Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill. This is very technical legislation, but technical does not make for unimportant, even today. In fact, my experience in business is that it is in the detailed technical and operational delivery that businesses succeed or fail—and when it comes to building national infrastructure, the same is true.

The strategy is relatively easy. I spent seven years as the chief executive of a telecoms company and, during that time and in the five years since, I have not found any community, business or politician who wants a different outcome. Everyone wants ubiquitously available, safe to use, affordable and, above all, high-speed connectivity at home, at work and on the move, on an ever-increasing number of devices, everywhere. The direction of travel is not up for debate. What is are the technical details to get us there as effectively as possible, which is what this Bill is about. As technical and detailed as it may be, it is none the less extremely important. It is in the shaping of these detailed laws and regulations that we determine whether we have the effective digital connectivity that we are all so agreed upon.

I am supportive of both parts of the Bill and will speak very briefly on the first half, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, is, I suspect, less contentious. I will then speak in more detail about the second half.

I am pleased to see in Part 1 a clear framework for regulating the security of connected devices. I have been involved in a related area of digital regulation—child internet safety—for over a decade, and that experience has taught me that it is necessary to put regulation on to a legal footing. For far too long, technology companies have tried to persuade us that self-regulation is the right route for the digital world, yet we are seeing in every area of digital, as here, that self-regulation leads to no regulation and that we need to do our job as legislators and set the rules of the game. The digital world is really no different from the physical world, where responsible capitalism works best when we set legal guardrails and encourage commercial creativity and innovation within them. As such, I welcome Part 1.

Turning to Part 2, even those stakeholders concerned about it are united in their agreement that enabling the rapid and effective build-out of mobile and fixed digital connectivity is an essential part of modern society. The devil really is in the detail here. I believe the Bill strikes the right balance between protecting property owners’ rights and the broader benefits to the whole of society of speeding up the delivery of faster connectivity.

Again, we should take our cues from the physical world. The Government are right not to move away from the changes in valuation methodology made in 2017, bringing telecoms infrastructure in line with other much older physical utilities, and right to extend this approach to renewals. I appreciate that this has meant a material reduction in rent, but as telecoms matures, surely it is fair to consumers, and ultimately landowners, to treat it in the same way as other essential utilities.

It is also important that, wherever possible, we enable rather than restrict competition in the building of these telecoms networks. When I first came into the industry in 2010, BT was not investing at all in building full-fibre networks. For the best part of a decade, the UK lagged behind many other countries because BT preferred to upgrade its copper, in large part because there was no credible threat to its Openreach-monopoly copper infrastructure. We are in a very different position today, with several alternative fibre providers building scale networks, which is providing consumer choice and spurring on Openreach to invest. It is in the detailed changes to telecoms regulation that this has been made possible; among other things, by forcing Openreach to make its ducts and poles open to alternative providers.

This physical infrastructure access—or PIA, to those of us in the industry—is a very important ingredient in speeding up the rollout of fibre broadband. It has enabled competition, which in turn is driving investment. As currently drafted, the Bill extends the effectiveness of PIA by allowing the sharing of existing ducts under private land, which will significantly speed up and extend rollout, and resolves the anomaly of different rules for cable duct infrastructure if built before or after 2017. However, it is not clear how telegraph poles are treated. This is where the detail starts to really matter. I ask my noble friend the Minister to clarify that operators cannot only lay cable to a telegraph pole and string fibre in the air between poles but can roll fibre up the pole itself. That may seem obvious, but if we do not get this sort of detail right in regulations, you cannot build the connectivity.

Another key area where we need to be careful about protecting competition is in access to multiple-dwelling units, or MDUs. I have huge sympathy with Members of the other place who have proposed amendments aimed at making it easier for Openreach to fibre-enable blocks of flats where it is having trouble contacting landlords. It is so important that we do not exacerbate existing non-digital inequalities in the digital world, which is exactly what happens when the fibre rollout goes past blocks of flats in many communities across London and other cities.

But—and it is a big “but”—there is a very big difference between the cabling in multiple-dwelling units and the ducts and poles in rural areas. Ducts and poles are now part of the PIA regime I mentioned earlier, so competing fibre providers can all use them. Openreach’s existing copper cables in multiple-dwelling units are its to use alone, so relaxing the rules for Openreach in MDUs such that it does not need permission from the landlord to upgrade to fibre is not only an extraordinary power of entry—one we do not even give the police—but gives Openreach a huge competitive advantage. Tempting though it might be in the short run, relatively recent history shows that embedding an infrastructure provider’s monopoly—in fact, embedding this infrastructure provider’s monopoly—is never good for consumers in the end. I encourage my noble friend the Minister to resist similar amendments should they be brought to this place.

