative unintended consequences. I associate myself with the remarks of everybody else who has spoken about that. I have written a list, which is endless. The Covid pandemic and recent events have demonstrated that, in today’s world, an understanding of science and religious literacy matter more than ever before.

I hope that this Bill enjoys a smooth and rapid progress through this House. I hope that it is not like the Online Safety Act, as it is now, where it was not until the very last moment of its passage that it was appreciated that your Lordships had made some very good points and the Minister eventually moved a number of welcome amendments. I live in hope that things might be a bit smoother for this Bill.

Royal Albert Hall Bill [HL]

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I approach this Bill from two angles: the first is from my experience of charity law, as I am the chief executive of a charity and was on the board of OSCR, which is the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator; and the second is my experience in, and love of, the arts. When I worked at English National Ballet, we staged wonderful in-the-round performances at the Royal Albert Hall. I am delighted to see that these productions are still being staged; the very first one, Derek Deane’s “Swan Lake”, which I was involved in when it was first produced in 1997, is coming back in June 2024. It is an unforgettable experience, and I urge noble Lords to book a ticket if they can get one.

Arts and heritage is a tough sector to operate in, particularly in the current climate. It is also an incredibly tough time for charities and, as other noble Lords have said, the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences, known as the Royal Albert Hall, is a charity and it has chosen to be a charity. In the latest annual report and accounts it declares that its purpose—and I always go back to a charity’s purpose—is to:

“promote the Arts and Sciences as well as to maintain our Grade I listed building, held in trust for the nation”.

I recognise that its royal charter and the various subsequent Royal Albert Hall Acts mean that it is not like other charities, but it is still a charity.

Public benefit is what makes charities different from any other organisation, so surely we should judge any Bill pertaining to the Royal Albert Hall through the lens of whether or not it supports public benefit and enables the corporation to fulfil its purpose to promote the arts and sciences and preserve its building for the nation. Given that, I believe the Royal Albert Hall does need a Bill; I just do not believe that it needs this one.

At the heart of the governance of the hall, as other noble Lords have said, there are huge and unresolved conflicts of interest. As matters currently stand, I do not see that the council, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, is bound under the current constitution to always act in the interests of the charity, and nor do I see that it properly recognises and manages its conflicts of interest. Both of these are legal requirements for any trustee in any other charitable organisation. I acknowledge, as my noble friend Lady Stowell mentioned, that the council has a conflict of interest policy that is regularly updated—it was last updated in December 2022—and there is a conflicts committee, but in terms of good governance, and on the urging of the Charity Commission, this still reads as though it is marking its own homework.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his work in trying to resolve these matters, but this Bill seems to be another missed opportunity. We have already mentioned the membership of the council and how those who are not seat-holders will always be outvoted. That constitution has come about because of a historical anomaly, and the scale of influence of seat-holders on decision-making relating to their own private interests is out of step with modern standards of any other charity’s governance.

When the hall was first conceived and built, the model of seat-holders’ contributions was perfectly good. As the hall has developed over the years, it should be congratulated on offering many more performances and hugely expanding its programme. As my noble friend Lord Hodgson mentioned, the 1966 Act recognised the threats posed by ticket touts and banned the sale of tickets within the environs of the hall, but the world has changed since 1871 and since 1966. No one then could have conceived of online ticket sites such as viagogo and there is no way the original seat-holders could have set up a ticket resale site such as hoorahtickets.com or a Facebook group, with over 50,000 members, to maximise profit on their investment.

I have also been checking ticket sites; everybody is obviously having a go at the moment. Apparently, the Last Night of the Proms is indeed going for over £1,000 each. Last week, I could have got a ticket to Ed Sheeran for 650 quid, which sounds like a bargain when there is a report in today’s Telegraph saying that they are going for almost £6,000. These are tickets with a face value of £125 or £200.

People are reselling their tickets in this way when there is a perfectly good official mechanism in place: the ticket-holder return scheme was launched in 1983 to provide a means for seat-holders to resell their tickets back to the hall and give the public the best possible access.

