Lord Vaizey of Didcot debates involving the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport during the 2019 Parliament

News Broadcasting: Regulation

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Thursday 14th March 2024

(2 weeks, 1 day ago)

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Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on securing this important debate on the regulation of news broadcasting companies. The role of due impartiality in broadcasting is an important issue to discuss.

I should say that I have skin in the game, as I have a regular Friday night show—7 pm to 10 pm—on Times Radio, where I normally cover culture. I always have an MP on the show: sometimes I am interviewing a Labour MP, sometimes a Conservative MP. I also cover shows. I covered Mariella Frostrup’s show recently, where we changed the section “Meet the Member” to “Meet the Peer”. I was lucky enough to have the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, on that section, but I did not feel that at any point we strayed beyond the rules of due impartiality in discussing his distinguished career. The noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, has been on as “my frenemy” on a Sunday show hosted by Alexis Conran. And of course, I should say that the Minister has been a guest on my show as well.

But enough about me; let us talk about due impartiality, because it is important that we discuss it. Obviously, we need to think back: as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, this has been around for 100 years. There is a reason why we have due impartiality rules, and there is a reason why we need to debate them now. We had them then because the BBC was by far the most dominant broadcaster, along with ITV and, to a certain extent, Sky News when it came into being. Most people got their news from linear television news, and it was important that they got it in as unbiased a fashion as possible. We have never worried about due impartiality from the rich newspaper ecology that we have in this country.

Now we face a very interesting landscape, where we have a plethora of new media companies able to launch because of technology—not just Times Radio but GB News, LBC and TalkTV. And we have streaming. If you decide that flat earth is your thing, you can spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, looking at flat earth conspiracy videos on YouTube. Amazon and Netflix are coming within Ofcom’s remit, but there is now a plethora of media.

We all know why we are talking about due impartiality. We want to avoid what we think we saw in the US, which was the rise of Fox News on the right—with its heavily biased programming and positions dictated to a certain extent by the management team—and CNN on the left. It is perhaps ironic that, if you examine the rise of President Trump, you might actually see that CNN played a bigger role, because, frankly, Trump was box office and got wall-to-wall coverage on CNN anyway.

When we discuss due impartiality, we need to be cautious. We need to have this debate not because we dislike GB News—although it does often air questionable content—or another right-wing broadcaster, because there are plenty of other stations that you could accuse of potentially breaching impartiality. LBC has David Lammy and James O’Brien—he is a broadcaster I admire, but nobody can pretend they do not know where his politics lie. The BBC has in fact today reappointed Robbie Gibb, a Conservative activist, to its board for another four years. Interestingly, in this Conservative Government, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, himself is investigating the BBC for due impartiality.

Nevertheless, I do support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said in his remarks, which is that it is important, as much for Ofcom’s sake as for ours, that it is not left to develop policy on its own without some oversight from Parliament, some indication from Parliament, about which direction it should travel in—and I absolutely agree with him that Ofcom is an excellent regulator that has proved itself time and time again able to navigate distinctly choppy waters where people have very strong opinions. I thought the remarks from Melanie Dawes, the chief executive, about holding broadcasters with a higher audience to a higher standard, was an interesting adaptation of doctrine, a bit like a papal bull, which deserves to be discussed in Parliament.

I sat on the fence when I raised the issue at Second Reading of the Media Bill—and guess what? I am going sit on the fence again and simply come to the position that we need to debate what we mean by “due impartiality” in a fragmented media world. Having said that, I will get off this fence and say emphatically that we need to continue to regulate broadcasters and we need the essence of due impartiality to continue.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, I declare my interests as a broadcaster on Times Radio, chairman of Marlow Film Studios and chairman of Common Sense Media in the UK. It is a great pleasure to follow the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hall. I loved working with him when I was a junior Culture Minister many years ago.