With the not inconsiderable challenges our economy faces as we emerge from Covid, we need detailed supply-side changes such as this Bill that will help drive growth across the country via digitally enabled, safe, secure and competitive markets. As such, I am pleased to support it.

Age Assurance (Minimum Standards) Bill [HL]

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for bringing this Bill and for her characteristic passion and commitment to this extremely important topic. Her work championing these issues has been so important and has undoubtedly led to the UK genuinely leading the world in digital safety. Today is another opportunity for us to do the same again.

Many people think that age assurance is all about pornography, but I think that we have a much broader and therefore potentially even more damaging digital age-assurance problem. It is a problem with the underlying social media and technology platforms themselves. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, go into any primary school year 6 classroom and ask the assembled 10 year-olds who is on social media—on TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp or Instagram—and almost all of them will say yes. Yet all these providers tell us that their products are not appropriate for 10 year-olds.

The evidence is mounting that the dangers of social media on young minds are substantial, so if the companies themselves tell us that 13—WhatsApp says 16—is the youngest that you should be to use these services, I suspect that that is the bare minimum. Yet we are living in a society where it is completely normal for the majority of children younger than 13 to be regular users of these products.

We do not tolerate this in the physical world; why should we tolerate it in the digital world? I will talk briefly about the physical world. Age assurance already exists there. I worked for much of my life in food retailing and, over the last 20 years, prevention of the sale of alcohol to underage children has changed beyond all recognition. When I was a teenager, sadly much more than 20 years ago, there was no impact on the publican, waiting staff, cashier or store owner if they sold me a beer. Now there is a material financial and criminal impact on them all if they are found selling alcohol to my underage children. As a result, they have developed effective age-assurance processes. We do not have hard age verification for selling alcohol in this country and do not all walk around with our passports in our hands, but we have an age-assurance approach.

Think 21 was, I believe, first launched in Wetherspoons in 2005, when signs were put up and staff were trained to look for people who looked under 21 and ask them for identification. That evolved to Think 25, as it is quite hard to tell the difference between an 18 year-old and a 21 year-old. Working together, food retailers and the hospitality industry have built systems, processes, training and communication that are much more effective than when I was young. That has not meant a loss of privacy or a material change to access to alcohol for adults—quite the opposite.

I would argue that the age-assurance tools available to social media and technology companies are much more sophisticated than those available to food retailers or pubs—at least, that is the premise on which the whole multibillion pound online advertising industry is based. I have every confidence that the truly brilliant behavioural scientists and software engineers currently focused on profiling our behaviour to sell us more things could switch their focus to ensuring that only people of the appropriate age are using their platforms—if they had to. The critical question is: why have they not? Sadly, I fear it is just so much easier not to try. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, it is better not to know how old someone is so you can claim ignorance; or, better still, to argue that it is the parents’ responsibility to prevent their younger children from straying.

Unlike the more mature and established food and hospitality sectors, unforced collaboration on projects with no financial gain does not come easily to the global tech giants. In fact, those of us who have worked on child internet safety over the past 10 years, including me, have all found that it is only when you legislate that you get real, concrete change in this space, as the age-appropriate design code championed by the noble Baroness has so ably demonstrated. What we have also learned from the age-appropriate design code is that it is possible to define standards in the digital space, and that good regulators can do that in such a way that it sparks real innovation and creativity in the sector that they regulate.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I fear that the Government will be tempted to agree with the principles of the Bill but will argue that it should all be picked up as part of the draft online safety Bill. I do not think that is the right approach. When you build new functionality into digital platforms, you make those changes in a series of releases—bite-size changes that can be developed, tested and implemented in a relatively short space of time and that deliver real benefits to users, one after another. That is why you have a series of releases of software upgrades on your mobile phone, rather than one big change every few years.

We should be taking the same approach to digital safety. Rather than waiting for the single, enormous project that always takes longer than you think it will, costs more and fails to deliver on the overarching vision, where we have clearly identified improvements that can be set out and then built into products and are consistent with our overall direction, we should get on with them. Age assurance is a known and tightly defined issue with known, real harms happening every day. The sooner tech companies have certainty of the minimum standards expected of them, the sooner they can commence the innovation and development needed to comply, and we have seen from the age-appropriate design code that genuine improvements from those tech platforms are forthcoming.

