UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Digital Impact

Baroness Shields Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shields (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to make my maiden speech as a Member of the House. It is an even greater honour to do so on a topic that is this important and so close to my heart.

Before I begin, I want to thank your Lordships for the remarkably warm welcome that I received here after my Introduction. What is particularly touching is the kindness and graciousness that noble Lords have extended to me. Your Lordships have made me feel very much at home here in this great House. Although I am still finding my way around, I want to thank the clerks, the doorkeepers and the staff, who remain most kind to and patient with me. I also want to acknowledge my mentors and noble friends Lady Hanham and Lady Eaton for their wisdom and guidance, and my dear supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and my noble friend Lord Marland, who encouraged me to make my maiden speech today. They know that this topic means a great deal to me, because I have spent my life in the pursuit of developing technology and innovation for good.

Today, I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for creating the iRights initiative, and her passion and determination to protect the rights of young people in this digital world. We are on this quest together. I am grateful to her for making this her personal mission, and I am confident that the work that she is doing will make a great impact on empowering young people and encouraging them to make better and more informed choices.

Over the past 25 years I have had the privilege of building some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Bebo and AOL. I feel fortunate to be asked to participate in the iRights initiative in my capacity as a technology industry veteran and as the Prime Minister’s adviser on the digital economy. My desire is to contribute further to this most important work.

Children today live in an always-on social, digital and connected world. With the click of a button, they build relationships with people across the globe. Everything that they want to do and learn is simply available to them on demand wherever they are. The velocity of change in the world brought about by technology and inspired thinking is unprecedented. We should welcome it with open arms. But as guardians of the next generation, we should also keep our eyes wide open. We should ensure that the companies building digital products and services for our children use the premise of safety first in every aspect of their design and development, so that what they create is safe by design.

The reason that this is so important is that a minority of people will use technology to exploit and harm our children, to bully and harass them, and in some cases, with far direr consequences, abuse them for sexual purposes. The same technology that is allowing our children to turn their dreams into reality can turn their lives into a nightmare. During my tenure in government I have been working closely with the Home Office and the National Crime Agency, and I have seen at first hand the terrible harm that can be caused to children by people who abuse technology for criminal means.

In 2012-13, the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, CEOP, received a staggering 18,887 reports relating to child sexual exploitation. In 2011, the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reviewed an overwhelming 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child pornography, which is nearly 4,000% more than in 2007. It saddens me beyond belief that 19% of the offenders identified had images of children younger than three years old on their devices; 39% of them had images of children under six years old; and 83% of them had images of children aged under 12. As I looked at these data in the summer of 2013 and at the trajectory of things, it was clear to me that we urgently needed a strong, effective strategy to protect our children online, and our Government took bold action.

The Prime Minister called together internet service providers and internet platform companies, and he set a challenge: to enlist their brightest minds in a mission to protect children all over the world from online abuse and exploitation. Last November, the Prime Minister and the President of the United States agreed to set up a joint UK-US task force to counter these horrendous crimes. The task force was established to focus on developing a better model for defending children in an increasingly digital world—a new level of co-operation to stop these horrific crimes.

As a result, working alongside Governments and law enforcement agencies, many of the leading technology companies have made much progress. I am happy to report that they are working side by side with government and NGOs in this pursuit. However, eradicating the crimes that threaten our children online remains a significant challenge. For every measure taken, the perpetrators of these crimes use new tools to change course and evade detection. To win this battle, we have no choice but to be faster, nimbler and more innovative than they are.

Luckily, the internet offers us a window into this offending behaviour—the tiny visible part of an otherwise hidden crime—and presents opportunities to identify the victims and perpetrators. As long as this window remains open, which may not be for ever, it is incumbent on government, law enforcement and industry to work together to do all that can be done to identify these perpetrators and protect their victims, who in all too many cases are unable to speak for or defend themselves.

In April this year, the technology industry came together in a first-ever industry alliance called We Protect. In that forum, technical experts representing 48 of the world’s leading technology companies collaborated to develop breakthrough approaches for protecting children from online abuse and exploitation.

The people who work in our digital industries represent some of the brightest minds in the world. They are the kind of people who, when they set their minds to a challenge, are able to step up and develop solutions to the world’s most difficult problems. The impact of cross-industry collaboration in developing these solutions cannot be overestimated. If we want to make a fundamental difference to the lives of vulnerable children all over the world, this modus operandi must continue.

I am happy to report that our work is paying off. I am proud and delighted to be able to tell noble Lords that next month, at the Prime Minister’s global summit to combat online child sexual exploitation, we will be presenting solutions created as a result of this new model. We will also be showcasing a number of breakthrough innovations that will be implemented by the world’s largest search engines, communication platforms and social networks. Real progress has been made, which means that our children are already safer online and incidents of actual harm to our children have been prevented.

The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that states act in the best interests of the child. Yet technology, without enlightened leadership, respects no rights or boundaries. The most popular internet platforms reach more people every day than there are in any sovereign country. By establishing a new paradigm of co-operation and collaboration with industry, NGOs and experts, we are creating an atmosphere of willingness and we can make real change in the way that we protect our children in the digital world.

Every child has the potential to dream, invent and amaze the world, but they must be able to do so creatively, knowledgeably and fearlessly. By working across national borders and using the skills of our brightest in business, I am happy to say that we are starting to give our children the future that they deserve. Thank you.