Many noble Lords have said during the debate that this is the biggest media Bill for 20 years. Of course, the last big media Bill, in 2003, created Ofcom. It was genuinely a very big media Bill and Ofcom has indeed proved itself to be an effective and robust regulator. It has increased its reach and powers, even to the extent that it now sits in your Lordships’ Chamber, keeping watch over the debate to see that we stick to the rules and give it appropriate praise. It has taken over the regulation of the BBC, which I oversaw and was very much in favour of. But when it comes to broadcasting, interestingly, Ofcom is wrestling now with the difficult question of impartiality—particularly some of the challenges posed to it by, for example, new and innovative stations such as GB News, which is testing the boundaries.

Interestingly, there does not seem to be much room in the Bill or this debate to discuss impartiality, or indeed the Broadcasting Code itself and whether it is up to speed. I am not putting forward a specific view here. There is a particular recognition by Ofcom that the broadcasting landscape is changing as more people are able to start television channels, but a debate on how the Broadcasting Code should adapt to this changing landscape is perfect for this House.

This is not a very important or very big Bill. That is not an insult to either the Government or the Minister, because we are simply tweaking the edges. In my view, the biggest media Bill we have had since 2003 was the Online Safety Act, which gave Ofcom very important powers to regulate the content of platforms. That, of course, encapsulates the change we are debating, because we are now a country that watches streamed content, and people are moving in their droves online. That is what the consumer is doing naturally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, pointed out in her robust speech on the quality of children’s programming, for which she has been a staunch advocate for many years.

It is true that, as my noble friend Lord Mendoza said, the streamers make great investment in the UK but the link to the public service broadcasters is important. Many of the senior executives you might meet from these big companies trained at places such as the BBC, so we still provide not just quality broadcasting but quality broadcasting executives to the streamers. It seems that at the heart of this debate is the support for our PSBs, particularly the BBC, no matter how much it annoys us. The existential question at the heart of the debate, which we have to address, is: what are we going to do when all the content we consume as British subjects is owned by the Americans? It will be on Netflix and Disney; it will be on Amazon, Apple and YouTube. If we are to preserve British cultural content, if we believe that to be important, we are going to have to support as best we can the BBC and the public service broadcasters. That may mean asking difficult questions such as whether their three streaming services should be allowed to merge— presumably in the face of opposition from the Competition and Markets Authority —and whether we can bring a degree of scale to this debate in order to have any sense of competition.

I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hall, mentioned that he was pleased that radio has its own section in this debate, because radio is something I am passionate about. While I might have used this opportunity to big up Times Radio, what I actually want to talk about is Global. I was delighted to see that the founder of Global, Ashley Tabor, got a CBE while the chief executive, Stephen Miron, who has led it for 16 years, has just announced that he will be stepping down and becoming the chairman. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Allen, one of our own, is the current chairman. It is a great British success story because we love radio in this country. Global took some assets such as Capital Radio and has turned them into real broadcasting powerhouses. It has been helped to do that by a process of deregulation, so I am pleased to see that the Government are continuing that process.

Behind deregulation lies the ability to trust the broadcasters to know where their audiences are and to use technology to provide local content—not necessarily having to be based locally, but still able to present local content. On that point, I would challenge how we have debated genres for public service broadcasters, because if we sit in this Chamber and decide what we think are important parts of the broadcasting genre land- scape, we will end up disappearing down a rabbit hole. I would err on the side of deregulation simply to give our broadcasting companies, whether public service broadcasters or commercial, room to thrive.

Specifically on radio, I would love to hear the Minister’s views on switchover. I avoided the date for switchover like the plague. There is nothing worse than having a person of a certain age with eight FM radios, one in the garden shed, coming at you if you tell them that they have to buy a digital radio. It seems that, rather like DTT, this should be led by the industry. I am a passionate supporter of community radio and would be interested in the Minister’s views about its future. I would also challenge the BBC because, again, if there is any area where the BBC can have a major impact, it is on local radio. I simply do not understand why it keeps pulling back from local radio and making such a mess of it.

The regulation of video on demand is fascinating. I would love to see how it is to be implemented in practice—how to effectively regulate a library of content with things such as impartiality or a watershed. I am delighted that Channel 4 can now invest in its own content. The debate on privatisation, which again I was open-minded about, proved to be an enormous and costly distraction for Channel 4. I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Bethell that the British Board of Film Classification should be given a monopoly on ratings; I should say that Common Sense Media provides excellent ratings, which are loved by British parents, and there should be a choice. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that the one issue we have not debated, partly because we do not have any answers, is the impact of artificial intelligence on content.