We have been debating digital age verification and age assurance in this House for many, many years now. It is time to stop debating and act. I urge the Government to support this Bill not just in principle but in practice, so that Ofcom and the tech sector can get started now in ensuring that our children use only age-appropriate services, rather than wait longer still. Our children have waited too long as it is.

Regulating in a Digital World (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will begin by commending and congratulating the Communications Committee and its chairman, my noble friend Lord Gilbert, for an excellent and very far-sighted report. I should declare my own interest: I was a trustee of Doteveryone until recently, and the chief executive of TalkTalk less recently.

I have personally campaigned for balanced internet safety regulation for a long time. I passionately believe in the good that the digital world is bringing to society. I also believe in free markets and competition driving that good. However, it is clear that we also need to have a civilised digital world and that it needs regulation to protect the vulnerable and to ensure a level, competitive playing field in order to continue driving innovation.

That position has felt quite a lonely place for quite a long time, with many of my fellow tech leaders arguing strongly that liberal markets will solve these problems; that the internet should be a completely open, unregulated space; or that no regulation is possible, because technology is moving too fast. On the other hand, campaigners have argued for blanket bans and blocks. I am therefore delighted to see—in this report, in the Government’s response in the online harms White Paper and in views expressed on both sides of the House, in this Chamber and in the other place—that there is a growing consensus that self-regulation of the digital world is not enough and not working, and that we need regulation that is thoughtfully designed across a whole range of potential social and economic harms.

I am particularly pleased to see agreement on legislating to create a statutory duty of care. That puts into practice the first principle that the committee’s report sets out: that we need to look for parity between the offline and online world wherever possible. A statutory duty of care that, in a sensible and balanced way, puts the onus on organisations to look after their customers and stakeholders seems to me a fantastic way forward, and we have plenty of offline precedent to guide us in our online regulation.

I would also like to congratulate the committee on its work in setting out a principles-based approach to regulation; its 10 principles are excellent. Why are some of those 10 principles not replicated in the Government’s thinking in their response? It seemed to me that they are a balanced and comprehensible set of guidelines for us to shape regulation for the future.

I would like to move to an important issue raised by my noble friend Lord Gilbert, on which I am less convinced that there is consensus: whether we should be addressing digital regulation piecemeal in each different part of society as it arises, or in a co-ordinated and more strategic way. In business, almost every large historic, physical, non-digital business has worked out that you need to bring digital leadership into one place for at least a period of time—you need to bring together all the teams looking at driving change on your digital agenda if you are really going to get momentum. It does not need to be done for ever. I have tried it both ways in my business career—keeping it separate or pulling it together—and, if you really want to create a step change in a physical organisation that is learning about the digital world, you need to have an overarching digital strategy and a team of people who specialise in looking at all the interconnectivity of these different digital issues.

It seems to me that the recommendation in this report to create the digital authority does exactly that in our physical society as we learn to integrate it with digital. The skills are too limited to keep them spread and the issues are too overlapping. It requires a different way of thinking from the old physical world. In all my experience in business, if you organise that together, you will get an acceleration of thinking and learning that can then be embedded in all the different parts of the system.

I think the committee is really on to something here. I am concerned that the Government do not appear to agree and instead prefer a more fragmented approach, creating additional regulators—which, as a good liberal Conservative, I do not like anyway—in what looks like an attempt to glue together this approach in a digital charter. To me, it looks more like a digital work plan than a charter, when compared with a statutory digital authority.

I am concerned for a number of reasons. First, I am worried that the digital charter is too close to politics. These are complex and technical issues that require a lot of detailed thought from experts who really understand the subject. Regardless of who is in charge in whichever Government we have, I am nervous about the digital charter being glued into the DCMS in a purely informal way. I also think it is too easily captured by powerful lobbyists. The tech industry is not separating out its approach to lobbying on digital regulation. Do not think for a moment that there are disparate teams working on online safety and online competition: there is one unified thought process coming through the tech industry. If we are going to get to the right, balanced answer, we should be doing the same.

It is dangerous to have your core digital strategy interwoven with an economic Ministry in DCMS. We are asking our DCMS Ministers and civil servants to be poacher and gamekeeper: to attract inward investment, but at the same time to create a fair, level playing field and safety net for the vulnerable.

