Growing up with the Internet (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, and his Communications Committee on its excellent report, Growing Up with the Internet, which I very much welcome. The subject area that it highlights is hugely important and one that I have sought to address through five online safety Bills and, this year, through my Digital Economy Act 2017 (Amendment) (Definition of Extreme Pornography) Bill.

Noble Lords will recall that since 2013 the big four ISPs have provided customers with an unavoidable choice about whether or not to have adult content filters or, in the case of Sky, default-on adult content filters. Having considered the experience of the big ISPs since 2013, the committee’s report makes two key recommendations about adult content filters. First, paragraph 258 recommends that, rather than having a voluntary approach to adult content filters presented in different ways by some but not all ISPs, there should be a statutory obligation on ISPs to provide adult content filters, and this should be presented in the default-on format.

Secondly, paragraph 259 recommends that the process of filtering should be informed by common and transparent standards to empower parents to make use of adult content filters, so that they do not get nasty shocks as they move from one ISP to another. It also highlighted the need for mechanisms to deal with overblocking. Given that the Government previously stated that filtering presents what they called a “vital tool for parents”, I contend that it is now imperative that the Government act on these recommendations.

This is all the more important now, given that they have rejected the general introduction of age verification checks for all online adult content, not just pornography, proposed in another place by the right honourable Member for Basingstoke last year. To this end, I am disappointed that in the Government’s response to the committee, they have rejected both recommendations.

I very much welcome the opportunity provided by today’s debate to examine their argument for doing so, which they presented in three paragraphs of their formal response, sent by the Secretary of State to the committee in July. I will now examine the response in a little detail. The first and third paragraphs engage with the committee’s recommendation in paragraph 258. The first paragraph takes up some space defining how the current system works, and then says that it works well. It continues:

“ISPs are best placed to know what their customers want, and to deliver flexible parental control tools that keep up-to-date with rapid changes in technology. A mandatory approach to filters risks replacing current, user-friendly tools (filtering across a variety of categories of content, but built on a common set of core categories) with a more inflexible ‘top down’ regulatory system”.


The problem with this is that the assertions that the current system works well and that ISPs are best placed to deliver what their customers want are read as assertions and completely fail to engage with the critical piece of evidence that the Communications Committee brought to the attention of the Government and your Lordships’ House at paragraph 251. The report highlights dramatically different filtering take-up rates between active choice, used by most of the big ISPs and default on, used by Sky. It states:

“Evidence shows that the usage of Sky’s filter systems is far higher than that of the other ISPs, as would be expected with a default on system. Customers are free to switch the filters off, but there are a significant number who do not actively choose to”.


If you examine the oral evidence given to the committee and the Ofcom report on internet safety measures, Strategies of Parental Protection for Children Online, you see that the difference in take-up between active choice on the one hand, which is used by the other big ISPs, and default on, used by Sky, is certainly not slight; it is dramatic. We are talking about a difference between an 8% to 10% take-up rate with active choice and a more than 60% take-up rate with default on. Indeed, if you read the oral evidence, you will see that this claim is made all the more striking by the fact that Sky initially adopted active choice. After getting only an 8% to 10% take-up, it moved to default on. As Sky told the committee:

“We have considered both options and we are pretty confident we have got the right outcome, if the objective is high parental engagement and high take-up of controls”.


The report acknowledges that this makes complete sense by referencing the evidence of Dr David Halpern, who headed up the nudge unit at No. 10 for some years. He noted that people have,

“a very strong tendency to stick with whatever the default had been set at”.

If the Government are serious about keeping children safe online, how can they cast aside the crucial recommendation to require statutory adult content filters on the basis of default on? It is one thing not to take steps to promote default on in the absence of clear evidence that it works, but quite another to do nothing in the face of clear evidence that it does—and works much better than active choice. With the knowledge that default on works much more effectively comes a responsibility to act, if we want to do right by our children.

To this end, I am disturbed by the fact that the Government simply dismiss the proposal and that the justification that they provide does not attempt to engage with or criticise the relevant evidence that the committee has presented. It rather suggests that they do not have a good justification for adopting these positions but have decided none the less to accommodate a situation in which most ISPs continue to operate active choice. If the Government have a real and relevant reason for not requiring default-on filters, even though the evidence clearly demonstrates a far higher take-up rate than with active choice, will the Minister please share it with us?

I now turn to the third paragraph of the Government’s response to the Communications Committee’s recommendations on filters, which completes their response to the recommendations in paragraph 258. Like the first paragraph of the response, this paragraph ignores the point of central importance—the evidence that default-on is a much better tool for protecting children than active choice—and focuses instead on the proposal that ISPs be required to offer adult content filters by law rather than through self-regulation. It contends that the big four ISPs—which are already doing this—cover 95% of the market and that all the remaining ISPs do not service households with children and are, consequently, not relevant. Two points must be made in response to this. First, this is a completely irrelevant argument with respect to the case for requiring ISPs to present filtering in the default-on format, since most of the market does not benefit from this on any basis.

Secondly, while it most certainly is the case that some of the smaller ISPs that account for the rest of the market after the big four service only businesses, this is not so for all of them. Unless we want to effectively say that some children do not matter, we have to address the smaller ISPs that service homes with children.

I now move to the second key recommendation of the report, in paragraph 259, which states:

“Those responsible for providing filtering and blocking services need to be transparent about which sites they block and why, and be open to complaints from websites to review their decisions within an agreed timeframe. Filter systems should be designed to an agreed minimum standard”.


This recommendation deals with three things: the need to be transparent about filtering standards; the need for a minimum standard; and a mechanism to deal with over-blocking. The only paragraph left in the Government’s response to the two filtering recommendations in paragraphs 258 and 259 is the middle one. This deals with over-blocking and does not cause me any concern, but has nothing to say about the need for common filtering standards. It means that the Government’s response to the committee’s filtering recommendations has not engaged at all with one of its key proposals.

ISPs have considerable power in setting filtering standards and, in the absence of common standards, the challenge of keeping children safe online becomes that much more difficult. As paragraph 52 of the report elaborates:

“Children use multiple devices to access digital services and can connect from their home network, school, friends’ houses, or by using public wi-fi and mobile networks”.


According to the BBC:

“These can all have different levels of filtering and present challenges to parents who want to try to control their child’s use of the internet”.


Parents who are used to a certain set of filtering standards under one ISP assume, not unnaturally, that the same standards apply generally. This can be a challenge if, in addition to using the internet at home, your child also uses it in other contexts where filters are applied but by other ISPs, for example at school, through public wi-fi in a cafe, through the internet at a friend’s house, et cetera. It is also an issue for families who change their ISP and assume that family-friendly filters provided by another ISP will subscribe to the same standards. It is because of this that my Online Safety Bills have required Ofcom to set filtering standards further to a public consultation.

I am under no illusion that filters make the internet safe—they do not. Filters do, however, help to make the internet safer for our children, and given that the Government have refused to introduce age-verification checks for other forms of adult content beyond pornography, they remain vital. I am disappointed that the Government have failed to engage properly with the important recommendations in this report on filtering, especially the imperative for sanctioning default-on above active choice, and the need for common standards. I ask that when the Minister responds, she provides a proper response to the filtering recommendations in the report that actually engages with the presenting arguments, or that she agrees to take another look at this.