I end by congratulating my noble friend Lord Forsyth on moving his amendment. I did not realise that if you put in a regret amendment, you get to speak at the beginning and the end of the debate. I put the House on notice that I will be putting down a regret amendment on every Second Reading of every Bill that comes before your Lordships in future.

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell (Con)
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I completely agree with my noble friend that no one should be given a monopoly on minimum standards. However, my amendment will be advocating that there should be minimum standards.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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I look forward to supporting the noble Lord’s amendment.

Arts

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Thursday 1st February 2024

(1 month, 3 weeks ago)

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Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, who has given so much to the arts over so many years. I briefly declare my interests as a trustee of the Tate, chairman of the Marlow Film Studios and a cultural broadcaster on Times Radio, broadcasting from the South Bank, but not quite to the same level as the noble Lord, Lord Bragg.

The funding for the arts in this country is not actually insubstantial, if you take the direct grants to museums, the grants through the Arts Council, the BBC itself, the tax credits which extend from film through to theatre and museums and, of course, university and local authority funding, although I accept that local authority funding is under intense pressure at the moment. This Government also deserve a great deal of credit for the support they gave the arts throughout Covid. My noble friend Lord Mendoza is not in the Chamber today, but he and Ministers worked tirelessly to ensure that the arts were supported. Nevertheless, it will not surprise your Lordships to learn that I think we can still give more.

I take a very simple view: that the arts budget is effectively a rounding error in terms of what government spends across the piece. It could be increased substantially for the arts insignificantly for what government spends overall, and it would make a difference. My thesis has always been that the Government should decide effectively what their national champions are—the national museums, flagship theatres, not just those in London but around the country—and fund them properly, securely and long-term, not to such an extent that it stifles their creativity, enterprise and philanthropic needs, but certainly to ensure that they do not have to keep looking over their shoulders to see whether they can keep the roof on. That to me is what one could call a no-brainer.

At Tate, for example, we have not lost our ambition. Tate Liverpool is going through its first major refurbishment for 40 years. Tate St Ives has acquired the Palais de Danse in St Ives, where Barbara Hepworth made her sculptures. We are building a new storage centre, which will be open to the public in a very deprived area of London. Please help these national institutions match their ambition.

I noted that the noble Lord focused on the economic impact of the arts, and there is no doubt that the arts and creative industries are some of our most successful industries. Their wider impact has also to be taken into account. I do not really like these terrible economic reports which say that for every pound you spend on the arts you get £500 back. I think they are nonsense—but we are world-leaders, and the arts have a huge impact on health, education, criminal justice and soft power.

The arts are the venture capital for really successful industries, such as our film, television and video games industries. Marlow Film Studios could not exist if it were not for the incredible talent that exists through this country’s heritage in television and film, but Marlow Film Studios may not exist because of the chronic and appalling planning system that exists in this country. If we look at the planning guidance in this country, we can see that cultural heritage and assets come even behind Wetherspoon pubs. The sooner we put cultural assets and heritage at the heart of our planning system and speed it up, the better.

Finally, I love the system we have in the UK of what we call the three-legged stool—core government funding, enterprise and creativity, and philanthropy. It is important to acknowledge all the people who make that happen and say thank you—thank you to the people who work in the arts, who work for salaries far lower than their talents deserve or what they could receive outside. We must thank the philanthropists, who give so generously, two of whom are in the Chamber with us today, and thank business—and yes, thank BP for its grant to the British Museum. Finally, of course, we should thank my noble friend Lord Parkinson for being such an excellent Arts Minister, and for the hard work and devotion he gives to his job as a servant to the community that he works for.

BBC: Funding

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Wednesday 17th January 2024

(2 months, 1 week ago)

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BBC: Royal Charter

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Monday 15th January 2024

(2 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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It is important to begin with the fact that the BBC will benefit from more than £3.8 billion of licence fee income per year; that is a considerable amount of money. We froze the licence fee to help people with the cost of living but it is now rising in line with inflation. It is for the BBC to decide how it spends the money that it gets from the licence fee payer within the expectations that are clearly set out in the royal charter, in which its first public purpose is:

“To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them”.