Those are all reasons why, in principle, we should accept the recommendation of this report and establish a digital authority. I think we can see in practice why we should as well. Like the right reverend Prelate, I am concerned that the kids’ code—the age-appropriate design code—will get watered down through hugely effective lobbying from people who will tell you that it is impossible or that it should be very narrow. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, will give us more detail on this when she speaks, so I will try not to steal her thunder. It is a great example of why, if we are not very careful, it is impossible to balance poacher and gamekeeper.

In conclusion, I would like to congratulate the Communications Committee and its chair on this excellent report, and to ask the Minister to reconsider the Government’s response and bring forward legislation to set up a digital authority and to implement the 10 principles set out in this report. I suspect that all of us in the Chamber this evening agree that this presents a real opportunity for us to do what we did in this country 150 years ago: to manage that balance between being open to innovation and protecting everyone in society as technological innovation gathers pace. This is a hugely exciting report and I am delighted to be part of the debate this evening.

Social Media: News

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for creating this opportunity for a hugely important debate. It seems to be my lot to follow her in a number of debates where she speaks so eloquently and passionately about the importance of protecting the vulnerable in the digital age. Since she has set out so clearly the challenges and problems of civilising the digital space, I will start by reminding us all of the opportunities and the value. Social media is something that the vast majority of the world now loves. We, our children and grandchildren and our parents and grandparents in various different ways all use it for good reason—because it adds real value to our lives. We and they genuinely enjoy the privilege of being able to communicate directly with whoever we want without any intermediation. As we think about the downsides, it is important that we put it in the context of the upsides and the huge possibility and opportunity that social media gives us all.

The technology itself really is morally neutral. It is what we as human beings do with it and how we configure it that drives the good and the bad. Clearly, we have to face into the bad. I am troubled by the trade-off of choosing between platform and publisher. I worry that we are ascribing old-world, analogue labels to a new-world digital phenomenon. It is akin to looking back 100 years and asking, is the car a bicycle or a train? It is neither and both. Instead of trying to look for an old world analogy, we have to really get into the detail of the new-world risks and opportunities, otherwise we just polarise the debate. I do not think it is a surprise that the biggest proponents of the publisher analogy are old-world publishers themselves, or that the biggest proponents of the platform analogy are the new media companies themselves. Methinks both of them have vested interests in this debate and we need to get into the detail properly of what is the potential and actual real harm that is happening in this new digital space.

For social media companies, this needs to be much more than fine words. I often think the sole job of the big social media companies, ably represented by very talented people in the UK, is to say no politely to every real request for change. At best, we get fine words and some money donated to education campaigns. What we do not get is what the social responsibility of a social media company ought to be, which is to roll up its sleeves and dedicate its really scarce resource, which is the engineers that develop the technology, to configure so that we can have the good and mitigate the bad. It will require genuine changes to the technology to have both, rather than just to polarise the debate. That is how we will tackle illegal extremist content, fake news, child protection and the protection of intellectual property rights in the space—by real technology changes.

The social media businesses, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has set out—the biggest, most profitable, arguably most successful companies of this millennium—have the resources and need to start putting them to work on these subjects. If they do not, we need to be willing and able to legislate to make them. It is a responsibility on us as legislators, and for government itself, to make sure that we get enough into detail that we are not ourselves conned into the Punch and Judy show of publisher versus platform but instead get into the detail of what can practically be done to ensure that we lean into the benefits of the new technology but protect the vulnerable and protect some of the most important things in our society, our very democracy and our freedoms, as a result.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships of my register of interests in the digital space, not least as the ex-chief executive of TalkTalk and trustee of Doteveryone. I add my thanks to those of my noble friend Lady Kidron. I also thank her for her tireless campaigning on behalf of children, and the energy, drive and commitment that she has shown in bringing all of us on this journey. We definitely would not be here today without her. I also thank my noble friend the Minister and the ministerial team both here and in the other place and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. This is genuinely a team effort, both within this House and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, set out, among all the charities and organisations which work tirelessly to ensure that we protect the vulnerable in the digital world—most importantly in the case we are discussing today, our children.

A code of practice for age-appropriate design for digital services is a hugely important step. Every time I speak in this House I talk about how much I believe that the digital world is a force for good and of the opportunity it presents us, particularly as an open country which embraces new technology. We have a history of not just embracing new technology but of protecting the vulnerable as we do so. This amendment is an important landmark in that journey for the digital world as we need the digital space to be civilised, every bit as civilised as the physical world, and we struggle in debating how we ensure that the physical world is civilised.