Who does this benefit? The public have to pay more than the face value of the ticket; the organisation loses out on a booking fee and, more concerningly, control of the data of who is in the hall and who they can market to in the future; or the seat-holders, some of whom—not all—seek to maximise financial return for private profit and their right to sell a commercially popular show. As far as I am aware, and I am happy to be corrected, no seat-holder loses money in any year. They receive more from the payment the hall makes to them than the annual contribution they make for the maintenance and enhancement of the hall. Owning the right to use a seat is therefore a very sound financial investment.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Stowell: I am not looking for a Bill that deprives seat-holders of their rights. I have no objection to seat-holders being members of the council or making a profit from their investment, but trustees who have a personal financial interest in the running of any organisation should not be allowed majority sway over that organisation to the extent that we see here, where, I believe, public benefit is compromised. I am not saying that it has been, but its charitable purpose and the maintenance of the building could be neglected.

My issue with the Bill is that, instead of tackling these issues, it just muddies the waters further. It exposes the corporation to significant future risk. I am sorry for going into detail, but I hope your Lordships will forgive me, since we will not have a Committee stage as other Bills do. Specifically, Clause 3 sets the seat-holders’ annual contribution and Clause 4 enables a resolution to be proposed by

“the council; or … not less than twenty members”.

If there is more than one resolution, Clause 4 allows for just

“the resolution with the highest number of votes in favour”

to be valid. For me, this Bill not only fails to deal with issues of conflict of interest but enables greater influence for the seat-holders of the organisation.

As my noble friend mentioned, Clause 5 seeks to increase members’ numbers, with powers to add seats to the boxes. This adds to my impression—which may not be backed up by evidence, but in charity governance the impression given is what is important—that the seat-holders are manipulating the legislation for their own benefit, not necessarily that of the hall or the public.

As for most other arts organisations, the financial reserves of the organisation have already been used up and are in deficit thanks to Covid and higher maintenance bills. The members, while an important source of income, do not keep the hall running on their own: the corporation relies on fundraising from major donors, trust foundations, corporates and individuals, just like any other charity. I accept that it receives no regular public subsidy, but, as others have mentioned, it received a £20 million Covid loan through the culture recovery fund, and its accounts show that it receives other grants from time to time. I do not know how the executive can confidently plan for and run an organisation for public benefit when a minority of members can change the rules at any point to suit their own financial interests.

Finally, I hope that your Lordships will look at amendments to the Bill to address some of these issues. It does no good for public trust and confidence in the charity sector, nor for the authority of the Charity Commission, for these issues to remain unaddressed. But I am aware of the little time we have left in this Session. I am also chilled by the comments that I read by the president of the council, who has written to members to state that the charity would

“resist changes that we think would be detrimental to the”

private “interests of members”, and that the charity could withdraw the Bill

“if its terms become unacceptable to us”.

I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Harrington of Watford, not only for the time that he has given to all us gadflies, as I think we are now termed, but for his service on the board of the hall. However, I hope that he and the Minister will agree that it would not be to the benefit of the public—nor, I believe, true to the original vision of the founders of the hall—if the Bill were to pass as it stands and we were to miss yet another opportunity to deal with the conflicts of interest arising out of the current governance arrangements of the hall.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. She has been such a forceful voice throughout the passage of this Bill, driven by her passion to protect children, and no more so than with the amendment in her name. That is why I feel compelled to speak up to support her. So far, we have all worked with the Government to see the safe passage of the Online Safety Bill, with strong protections for children. These amendments would be yet another excellent and unique opportunity to protect children. This is what we have been fighting for for years, and it is so uplifting that the Government have listened to us throughout the passage of this Bill—so why stop now? If the Government are saying that the Bill is being clear about harms, they should have no objection to making it explicit.