It is important that the BBC does this.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, those of us who care passionately about the BBC are very worried about the direction of travel for BBC News. There have been decimating cuts to local radio, with long-standing presenters being made redundant in the most brutal of ways, the botched merger of world news and domestic news, and the cuts to flagship programmes. As the Minister said, is it not the BBC’s duty as a publicly funded broadcaster—particularly in an age of disinformation being so widespread—to invest heavily in a news service that we all rely on?

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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Although it is up to the BBC to decide how to deliver its services, the Government are clear that it must make sure that it continues to deliver its remit as set out in the royal charter and the agreement. The Government expect Ofcom, as the BBC’s regulator, to ensure that the BBC is held to account in the way it does so. We recognise the strength of feeling on the importance of news coverage, both nationally and locally. We have raised the concerns expressed in your Lordships’ House and another place about cuts to local news reporting services, but it is up to the BBC to decide how it delivers these services with the money that it gets.

Loot Boxes in Video Games

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts
Wednesday 13th December 2023

(3 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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Research has provided evidence that loot box purchases may be linked to a variety of harms. In particular, there is robust evidence of an association with problem gambling, as the noble Lord mentions, but research has not established whether a causal relationship exists. There are a range of plausible explanations. We have developed and published the video games research framework to support high-quality, independent research into video games, including into loot boxes. If new evidence becomes available, we will consider it.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, I heap praise on the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who has been a great supporter of the video games industry, although I do not agree with him on loot boxes. I am sure that he and the Minister will have seen the recent report from the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, the trade body for video games, showing how this industry, which is bigger than film, television and music put together, has huge benefits for our wider economy, including the automotive and health sectors. Does the Minister agree with me that it is important not to overregulate such a successful industry? I refer to my entry in the register.

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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My noble friend is right to point to the huge success of the UK consumer games market. It is currently valued at more than £7 billion, which is more than double its size in 2013—during my noble friend’s heyday as the Minister responsible for it. The industry employs 27,000 people across the country, with nearly 80% of those people based outside London; there are video games clusters in Dundee, Sheffield, Manchester, Guildford and Royal Leamington Spa. The growth has of course been accelerated by generous tax reliefs, including those on which my noble friend worked in government. We are very proud of the impact that it has on our wider creative industries.

BBC Funding

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Tuesday 12th December 2023

(3 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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I have indeed pointed to the extra freedom that the Government have given the BBC to pursue its commercial income, so that it can continue to do its excellent work and be funded in a sustainable way that is fair to licence fee payers, viewers, listeners and indeed bakers.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, given that a full-scale rebellion is under way against my noble friend Lord Harlech’s—

Lord Russell of Liverpool Portrait The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
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My Lords, the time allowed for the Statement has elapsed.

Classical Music

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Thursday 7th December 2023

(3 months, 3 weeks ago)

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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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I congratulate OperaUpClose, which is one of the new operatic organisations that have joined the Arts Council national portfolio. I met another, Pegasus Opera, which is doing great work as well in encouraging new audiences and new compositions so that opera can continue to be a rich art form that people of all backgrounds get to enjoy. The noble Baroness is right that private philanthropy as well as public subsidy plays an important part. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I have had meetings with arts organisations and funding bodies to look at ways in which we might be able to create further incentives for giving. But I hope that people will be able to leverage their part in the national portfolio through the Arts Council—not just to spend the public subsidy that is given but also to be part of that network, which they now are.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, leaving aside the extreme concern that the Chancellor is favouring EU composers over British composers—I hope that nobody tells the Prime Minister that—may I ask my noble friend what he is doing to increase diversity in classical music? Will he join me in congratulating the Chineke! Orchestra on its success and all it has done to increase diversity in our orchestras, and perhaps illuminate us regarding the discussions he has had with the Arts Council to continue this impressive progress?