Data is at the core of digital and therefore this amendment is at the core of building a civilised digital society as it recognises that children’s data needs must be addressed and that children need to have special protections in the digital world, just as they do in the physical world. We are taking a hugely important moral as well as legal step in our digital journey. However, a code of practice will make a difference only if it changes behaviours, and, in this case, changes the behaviours of very big and very small digital service providers. Sadly, we are debating this issue because self-regulation is not working. I certainly think it is sad that that is the case. I very much hope that this amendment will start to drive the right behaviours but it will do so only if has teeth. Therefore, when my noble friend the Minister replies, I would be interested to hear his interpretation of the powers that this amendment would give the Information Commissioner. We need it to give her position teeth. We need to ensure that the ICO has sufficient resources to conduct the consultation properly in a reasonable period of time to provide commercial businesses big and small with sufficient time to enable them to implement this measure for children. A code will be effective only if tech companies subsequently change their behaviour.

I still very much hope that this debate and the amendment itself demonstrate to technology companies big and small our commitment as a country to protect our children online, and our expectation that all businesses will play their part. I still firmly believe that the free market works in most cases. I hope that simply by setting this process in train, technology companies will start to implement some of the basic protections for children that we discussed in Committee. It will be so much easier for the ICO to implement these standards if many of the basic protections are already in place but, much more importantly, our children would be safer from tomorrow rather than in 18 months’ or two years’ time. I am delighted to see this amendment supported on all sides of the House.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I am glad to support Amendment 7 and the related amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Kidron. Like others, I commend her for her perseverance and commitment in ensuring that we see children flourish as they grow from the early years of digital interaction to adulthood.

In 2010, the annual Ofcom media report made no mention of tablet computers. In 2017, 21% of three year-olds have their own tablet. This is the world in which our children are growing up. We use the global term “children” easily, which under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child means a person under the age of 18. As those years encompass such diverse development, the Information Commissioner has a considerable challenge ahead to identify design suitable to cover all those needs. I for one wish her well.

As I have made clear on many occasions, I am for positive use of the internet by children, and for resources which help parents raise their children in the digital age. With that preface in mind, I would like to ask some questions about these amendments to clarify the intentions and the way forward.

First, during the debates we have had on Clause 8, we have talked about children aged between 13 and 16. Amendment 109 refers to a code being developed for sites,

“which are likely to be accessed by children”.

I hope that my noble friend and the Minister will clarify which age group we are referring to, since there is no definition of children in the Bill but the terms “child” and “children” are used in the headings of Clauses 8 and 191, where the relevant age of the child is 13 and 12 respectively. As Amendment 109 refers to the UNCRC, I assume that the intention is that the age-appropriate design code of practice will cover all children up to the age of 18. However, it would be very helpful for a definition of children to be included in the relevant clauses so that there is no uncertainty.

Secondly, I hope that there will be clarification of which sites will fall within the requirements of the code. Clearly, the expectation is that the code will go beyond sites which would require the consent of children, but will it apply only to sites whose primary intention is to reach children? For instance, in the last couple of weeks, Facebook has launched a chat app for children who are not old enough to be signed up to Facebook. The new app is aimed at six to 12 year-olds. Will the new code apply just to this app or to the version of Facebook that permits access by those aged 13 and above as well?

On 23 November, this House discussed online problem gambling. A number of interventions were made by noble Lords on online gambling sites that have games involving cartoon characters which look similar to characters in children’s TV, and most certainly appeal to children. When the Times reported on these games, the chief executive of the Remote Gambling Association said that companies were not deliberately targeting children but that some nostalgic games might inadvertently be attractive to them. I hope that the position of these sites under the code, which in theory should not be accessible to children but clearly are, will also be addressed.

Thirdly, how will sites complying with the age-appropriate design be obvious to parents, especially to parents who consent to their child’s use of any data? In this context, will the new code be incorporated into the next draft of the Internet Safety Strategy? Finally, how will the code be enforced? Without some good enforcement mechanism, it is likely that it will not have as wide-reaching an impact as this House hopes that it will.

These amendments have come at a late stage in our consideration of this Bill. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend and the Minister have to say in response to my questions. I hope that the other place will continue to reflect on the proposal before us today and refine it if necessary. I hope too that it will continue to ask questions about whether the digital age of consent of 13 is the most appropriate age, and that there will be satisfactory evidence that 13 is in the best interests of our young people.