These amendments press for safety by design to be embedded in later clauses of the Bill and go hand in hand with the earlier amendment that the House so clearly supported. It is clear that the design of services and algorithms is responsible for orchestrating and manipulating the behaviour, feelings, emotions and thoughts of children who, because they are at a vulnerable stage in their development, are easily influenced. We have all witnessed the disastrous impact of the new technology which is fast encroaching upon us, and our children will not be spared from it. So it is imperative that Ofcom have the tools with which to consider and interrogate system design separately from content because, as has been said, it is not only content that is harmful: design is too. We therefore need to take a holistic approach and leave nowhere to hide for the tech companies when it comes to harms affecting our children.

As I have said before, these amendments would send a loud and clear message to the industry that it is responsible for the design of its products and has to think of the consequences for our children’s mental health and well-being when considering design. What better way to do that than for the Government to accept these amendments, in order to show that they are on the side of our children, not the global tech companies, when it comes to protecting them from harm? They need to put measures in place to ensure that the way a service is designed is subject to the online safety regime we have all fought for over the years and during the passage of this Bill.

If the Government do not accept the amendment, perhaps the issue of harmful design could be included in the welcome proposed review of pornography. It would be good to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this idea—but I am not giving him a let-off. I hope he will listen to the strength of feeling and that the Government will reconsider their position, support the amendment and complete the one main task they set out to complete with this Bill, which is to protect children from harm no matter where it rears its ugly head online.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lady Harding and to associate myself with everything she has just said. It strikes me that if we do not acknowledge that there is harm from functionality, not just content, we are not looking to the future, because functionality protects vulnerable people before the harm has happened; content relies on us having to take it down afterwards. I want to stress that algorithms and functionality disproportionately harm not just vulnerable children but vulnerable adults as well. I do not understand why, since we agreed to safety by design at the beginning of the Bill, it is not running throughout it, rather than just in the introduction. I want to lend my support these amendments this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

286: Clause 211, page 177, line 7, at end insert—
““freedom of expression”: any reference to freedom of expression (except in sections 36(6)(f) and 69(2)(d)) is to the freedom to receive and impart ideas, opinions or information (referred to in Article 10(1) of the Convention) by means of speech, writing or images;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts a definition of freedom of expression into the Bill.

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Moved by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

294: Page 179, line 22, at end insert—

“freedom of expression

section 211”

Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment adds a definition of “freedom of expression” to the index of defined terms.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the business of the internet is data. Whether it is a retail business, a media business or any other kind of business, the internet is all about data. The chiefs of our internet companies know more about noble Lords than anyone else—more than any government agency, your doctor and almost anyone—because the number of data points that big internet companies have on people is absolutely enormous, and they use them to very great effect.

Some of those effects are entirely benign. I completely endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. As a champion of innovation and business, I totally recognise the good that is done by the world’s internet companies to make our lives richer, create jobs and improve the world, but some of what they do is not good. Either inadvertently or by being passive enablers of harm, internet companies have been responsible for huge societal harms. I do not want to go through the full list, but when I think about the mental health of our teenagers, the extremism in our politics, the availability of harmful information to terrorists and what have you, there is a long catalogue of harms to which internet companies have contributed. We would be naive if we did not recognise.

However, almost uniquely among commercial businesses, internet companies guard access to that data incredibly jealously. They will not let you peek in and share their insights. I know from my experience in the health field that we work very closely with the pharmaceutical industry—there is a whole programme of pharmacovigilance that any pharma company has to participate in in order to explain, measure and justify the good and disbenefits of its medicines. We have no similar programme to pharmacovigilance for the tech industry. Instead, we are completely blind. Policy makers, the police and citizens are flying blind when it comes to the data that is held on us on both an individual and a demographic basis. That is extremely unusual.

That is why I really welcome my noble friend’s amendments that give Ofcom what seems to me to be extremely proportionate and thoughtful powers in order to look into this data, because without it, we do not know what is going on in this incredibly important part of our lives.