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
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The Arts Council did a very valuable study on diversity in classical music—diversity in every form. As I say, companies such as Pegasus Opera are doing important work in bringing people from diverse backgrounds into art forms that we can all enjoy, as are the Chineke! Orchestra and many others. Through its new national portfolio, the Arts Council is investing in more companies and organisations in more parts of the country than ever before, including those led by a more diverse range of people.

Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

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Friday 7th July 2023

(8 months, 3 weeks ago)

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Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this important debate. I refer to my register of interests, where I have numerous creative jobs, including being the president of Marlow Film Studios; that is probably the most specific one. I just want to say how grateful I am to follow such incredible and eminent speakers, all of whom have genuine and real experience of working in the creative industries. My former chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—I say “former” because I was kicked off the committee—gave an incredible outline of the report, setting out all the key details; of course, she has worked at a senior level in the media. We have also heard from the world’s greatest publisher, the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck; the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, who has had a glittering career in the media; and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, one of our foremost arts educators and practitioners—and we still have the world’s greatest Methodist preacher to come.

I welcome the Government’s vision for the creative sector industries. It was clearly provoked by our hard-hitting report; through the recommendations that we made, we managed to force some importance concessions from the Government and get a comprehensive strategy from them for the creative industries. It is a bit depressing, when the Government represent the creative industries, that they cannot come up with a more poetic title than Creative Industries Sector Vision; it does not exactly make for light or enjoyable reading, but we know that the spirit is willing and the Government are working to support our creative industries.

As noble Lords can probably tell, I want to provide a bit of a corrective because I do not think that the Government tell their own story well enough. For example, they deserve an enormous amount of praise for the way in which they handled the cultural recovery fund during the pandemic; it really made an enormous difference. There is also their recent announcement of the cultural education advisory council to implement the cultural education plan and the new music education plan. That is to be ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull; there are one or two glaring omissions in the people appointed to that commission, but we will skate over them.

One thing I always think when we talk about the arts is that it is important for Ministers—this is just a word of sage advice for my noble friend Lord Parkinson, who is without question the best arts Minister we have had since 2016—always to keep hold of the outputs, not the inputs. There is always a tendency for those of us who care passionately about the arts to talk constantly about the inputs, such as better budgets and so on, and not look at what is happening around us.

Let us look around us. The recent reopening of the National Portrait Gallery was a complete triumph. In my role as a Tate trustee, I am looking forward to the complete refurbishment of Tate Liverpool. There are new storage facility sites for places such as the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. There is the reopening of the children’s museum via the V&A and V&A East. Factory International in Manchester reopened recently, reassuringly over budget. Of course, the Manchester Art Gallery has also been a triumph. In Birmingham, there are the Steven Knight-led film studios; there are also new proposals for studios in the north-east. Look at the kind of leadership that we still enjoy in the creative industries; for example, with David Chipperfield recently winning the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture.

These are all great stories. Only today, if you read the excellent newsletter the Vaizey View, written by Alex Pleasants, you will see a reference to music exports having increased by 20% in the last year alone. No doubt many of us here will celebrate that tomorrow night in Hyde Park when we pop along to watch Bruce Springsteen. When the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, mentioned Melvyn Bragg, I was wondering whether to refer to his interview in his absence. In it, he bemoaned 12 years of Tory philistinism. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there have been huge success stories along the way. I noted that he compared a successful arts policy with the success of Athens. I do think that the one glaring omission in the Government’s arts policy is the return of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens, which will unleash a huge and thriving cultural partnership between Greece and the UK.

These are all great success stories. It sounds facetious, but the most important thing that the creative industries and the arts sector need from any Government is proper, committed and passionate leadership. It is important that we have Ministers who are there for a significant length of time and it is good to see that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, looks like he will never leave his post. That is very important. It is important that we celebrate, for example, David Chipperfield receiving the Pritzker Prize. I do not know whether the Prime Minister wrote to him, but these are the kinds of success stories that the Government should be talking about, even if they are not directly responsible for them.