The internet puts the world at the fingertips of our children. I commend my noble friend Lady Kidron for working to ensure that children are able to make the most of this amazing resource in a way that supports child development.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

It is imperative that children and young people are able to access a digital environment creatively, knowledgably and fearlessly. In helping them do so, we would be fulfilling the Government’s manifesto pledge to make the UK the best place in the world to be on line. I beg to move.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I should draw the attention of the House to my interests in various digital organisations as set out in the register. I put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with a heavy heart, if I am honest. I have spent the past eight years running an internet service provider and arguing that competition is the route to delivering better services for consumers, and a large part of me would really like to believe that the fierce competition that exists among social media companies and other web applications would drive to the right outcomes for our children and for parents looking to protect their children, but the sad truth is that that is not the case. I have worked for and with many very well-meaning and talented people who lead these businesses, but the truth is that some of the largest companies in the world are simply not putting in place the most basic protections for our children. It is clear that our children are not protected. What is more, children say that themselves. They love social media platforms, but in research conducted by the Children’s Society, 83% of children said that they think that social media companies should do more to protect them, and we know that if we ask parents we get very similar statistics.

It is also clear that we know what could be done. It is no good saying we should set minimum standards if we do not have a sense of what those basic minimum standards would be. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has just set out, the children’s charities, led mainly on this by the NSPCC and the Anti-Bullying Alliance, are very clear about what some very basic standards would look like: the strongest privacy settings being default on for anyone under 18; geolocation turned off as a default if you are under 18; regular prompts about your privacy settings targeted in language that under-18s will understand; age being a required field when signing up for a service; and clear, transparent reporting processes if a child reports abusive behaviour on that platform in children’s language.

These are not difficult things, and I hope they are not contentious, yet they are not being done. We owe it to our children to step back and ask why these basic things are not being done. People attempted to argue that this is because these are small start-ups scrambling in the rush to build a tech business, but I am afraid the basic things I have just listed are by and large not done by the largest businesses on the planet, providing services to the vast majority of our children.

The second reason people argue these things are not being done is that these are global businesses that will develop only one, global, product and they cannot—they are terribly sorry—adjust for our children’s needs when they are working on their global technology road map. That is just not a good enough argument. In every other form of regulation the world over, good regulation begins in one geographical area and then spreads. We should not allow these large companies to tell us that because they are global they cannot engage with us locally. Actually, they are all learning that that is not true.

I suspect that the real reason we are not getting change is a very practical one, which is that every technology company in the world has a contended development pipeline, by which I mean they have more things they want to do to improve their product for their customers than they have the resource or capability to deliver. I say this having been a chief executive of a tech company: you spend your life trying to prioritise the list of ideas and innovations, and the harsh reality is that protecting children is not coming high enough up that contended technology stack in any of these businesses. That is probably not surprising, because children themselves will be asking for other things as well, and it is exactly why you need to have regulation.

We accept absolutely, almost as an act of faith, that minimum health and safety standards are necessary in the physical world and that factories have to meet basic regulatory standards. The digital world is no different. We know what those basic standards should be now. I am sure they will change over time, but we know enough to set them. Our children’s mental health is every bit as important as people’s physical health as they grow up. This is something that we have to face.

I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I am getting the procedures of the House wrong, but my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox asked me to add her voice to this debate. Although she is currently in her place, she says:

“I cannot be in my place for the length of the debate today but I would like to add my voice to the amendment. There is a clear need for more to be done to protect children and to ensure that they can realise the multiple benefits of engaging with the internet while recognising that they are not yet experienced users.


I welcome the opportunity to design accessible and clear services that help children to navigate around safely. As others may already have raised, designing for children is not technically difficult—the BBC has been doing it well online for many years, but it is right to ensure more services are as careful and do not shirk their responsibilities. As I raised in Second Reading, I would very much hope that the ICO will be given the necessary resources to be able to handle Baroness Kidron’s sensible suggestions alongside the other sizeable new areas of activity that they are being given in this Bill”.


Switching back to my own voice, I join the noble Baroness in being convinced of the good that the digital world can do, but as with all technology, we need to mould it to meet our needs, not vice versa, and it is high time we set out the basic safety requirements our children need. That is what this set of amendments intends to do, which is why I support it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, as I have said on a number of occasions, my previous job for 40 years was a teacher, 20 of those as a head teacher. One of my prime responsibilities as a head teacher was the safeguarding of children in my school. That was the most important thing I did: to make sure they were safe, so that those primary-age children, aged from five to 11, and nursery as well, could enjoy their childhood and their parents could know that they were safe and enjoying their innocence.