The role that researchers, including academic, civil society and campaigning researchers, play in helping Ofcom, policymakers and politicians to arrive at sensible, thoughtful and proportionate policy is absolutely critical. I pay enormous tribute to them; I am grateful to those noble Lords who have also done so. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his amendments on this subject, Amendments 272B and 272C, which address the question of giving researchers better access to some of this data. They would reduce the timeline for the review on data from 24 months to 18 months, which would be extremely helpful, and would changing “may” to “must”, which represents an emphatic commitment to the outcome of this review.

However, issues remain around the question of granting access to data for researchers. What happens to the insights from the promised review once it is delivered? Where are the powers to deliver the review’s recommendations? That gap is not currently served by the government amendments, which is why I and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, have tabled Amendments 237ZA, 237DB, 262AA and 272AB. Their purpose is to put in the Bill reasonable, proportionate powers to bring access to data for researchers along the lines that the research review will recommend.

The feelings on this matter are extremely strong because we all recognise the value here. We are concerned that any delay may completely undermine this sector. As we debated in Committee, there is a substantial and valuable UK sector in this research area that is likely to move lock, stock and barrel to other countries where these kinds of powers may be in place; for instance, in EU or US legislation. The absence of these powers will, I think, leave Britain in the dark and competitively behind other countries, which is why I want to push the Minister hard on these amendments. I am grateful for his insight that this matter is something that the Government may look to in future Bills, but those Bills are far off. I would like to hear from him what more he could do to try to smooth the journey from this Bill and this review to any future legislation that comes through this House in order to ensure that this important gap is closed.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 270 and 272 are in my name; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, for adding his name to them. They are the least controversial amendments in this group, I think. They are really simple. Amendment 270 would require Ofcom’s research about online interests and users’ experiences of regulated services under Clause 143 to be broken down by nation, while Amendment 272 relates to Clause 147 and would require Ofcom’s transparency reports also to be broken down in a nation-specific way.

These amendments follow on from our debates on devolution in Committee. Both seek to ensure that there is analysis of users’ online experiences in the different nations of the UK, which I continue to believe is essential to ensuring that the Bill works for the whole of the UK and is both future-proofed—a word we have all used lots—and able to adapt to different developments across each of the four nations. I have three reasons why I think these things are important. The first concerns the interplay between reserved and devolved matters. The second concerns the legal differences that already exist across the UK. The third concerns the role of Ofcom.

In his much-appreciated email to me last week, the Minister rightly highlighted that internet services are a reserved matter and I absolutely do not wish to impose different standards of regulation across the UK. Regarding priority offences, I completely support the Government’s stance that service providers must treat any content as priority illegal content where it amounts to a criminal offence anywhere in the UK regardless of where that act may have taken place or where the user is. However, my amendments are not about regulation; they are about research and transparency reporting, enabling us to understand the experience across the UK and to collect data—which we have just heard, so powerfully, will be more important as we continue.

I am afraid that leaving it to Ofcom’s discretion to understand the differences in the online experiences across the four nations over time is not quite good enough. Many of the matters we are dealing with in the online safety space—such as children, justice, police and education—are devolved. Government policy-making in devolved areas will increasingly rely on data about online behaviours, harms and outcomes. These days, I cannot imagine creating any kind of public policy without understanding the online dimension. There are areas where either the community experience and/or the policy approach is markedly different across the nations—take drug abuse, for example. No data means uninformed policy-making or flying blind, as my noble friend Lord Bethell has just said. But how easy will it be for the devolved nations to get this information if we do not specify it in the Bill?

In many of the debates, we have already heard of the legal differences across the four nations, and I am extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who is not in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and the Minister for supporting my amendment last week when I could not be here. I am terribly sorry. I was sitting next to the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, at the time. The amendment was to ensure that there is a legal definition of “freedom of expression” in the Bill that can be understood by devolved Administrations across the UK.