To put it another way, the relentless and pointless attacks on the BBC just undermine some of the great jewels in the crown of our creative industry sector. Any sensible Government would stop them and celebrate these incredible success stories, because the UK’s creative industries are, without doubt, a massive success story. There are lots of intangible reasons why that might be the case—the English language, our ability to grow and export to the US, and so on. British individualism—the fact that we have been able to be rude about our politicians for the last 400 years—may be a factor that allows us to follow our creative nose, but there are other things that the Government could do.

At the core of what makes a successful creative industry ecosystem, to use a rather crude and inept word, is tax policy. Here again the Government deserve an enormous amount of credit for: maintaining the film tax credit and even improving it over the last couple of years; the video games tax credit; the television tax credit; and the museum and theatre tax credits, which, again, they extended. Those are very good things. Noble Lords have referred to the R&D tax credit. I know of one video games company that has taken a year to get its R&D tax credit, which may not even come through. I would be interested to know the Minister’s view on whether there is perhaps a silent agenda to make it tougher for the creative industries to access the R&D tax credit. It remains a very important piece of fiscal support for the creative industries.

The other important role is having a proper intellectual property regime. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, pointed out, the Government have climbed down, thankfully, on their proposals to weaken that regime. Again, this is about constancy and certainty. People do not want to hear bright ideas about messing about with an IP regime that, broadly speaking, works, is robust and which people rely on. One of the points that is referred to in the report is the need to scale up funding for our creative businesses and the fact that many are sold too early. This is a conundrum that is very difficult for the Government to solve. They have world-class incentives for start-ups. The same kinds of incentives do not necessarily exist for scale-ups but at the same time, there is nothing that one can do about the fact that in the US there is a huge wall of capital that can be deployed, which is not deployed in the same way in Britain.

I will pause and talk a bit about education and skills, since that seems to be the main topic that is emerging in the debate. This took up a lot of my time as a Minister. I referred earlier to the Government’s cultural education plan, which is a good thing. Again, one has to be robust to a certain extent. It is often down to head teachers to put in place a strong creative curriculum for their pupils. There is nothing stopping visionary secondary heads doing it but, of course, government can help. Things such as the EBacc did not help particularly. We talked in the culture White Paper about a proper school engagement plan in the arts, twinning arts institutions with schools and allowing children to have work placements—not just front of house or on stage but working across the whole range of different jobs that exist in any arts or creative industry organisation.

Sorting out creative industries apprenticeships is long overdue. The apprenticeship levy itself is a terrible policy to which for some reason the Government remain committed. Sorting out creative industries apprenticeships and the freelance nature of work in many creative industries should certainly be a priority.

The Government also need to get their hands around our conservatoires and specialist arts education institutions. They really are world class. We talk about the Ivy League and Oxbridge, but no country in the world has such an incredible infrastructure of these colleges. You visit them and see some of them being held together with sticky tape. They do not have a strong relationship with government and are not celebrated as a collective force. As far as I can see, there is no real, coherent strategy to support them going forward. We have things such as the Music and Dance Scheme, but these are random and bitty. It needs some coherence. This is a free hit for the Minister, because it need not cost much money and engagement at a senior government level would be so welcomed by these institutions.

I praise the Labour Party for its announcement on education yesterday. It was wonderful to see a commitment from the party opposite to put cultural education at the heart of schools until the age of 16. I learned a new word: oracy. That is really important in terms of the class ceiling and giving kids at state school the opportunity to debate and argue, with the self-confidence that it gives. That goes to the heart of why arts education is so important; it is not just about skills and creative skills but about self-confidence. Things such as the music education plan are not about creating the next generation of world-class violinists, although that would be a welcome development, but about giving a lot of children who would not have that opportunity incredible self-confidence in their achievements.

I will not dwell on Brexit, but it has obviously been a massive and comprehensive disaster for the creative industries in the UK. Even one small win, such as allowing our musicians and artists to tour freely in Europe, would be welcome. I know the Minister will redouble his efforts to sort out this unholy mess. He is not immature enough to keep blaming our European partners for being unable to solve that problem.

In summing up, I started with leadership and I will end by saying that we need joined-up government for the arts and creative industries. I have always thought that. The excellent suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, about putting the Education Secretary on the Creative Industries Council goes to the heart of that. At the heart of education, health, levelling up, and soft power and diplomacy lie our creative industries. They are world class, world beating and something of which we should all be immensely proud.