The Government did a lot with their education policies about safeguarding. Anyone visiting the school had to be checked and double-checked and had to wear identification. Children who went out of school had to be escorted properly and correctly. As part of our personal and social health education, we made sure that young people themselves understood. Yet, when it comes to this area, we seem not to take the role as seriously as we should. I was reading the newspapers on the train from Liverpool this morning. I just could not believe the Times headline:

“Children as young as ten are sexting”.


The article says that,

“according to figures from the National Police Chiefs Council. In 2015-16, there were 4,681 cases”,

where children as young as 10 were either sending inappropriate messages or photographs to other pupils or receiving them. Imagine it was your daughter who at the age of seven or eight—and some of them are that young—was receiving inappropriate pictures from other pupils. How would you feel as a parent? Is that really protecting or safeguarding those children?

I do not want to speak at length in this debate; I think the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Harding, have said it all. It is not beyond our wit to do these simple things. I have seen for myself that self-regulation does not work. I hope that between now and Report the Government will put aside any feeling that, “We can’t do this because of the EU, because of our own lethargy, because of what we have said in the past or because it will create more regulation”. This is about children. Let us all agree that on Report we can agree these eminently sensible amendments.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests. I only recently, four months ago, stepped down as chief executive of TalkTalk, the internet service provider.

In my brief time in the House, I have heard many speeches lamenting poor broadband speeds, and it is quite cheering to speak today in a debate about a potential, although admittedly only partial, solution. Connectivity, as my noble friend said, is essential to modern life, and becoming more and more essential. Unfortunately, the copper wires that we all—98% of households—depend on for broadband today are not fit for propose. It is nothing short of a miracle that they deliver even poor broadband at all, because they were certainly never designed to when they were laid decades ago. Full fibre, on the other hand, is designed for that.

I draw the analogy with the electricity market. Imagine if we all had apps on our phone to check the power wattage into our homes and we started conversations of an evening by saying, “I’m terribly sorry, we live quite a long way from the electricity substation here, and therefore the lights don’t work all the time”. That is exactly what happens with copper-based broadband today, and it is not good enough for now, let alone for the world that we will be inhabiting in the next 10 or 20 years. I worked for a business that was starting to trial full fibre right the way to the home. Families using it do not say, “I have fantastic ultra-fast broadband”; they just say, “My broadband works; it does what it says on the tin”. That is why pushing to have full fibre, and fibre-optic cable laid right the way to everybody’s home or business premises, is so important. It is modern technology that will not just be fit for today—all you have to do is pump more power down it and it will be fit for a very long time ahead.

It is extremely good to support the Bill today, because although I am hugely hopeful about the role Britain can play in the digital revolution, and how we can emerge stronger and more competitive as a result of it, we do not do very well on full-fibre take-up today. As I have said, 98% of households use a copper-related product, so although availability is a bit more than that, there is a 2% take-up in the UK. That compares to 40% in Sweden, 26% in Portugal, 11% in France and an EU average of just under 9%. These are figures from the FTTH, the Fibre to the Home Council Europe, from this time last year. We are a long way behind today and I am pleased to support a Bill that will incentivise all providers to start investing more firmly in full fibre. The danger is that the large incumbents attempt to eke out a return from their legacy copper assets, while the new businesses are daunted by the sheer scale of the challenge ahead in investing in full fibre. So it is great to see the Government coming up with a proposal that will genuinely incentivise everybody to invest.

I will just make three brief comments on the Bill. First, it is very important that the scheme cannot be gamed. I am reliably informed by people in the industry that, according to the business case based on full rates relief, ripping out existing fibre and replacing it with a new one that would be eligible for rates relief would pay back in just a couple of years. It would be a real shame if an intent to do the right thing translated into a subsidy for the old networks we already have. I assume that this will be in secondary legislation, and it would be very good to hear from my noble friend how the Government intend to ensure that this cannot be gamed and will genuinely incentivise the building of new fibre to premises across the UK.

Secondly, this is a good Bill but it is only a relatively small contribution. I believe the Treasury estimate is £60 million over five years—would that all our broadband problems could be solved with £60 million over five years—so this is good but it is only a start. The Minister has set out quite an impressive list of other initiatives that the Government are putting towards nudging, cajoling and encouraging the industry to build out more fibre, and it is hugely important that we complete on all those actions. It is not the words that will drive this but the actions and there is a lot more to do, particularly making it easier for all providers to access existing poles and ducts; ensuring that the commitment to the universal service obligation is not an excuse to rely more on copper and less on investing in fibre; and ensuring, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has just said, that Openreach separation is just that and genuinely drives the investment that the country needs.