The more I look at this landscape, the more challenges arise. The creation of legislation around intimate abuse images is a good example. The original English legislation was focused on addressing the abusive sharing of intimate images after a relationship breakdown. It required the sharing to have been committed with the intent to cause harm, which has a very easy defence: “I did not mean to cause any harm”. The Scottish legislation, drafted slightly later, softened this to an intent to cause harm or being reckless as to whether harm was caused, which is a bit better because you do not need to prove intent. Now the English version is going to be updated in the Bill to create an offence simply by sharing, which is even better.

Other differences in legislation have been highlighted, such as on deepfakes and upskirting. On the first day of Report, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, highlighted a difference in the way cyberflashing offences are understood in Northern Ireland. So the issue is nuanced, and the Government’s responses change as we learn about harmful behaviours in practice. Over time, we gradually see these offences refined as we learn more about how technology is used to abuse in practice. The question really is: what will such offences look like online in five years’ time? Will the user experience and government policy across the four nations be the same? I will not pretend to try to answer that, but to answer it we will need the data.

I am concerned that the unintended consequences of the Bill in the devolved Administrations have not been fully appreciated or explored. Therefore, I am proposing a belt and braces approach in the reporting regime. When we come to post-legislative scrutiny, with reports being laid before this Parliament and the devolved Administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast—if there is one—we will want to have the data to understand the online experiences of each nation. That is why my very little amendments are seeking to ensure that we capture this experience and that is why it is so important.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am very happy to discuss this further with noble Lords, but I will reserve the right, pending that discussion, to decide whether we need to return to this at Third Reading.

Amendments 270 and 272, tabled by my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, to whom I am very grateful for her careful scrutiny of the devolved aspects of the Bill, seek to require Ofcom to include separate analyses of users’ online experiences in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the research about users’ experiences of regulated services and in Ofcom’s transparency reports. While I am sympathetic to her intention—we have corresponded on it, for which I am grateful—it is important that Ofcom has and retains the discretion to prioritise information requests that will best shed light on the experience of users across the UK.

My noble friend and other noble Lords should be reassured that Ofcom has a strong track record of using this discretion to produce data which are representative of people across the whole United Kingdom. Ofcom is committed to reflecting the online experiences of users across the UK and intends, wherever possible, to publish data at a national level. When conducting research, Ofcom seeks to gather views from a representative sample of the United Kingdom and seeks to set quotas that ensure an analysable sample within each of the home nations.

It is also worth noting the provisions in the Communications Act 2003 that require Ofcom to operate offices in each of the nations of the UK, to maintain advisory committees for each, and to ensure their representation on its various boards and panels—and, indeed, on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, to capture the experiences of children and users of all ages. While we must give Ofcom the discretion it needs to ensure that the framework is flexible and remains future-proofed, I hope that I have reassured my noble friend that her point will indeed be captured, reported on and be able to be scrutinised, not just in this House but across the UK.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. My premise is that the reason Ofcom reports in a nation-specific way in broadcasting and in communications is because there is a high-level reference in both the Communications Act 2003 and the BBC charter that requires it to do so, because it feeds down into national quotas and so on. There is currently nothing of that equivalence in the Online Safety Bill. Therefore, we are relying on Ofcom’s discretion, whereas in the broadcasting and communications area we have a high-level reference to insisting that there is a breakdown by nation.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

58: Clause 18, page 20, line 32, at end insert “as defined under the Human Rights Act 1998 and its application to the United Kingdom.”

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[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to propose this group of amendments on devolution issues. I am always delighted to see the Committee so full to talk about devolution issues. I will speak particularly to Amendments 58, 136, 225A and 228 in this group, all in my name. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for supporting them.

As I have said before in Committee, I have looked at the entire Bill from the perspective of a devolved nation, in particular at the discrepancies and overlaps of Scots law, UK law and ECHR jurisprudence that I was concerned had not been taken into account or addressed by the Bill as it stands. Many have said that they are not lawyers; I am also not. I am therefore very grateful to the Law Society of Scotland, members of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Scotland, and other organisations such as the Carnegie Trust and Legal to Say, Legal to Type, which have helped formulate my thinking. I also thank the Minister and the Bill team for their willingness to discuss these issues in advance with me.