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Portrait Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
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My Lords, it is an honour, once again, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, in this Committee. I am going to speak in detail to the amendments that seek to change the way the codes of practice are implemented. Before I do, however, I will very briefly add my voice to the general comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, have just taken us through. Every parent in the country knows that both the benefit and the harm that online platforms can bring our children is not just about the content. It is about the functionality: the way these platforms work; the way they suck us in. They do give us joy but they also drive addiction. It is hugely important that this Bill reflects the functionality that online platforms bring, and not just content in the normal sense of the word “content”.

I will now speak in a bit more detail about the following amendments: Amendments 65, 65ZA, 65AA, 89, 90, 90B, 96A, 106A, 106B, 107A, 114A—I will finish soon, I promise—112, 122ZA, 122ZB and 122ZC.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My noble friend may have left one out.

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Portrait Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
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I am afraid I may well have done.

That list shows your Lordships some of the challenges we all have with the Bill. All these amendments seek to ensure that the codes of practice relating to child safety are binding. Such codes should be principles-based and flexible to allow companies to take the most appropriate route of compliance, but implementing these codes should be mandatory, rather than, as the Bill currently sets out, platforms being allowed to use “alternative measures”. That is what all these amendments do—they do exactly the same thing. That was a clear and firm recommendation from the joint scrutiny committee. The government’s response to that joint scrutiny committee report was really quite weak. Rather than rehearse the joint scrutiny committee’s views, I will rehearse the Government’s response and why it is not good enough to keep the Bill as it stands.

The first argument the Government make in their response to the joint scrutiny report is that there is no precedent for mandatory codes of conduct. But actually there are. There is clear precedent in child protection. In the physical world, the SEND code for how we protect some of our most vulnerable children is mandatory. Likewise, in the digital world, the age-appropriate design code, which we have mentioned many a time, is also mandatory. So there is plenty of precedent.

The second concern—this is quite funny—was that stakeholders were concerned about having multiple codes of conduct because it could be quite burdensome on them. Well, forgive me for not crying too much for these enormous tech companies relative to protecting our children. The burden I am worried about is the one on Ofcom. This is an enormous Bill, which places huge amounts of work on a regulator that already has a very wide scope. If you make codes of conduct non-mandatory, you are in fact making the work of the regulator even harder. The Government themselves in their response say that Ofcom has to determine what the minimum standards should be in these non-binding codes of practice. Surely it is much simpler and more straightforward to make these codes mandatory and, yes, to add potentially a small additional burden to these enormous tech companies to ensure that we protect our children.

The third challenge is that non-statutory guidance already looks as if it is causing problems in this space. On the video-sharing platform regime, which is non-mandatory, Ofcom has already said that in its first year of operation it has

“seen a large variation in platforms’ readiness to engage with Ofcom”.

All that will simply make it harder and harder, so the burden will lie on this regulator—which I think all of us in this House are already worried is being asked to do an awful lot—if we do not make it very clear what is mandatory and what is not. The Secretary of State said of the Bill that she is

“determined to put these vital protections for … children … into law as quickly as possible”.

A law that puts in place a non-mandatory code of conduct is not what parents across the country would expect from that statement from the Secretary of State. People out there—parents and grandparents across the land—would expect Ofcom to be setting some rules and companies to be required to follow them. That is exactly what we do in the physical world, and I do not understand why we would not want to do it in the digital world.

Finally—I apologise for having gone on for quite a long time—I will very briefly talk specifically to Amendment 32A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which is also in this group. It is a probing amendment which looks at how the Bill will address and require Ofcom and participants to take due regard of VPNs: the ability for our savvy children—I am the mother of two teenage girls—to get round all this by using a VPN to access the content they want. This is an important amendment and I am keen to hear what my noble friend Minister will say in response. Last week, I spoke about my attempts to find out how easy it would be for my 17 year-old daughter to access pornography on her iPhone. I spoke about how I searched in the App Store on her phone and found that immediately a whole series of 17-plus-rated apps came up that were pornography sites. What I did not mention then is that with that—in fact, at the top of the list—came a whole series of VPN apps. Just in case my daughter was naive enough to think that she could just click through and watch it, and Apple was right that 17 year-olds were allowed to watch pornography, which obviously they are not, the App Store was also offering her an easy route to access it through a VPN. That is not about content but functionality, and we need to properly understand why this bundle of amendments is so important.