I bow to the experts here, of which I am definitely not one, on the rating regime. While temporary short-term relief in a specific sector is good, I very much doubt that it is the long-term answer to enable businesses to understand how the rating regime works and invest in the things that the country needs for the long-term future. That all said, it is important that we do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. This is a good Bill and I am pleased to support it.

Digital Understanding

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for tabling this debate. I declare my interest as a trustee of the digital charity Doteveryone, which the noble Baroness chairs so ably. She and I have campaigned for a long time about basic digital skills, and a number of noble Lords here today have spoken very eloquently about that. So I want to park the issue of basic digital skills; they are so essential that a lot has already been said about them today. I hope the Minister will update us on what the Government are doing to deliver on their commitments to spend money on and support universal basic digital literacy.

Instead, I shall focus my comments on the importance of digital understanding more broadly. Basic digital skills and digital infrastructure are essential to be able to start to understand the digital world, and that is really what this debate is all about: broad digital understanding. People are afraid of the things they do not understand. They are particularly afraid of the things they do not understand that threaten their way of life, and we should have no illusions that the digital world is going to do that to a large number of people. There will be good change and bad change. I firmly believe that the good will outweigh the bad, but it is unlikely to happen simultaneously and symmetrically so that individuals are not left stranded unless we do something about it.

I shall talk briefly about one example: cars. If you take a taxi ride in London today and mention the word “Uber”, your conversation is pretty much guaranteed for the rest of the journey. The danger is that those taxi drivers are actually fighting yesterday’s battle. Come driverless cars, it is not going to be a question of regulating the drivers of Uber taxis; we need to think about how we prepare a huge swathe of society to build different skills in order to have different jobs in the new world. We also need to think about how we regulate those driverless cars. I think it was in 1930 or 1931 that the Highway Code was first drafted. One thing that has remained consistent in that code is the exhortation to drivers to drive with care and consideration of others. We are going to need to work out what the Highway Code for driverless cars is that ingrains that in the machine learning and the algorithms. We cannot abdicate that responsibility to either our children or grandchildren in the way that our grandparents did in working the VCR, nor can we abdicate that responsibility to the brilliant software engineers. I honestly think they are the last people who should be working out the new Highway Code and the moral and ethical regulatory debates that that will bring.

To create the right regulatory framework—I have picked one tiny innovation that the digital world is bringing—all of us need a general understanding of that technology to be able to engage in the debate with those brilliant software engineers, rather than to run away from them. That is why this debate is so important and why it is so fantastic, for me as someone who has worked in the tech sector for a long time, to see so many people in the Chamber today bringing such varied perspectives to this subject.

I ask the Minister what he and his department are doing to drive further digital understanding in Whitehall, in Westminster and beyond. Some very important work needs to happen now. I think we already see the signs of fear of change in our society. I would not suggest that technology is the only reason why we have a very fractured and unhappy political discourse today but it is undoubtedly one of the underlying reasons, and that is only going to increase. I hope that in future we will be discussing the real ethical and regulatory issues, rather than the need to discuss them one day.

Data Ethics Commission

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to set up a Data Ethics Commission, as set out in their 2017 manifesto.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my digital interests as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, data governance and the effective and ethical use of data are vital for the future of our economy and our society. The Government are committed to creating a sound ethical framework in the UK that will give people confidence in how their data are being handled and used. We are working closely with industry, civil society groups and academia to examine how we can best achieve this.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his Answer. It is encouraging to hear his enthusiasm, but the scale and scope of data usage is growing fast. Just in the past couple of weeks, parents have been scrambling to work out how to protect their children’s location from Snap Map, and we have heard that Vodafone has been using robots to screen candidates in advance of interviews. Just because you can does not mean that you automatically should. The technology world will not wait for us. Will my noble friend say when a commission will be set up?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this because we agree that these issues are vital. It is critical that we get the rules right so that we can give the public confidence in how their data are being used. I completely agree with her that things are moving very fast. I can be more specific about the timing when we have consulted various groups that will be set up or have been set up, and when we have looked at the reports, particularly the Royal Society and British Academy report. When we have considered those reports we can be more specific, but we aim to update our thinking later in the year.