When the first proposed Marshalled List for this Committee was sent round, my amendments were dotted all over the place. When I explained to the Whips that they were all connected to devolved issues and asked that they be grouped together, that must have prompted the Bill team to go and look again; the next thing I know, there is a whole raft of government amendments in this group referring to Wales, Northern Ireland, the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Isle of Man—though not Scotland, I noted. These government amendments are very welcome; if nothing else, I am grateful to have achieved that second look from the devolved perspective.

In the previous group, we heard how long the Bill had been in gestation. I have the impression that, because online safety decision-making is a centralised and reserved matter, the regions are overlooked and engaged only at a late stage. The original internet safety Green Paper made no reference to Scotland at all; it included a section on education describing only the English education system and an annexe of legislation that did not include Scottish legislation. Thankfully, this oversight was recognised by the White Paper, two years later, which included a section on territorial scope. Following this, the draft Bill included a need for platforms to recognise the differences in legislation across the UK, but this was subsequently dropped.

I remain concerned that the particular unintended consequences of the Bill for the devolved Administrations have not been fully appreciated or explored. While online safety is a reserved issue, many of the matters that it deals with—such as justice, the police or education —are devolved, and, as many in this House appreciate, Scots law is different.

At the moment, the Bill is relatively quiet on how freedom of expression is defined; how it applies to the providers of user-to-user services and their duties to protect users’ rights to freedom of expression; and how platforms balance those competing rights when adjudicating on content removal. My Amendment 58 has similarities to Amendment 63 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. It seeks to ensure that phrases such as “freedom of expression” are understood in the same way across the United Kingdom. As the noble and learned Lord pointed out when speaking to his Amendment 63 in a previous group, words matter, and I will therefore be careful to refer to “freedom of expression” rather than “freedom of speech” throughout my remarks.

Amendment 58 asks the Government to state explicitly which standards of speech platforms apply in each of the jurisdictions of the UK, because at this moment there is a difference. I accept that the Human Rights Act is a UK statute already, but, under Article 10—as we have heard—freedom of expression is not an absolute right and may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, argued last week that the balance between freedom of expression and any condition or restriction was not an equal one but was weighted in favour of freedom of expression. I take this opportunity to take some issue with my noble friend, who is not in his place, on this. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the British Institute of Human Rights and Supreme Court judgments, human rights are equal and indivisible, neither have automatic priority, and how they are balanced depends on the context and the particular facts.

In Scotland, the Scottish Government believe that they are protecting freedom of expression, but the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 criminalises speech that is not illegal elsewhere in the UK. Examples from the Scottish Government’s own information note state that it is now an offence in Scotland

“if the urging of people to cease practising their religion is done in a threatening or abusive manner or, alternatively, … if a person were to urge people not to engage in same-sex sexual activity while making abusive comments about people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual”.

The Lord Advocate’s guidance to the police says that

“an incident must be investigated as a hate crime if it is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be aggravated by prejudice”.

I stress that I make no absolutely comment about the merits, or otherwise, of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. I accept that it is yet to be commenced. However, commencement is in the hands of the Scottish Parliament, not the Minister and his team, and I highlight it here as an illustration of the divergence of interpretation that is happening between the devolved nations now, and as an example of what could happen in the future.

So, I would have thought that we would want to take a belt-and-braces approach to ensuring that there cannot be any differences in interpretation of what we mean by freedom of expression, and I hope that the Minister will accept my amendment for the sake of clarity. Ofcom is looking for clarity wherever possible, and clarity will be essential for platforms. Amendment 58 would allow platforms to interpret freedom of expression as a legal principle, rather than having to adapt considerations for Scotland, and it would also help prevent Scottish users’ content being censored more than that of English users, as platforms could rely on a legally certain basis for decision-making.