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Lord Moylan Portrait Lord Moylan (Con)
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My Lords, if the internet were a toy, aimed at children and used only by children, those remarks would of course be very relevant, but we are dealing with something of huge value and importance to adults as well. It is the lack of consideration of the role of adults, the access for adults and the effects on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, implicit in these amendments, that cause me so much concern.

I seem to have upset everybody. I will now take issue with and upset the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, with whom I have not engaged on this topic so far. At Second Reading and earlier in Committee, she used the phrase, “childhood lasts a lifetime”. There are many people for whom this is a very chilling phrase. We have an amendment in this group—a probing amendment, granted—tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, which seeks to block access to VPNs as well. We are in danger of putting ourselves in the same position as China, with a hermetically sealed national internet, attempting to put borders around it so that nobody can breach it. I am assured that even in China this does not work and that clever and savvy people simply get around the barriers that the state has erected for them.

Before I sit down, I will redeem myself a little, if I can, by giving some encouragement to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on Amendments 28 and 32 —although I think the amendments are in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. These amendments, if we are to assess the danger posed by the internet to children, seek to substitute an assessment of the riskiness of the provider for the Government’s emphasis on the size of the provider. As I said earlier in Committee, I do not regard size as being a source of danger. When it comes to many other services— I mentioned that I buy my sandwich from Marks & Spencer as opposed to a corner shop—it is very often the bigger provider I feel is going to be safer, because I feel I can rely on its processes more. So I would certainly like to hear how my noble friend the Minister responds on that point in relation to Amendments 28 and 32, and why the Government continue to put such emphasis on size.

More broadly, in these understandable attempts to protect children, we are in danger of using language that is far too loose and of having an effect on adult access to the internet which is not being considered in the debate—or at least has not been until I have, however unwelcomely, raised it.

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
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My Lords, I assure your Lordships that I rise to speak very briefly. I begin by reassuring my noble friend Lord Moylan that he is loved in this Chamber and outside. I was going to say that he is the grit in the oyster that ensures that a consensus does not establish itself and that we think hard about these amendments, but I will revise that and say he is now the bungee jumper in our ravine. I think he often makes excellent and worthwhile points about the scope and reach of the Bill and the unintended consequences. Indeed, we debated those when we debated the amendments relating to Wikipedia, for example.

Obviously, I support these amendments in principle. The other reason I wanted to speak was to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—Beeban—a happy birthday, because I know that these speeches will be recorded on parchment bound in vellum and presented to her, but also to thank her for all the work that she has done for many years now on the protection of children’s rights on the internet. It occurred to me, as my noble friend Lady Harding was speaking, that there were a number of points I wanted to seek clarity on, either from the Minister or from the proponents of the amendments.

First, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, mentioned the age-appropriate design code, which was a victory for the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. It has, I think, already had an impact on the way that some sites that are frequented by children are designed. I know, for instance, that TikTok—the noble Baroness will correct me—prides itself on having made some changes as a result of the design code; for example, its algorithms are able, to a certain extent, to detect whether a child is under 13. I know anecdotally that children under 13 sometimes do have their accounts taken away; I think that is a direct result of the amendments made by the age-appropriate design code.

I would like to understand how these amendments, and the issue of children’s rights in this Bill, will interact with the age-appropriate design code, because none of us wants the confetti of regulations that either overlap or, worse, contradict themselves.

Secondly, I support the principle of functionality. I think it is a very important point that these amendments make: the Bill should not be focused solely on content but should take into account that functionality leads to dangerous content. That is an important principle on which platforms should be held to account.

Thirdly, going back to the point about the age-appropriate design code, the design of websites is extremely important and should be part of the regulatory system. Those are the points I wanted to make.