The hate crime Act was also the motivation for my Amendment 136, which asks why the Government did not include it on the list of priority offences in Schedule 7. I understand that the Scottish Government did not ask for it to be included, but since when did His Majesty’s Government do what the Scottish Government ask of them?

I have assumed that the Scottish Government did not ask for it because the hate crime Act is yet to be commenced in Scotland and there are, I suspect, multiple issues to be worked out with Police Scotland and others before it can be. I stress again that it is not my intention that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act should dictate the threshold for illegal and priority illegal content in this Bill—Amendment 136 is a probing amendment—but the omission of the hate crime Act does raise the question of a devolution deficit because, while the definition of “illegal content” varies, people in areas of the UK with more sensitive thresholds would have to rely on the police to enforce some national laws online rather than benefiting from the additional protections of the Ofcom regime.

Clause 53(5)(c) of this Bill states that

“the offence is created by this Act or, before or after this Act is passed, by”—

this is in sub-paragraph (iv)—

“devolved subordinate legislation made by a devolved authority with the consent of the Secretary of State or other Minister of the Crown”.

How would this consent be granted? How would it involve this Parliament? What consultation should be required, and with whom—particularly since the devolved offence might change the thresholds for the offence across the whole of the UK? The phrase “consent of the Secretary of State” implies that a devolved authority would apply to seek consent. Should not this application process be set out in the Bill? What should the consultation process with devolved authorities and Ofcom be if the Secretary of State wishes to initiate the inclusion of devolved subordinate legislation? Do we not need a formal framework for parliamentary scrutiny—an equivalent of the Grimstone process, perhaps? I would be very happy to work with the Minister and his team on a Parkinson process between now and Report.

Amendments 225A and 228 seek to ensure that there is an analysis of users’ online experiences in the different nations of the UK. Amendment 225A would require Ofcom to ensure that its research into online experiences was analysed in a nation-specific way while Amendment 228 would require Ofcom’s transparency reporting to be reported via each nation. The fact is that, at this moment in time, we do not know whether there is a difference in the online experience across the four nations. For example, are rural or remote communities at greater risk of online harm because they have a greater dependence on online services? How would online platforms respond to harmful sectarian content? What role do communication technologies play in relation to offline violence, such as knife crime?

We can compare other data by nation, for example on drug use or gambling addiction. Research and transparency reporting are key to understanding nation-specific harms online, but I fear that Ofcom will have limited powers in this area if they are not specified in the Bill. Ofcom has good working relationships from the centre with the regions, and part of this stems from the fact that legislation in other sectors, such as broadcasting, requires it to have advisory committees in each of the nations to ensure that English, Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh matters are considered properly. Notably, those measures do not exist in this Bill.

The interplay between the high-level and reserved nature of internet services and online safety will require Ofcom to develop a range of new, wider partnerships in Scotland—for example with Police Scotland—and to collaborate closely at a working level with a wide range of interests within the Scottish Government, where such interests will be split across a range of ministerial portfolios. In other areas of its regulatory responsibility, Ofcom’s research publications provide a breakdown of data by nation. Given the legislative differences that already exist between the four nations, it is an omission that such a breakdown is not explicitly required in the Bill.

I have not touched—and I am not going to touch—on how this Bill might affect other devolved Administrations. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, apologises for being unable to be in the Chamber to lend her voice from a Northern Ireland perspective— I understand from her that the Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 might be another example of this issue—but she has indicated her support here. As my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes said last Thursday:

“The Minister has done a very good job”


of

“batting away amendments”.—[Official Report, 11/5/23; col. 2043.]

However, I am in an optimistic mood this afternoon, because the Minister responded quite positively to the request from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that we should define “freedom of expression”. There is great benefit to be had from ensuring that this transparency of reporting and research can be broken down by nation. I am hopeful, therefore, that the Minister will take the points that I have raised through these amendments and that he will, as my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes hoped, respond by saying that he sees my points and will work with me to ensure that this legislation works as we all wish it to across the whole of the UK. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I put on record that the withdrawal of Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 will be greeted with happiness only should the full schedule of AV and harms be put into the Bill. I must say that because the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, is not in her place. She worked very hard for that piece of legislation.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I take it as a win that we have been offered a meeting and further discussion, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, agreeing with every word I said. I hope we can continue in this happy vein in my time in this House.

The suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, of a table is a welcome one. Something that has interested me is that some of the offences the Minister mentioned were open goals: there were holes leaving it open in Northern Ireland and not in England and Wales, or whatever. For example, epilepsy trolling is already a criminal offence in Scotland, but I am not sure that was appreciated when we started this discussion.

I look forward to the meeting and I thank the Minister for his response. I am still unconvinced that we have the right consultation process for any devolved authority wanting to apply for a subordinate devolved Administration to be included under this regime.

It concerns me that the Minister talked about leaving requesting data that Ofcom deemed to be appropriate. The feeling on the ground is that Ofcom, which is based in London, may not understand what is or is not necessarily appropriate in the devolved Administrations. The fact that in other legislation—for example, on broadcasting—it is mandated that it is broken down nation by nation is really important. It is even more important because of the interplay between the devolved and the reserved matters. The fact that there is no equivalent Minister in the Scottish Government to talk about digital and online safety things with means that a whole raft of different people will need to have relationships with Ofcom who have not hitherto.

I thank the Minister. On that note, I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 58 withdrawn.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

I will not detain noble Lords very long either. Two things have motivated me to be involved in this Bill. One is protection for vulnerable adults and the second is looking at this legislation with my Scottish head on, because nobody else seems to be looking at it from the perspective of the devolved Administrations.

First, on protection for vulnerable adults, we have already debated the fact that in an earlier iteration of this Bill, there were protections. These have been watered down and we now have the triple shield. Whether they fit here, with the amendment from my noble friend Lady Stowell, or fit earlier, what we are all asking for is the reinstatement of risk assessments. I come at this from a protection of vulnerable groups perspective, but I recognise that others come at it from a freedom of expression perspective. I do not think the Minister has answered my earlier questions. Why have risk assessments been taken out and why are they any threat? It seems to be the will of the debate today that they do nothing but strengthen the transparency and safety aspects of the Bill, wherever they might be put.

I speak with trepidation to Amendment 63 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I flatter myself that his amendment and mine are trying to do a similar thing. I will speak to my amendment when we come to the group on devolved issues, but I think what both of us are trying to establish is, given that the Bill is relatively quiet on how freedom of expression is defined, how do platforms balance competing rights, particularly in the light of the differences between the devolved Administrations?

The Minister will know that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 made my brain hurt when trying to work out how this Bill affects it, or how it affects the Bill. What is definitely clear is that there are differences between the devolved Administrations in how freedom of expression is interpreted. I will study the noble and learned Lord’s remarks very carefully in Hansard; I need a little time to think about them. I will listen very carefully to the Minister’s response and I look forward to the later group.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I too will be very brief. As a member of the Communications and Digital Committee, I just wanted to speak in support of my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston and her extremely powerful speech, which seems like it was quite a long time ago now, but it was not that long. I want to highlight two things. I do not understand how, as a number of noble Lords have said, having risk assessments is a threat to freedom of expression. I think the absolute opposite is the case. They would enhance all the things the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is looking to see in the Bill, just as much as they would enhance the protections that my noble friend, who I always seem to follow in this debate, is looking for.

Like my noble friend, I ask the Minister: why not? When the Government announced the removal of legal but harmful and the creation of user empowerment tools, I remember thinking—in the midst of being quite busy with Covid—“What are user empowerment tools and what are they going to empower me to do?” Without a risk assessment, I do not know how we answer that question. The risk is that we are throwing that question straight to the tech companies to decide for themselves. A risk assessment provides the framework that would enable user empowerment tools to do what I think the Government intend.

Finally, I too will speak against my noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment 294 on psychological harm. It is well documented that tech platforms are designed to drive addiction. Addiction can be physiological and psychological. We ignore that at our peril.