BBC: Appointment and Resignation of Chair

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is important that there is a thorough and swift investigation in cases such as this, and that is what has happened here; Adam Heppinstall has produced a thorough report. He has looked into this carefully and brought forward his conclusions. Richard Sharp has resigned, and we understand and respect his reasons for doing so.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is very nice to have a Tory voice in this debate. I declare my interest as a presenter on Times Radio. Richard Sharp was an excellent chair of the BBC, and he has been extremely harshly treated—not least by that terrible cartoon in the Guardian over the weekend. However, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Birt: one of things that is clear from this report, and something we all knew at the time, is who the Government’s favoured candidate for the position was. This does a disservice to the Government because it prevents excellent candidates putting themselves forward and giving them a genuine choice. I know the Minister will simply play a completely straight bat as he answers this Question, but he must know that the Government should have a much more open process for the appointment of the next chair of the BBC.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I completely agree with what my noble friend says about the brilliant work done by Richard Sharp during his time as chairman of the BBC and with the comments he made about the deplorable cartoon in the Guardian, which I am glad was pulled. The Adam Heppinstall report rightly points to the impact that the publication of candidates’ names in the media can have on the public appointments process, and we echo the concerns he raised there. The process to appoint a new permanent chairman will be run in a robust, fair and open manner, in accordance with the governance code.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

I will speak in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan and Amendment 9. I declare an interest as an author and publisher.

Last week, we had the London Book Fair, and proposed new paragraph 10A could read almost like an executive summary of the main talking point, which was how AI will influence all aspects of the media but particularly publishing. For the sake of future-proofing, paragraph 10A would be a particularly useful step to adopt. Proposed new paragraph 10B would be in the interest of fairness because publishing, and a lot of media, is made up of micro-businesses, often one-man or one-woman companies. This is certain to happen with AI as well, as the intermediary roles are taken up by these. In the interest of future-proofing and fairness, I recommend this amendment.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, as my name is on Amendment 9, I speak to support these amendments and say that they are worthy of debate. As your Lordships know, I am extremely supportive of the Bill and hope that it will be passed in short order. It is much needed and overdue that we have the opportunity for legislation to provide us with a regulator that is able to hold platforms to account, protect users where it can and enhance child safety online. I can think of no better regulator for that role than Ofcom.

I have listened to the debate with great interest. Although I support the intentions of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendment, I am not sure I agree with him that there are two cultures in this House, as far as the Bill is concerned; I think everybody is concerned about child safety. However, these amendments are right to draw attention to the huge regulatory burden that this legislation can potentially bring, and to the inadvertent bad consequences it will bring for many of the sites that we all depend upon and use.

I have not signed many amendments that have been tabled in this Committee because I have grown increasingly concerned, as has been said by many others, that the Bill has become a bit like the proverbial Christmas tree where everyone hangs their own specific concern on to the legislation, turning it into something increasingly unwieldy and difficult to navigate. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, put it extremely well when she effectively brought to life what it would be like to run a small website and have to comply with this legislation. That is not to say that certain elements of micro-tweaking are not welcome—for example, the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on giving coroners access to data—but we should be concerned about the scope of the Bill and the burden that it may well put on individual websites.

This is in effect the Wikipedia amendment, put forward and written in a sort of wiki way by this House—a probing amendment in Committee to explore how we can find the right balance between giving Ofcom the powers it needs to hold platforms to account and not unduly burdening websites that all of us agree present a very low risk and whose provenance, if you like, does not fit easily within the scope of the Bill.

I keep saying that I disagree with my noble friend Lord Moylan. I do not—I think he is one of the finest Members of this House—but, while it is our job to provide legislation to set the framework for how Ofcom regulates, we in this House should also recognise that in the real world, as I have also said before, this legislation is simply going to be the end of the beginning. Ofcom will have to find its way forward in how it exercises the powers that Parliament gives it, and I suspect it will have its own list of priorities in how it approaches these issues, who it decides to hold to account and who it decides to enforce against. A lot of its powers will rest not simply on the legislation that we give it but on the relationship that it builds with the platforms it is seeking to regulate.

For example, I have hosted a number of lunches for Google in this House with interested Peers, and it has been interesting to get that company’s insight into its working relationship with Ofcom. By the way, I am by no means suggesting that that is a cosy relationship, but it is at least a relationship where the two sides are talking to each other, and that is how the effectiveness of these powers will be explored.

I urge noble Lords to take these amendments seriously and take what the spirit of the amendments is seeking to put forward, which is to be mindful of the regulatory burden that the Bill imposes; to be aware that the Bill will not, simply by being passed, solve the kinds of issues that we are seeking to tackle in terms of the most egregious content that we find on the internet; and that, effectively, Ofcom’s task once this legislation is passed will be the language of priorities.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the first time in this Committee, and I suspect it will not be the last, when I rise to stand somewhere between my noble friend Lord Vaizey and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I am very taken by her focus on risk assessments and by the passionate defences of Wikipedia that we have heard, which really are grounded in a sort of commoner’s risk assessment that we can all understand.

Although I have sympathy with the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about small and medium-sized businesses being overburdened by regulation, I am less taken with the amendments on that subject precisely because small tech businesses become big tech businesses extremely quickly. It is worth pointing out that TikTok did not even exist when Parliament began debating this Bill. I wonder what our social media landscape would have been like if the Bill had existed in law before social media started. We as a country should want global tech companies to be born in the UK, but we want their founders—who, sadly, even today, are predominantly young white men who do not yet have children—to think carefully about the risks inherent in the services they are creating, and we know we need to do that at the beginning of those tech companies’ journeys, not once they have reached 1 million users a month.

While I have sympathy with the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, not to overburden, just as my noble friend Lord Vaizey has said, we should take our lead from the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron: we need a risk assessment even for small and medium-sized businesses. It just needs to be a risk assessment that is fit for their size.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests, in particular my work with Common Sense Media, a US not-for-profit that is focused on internet safety for children. What a pleasure it is to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford—my local bishop, no less. I always find it a great thing that it is our Bishops who read their speeches from iPads; we have iBishops in this Chamber who are far more technologically advanced than the rest of us. What a pleasure it is to see our national treasure the Arts Minister on the Front Bench; yesterday he launched the 2021 report of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which displays ancient treasures dug up from many centuries ago. I thought he might be presented with the first consultation paper on the Online Safety Bill, because it has taken so long to get to the stage where we are today.

A dozen years ago, when we talked about the impact of the internet, we were actually focused on copyright infringement; that was the big issue of the day. It is quite instructive to think about what happened there; it was a combination of technology, but also business solutions, licensing and the creation of companies such as Spotify that had an impact. But piracy remains with us, and will continue to remain with us because of the internet.

I like to think that the Jurassic journey of the Online Safety Bill began with an Adjournment debate by the then Member for Devizes, Claire Perry, who began a debate about protecting children from adult content on the internet, which is one of the most important issues. That led to her being commissioned to do a review by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, and that began the ball rolling. But Prime Minister David Cameron’s biggest intervention, which I remember well, was to tackle Google on the issue of child sex abuse. At the time the prevailing mood, which still prevails, was that politicians do not understand technology—you cannot regulate the internet, “Get your tanks off our lawn”. But Cameron said, “We will legislate unless you do something”, and Google, which said it was impossible, eventually came up with something like 150,000 search terms which would give a non-search return and refer the searcher to get some help, frankly—that is what the page would come up with.

That was instructive because it was a combination of government action, but in tackling child sexual abuse we had relied on not-for-profits, such as the Internet Watch Foundation. As we debate a piece of legislation and call on the Government to do this or that, it is important to remember that the internet has always had many governors, if you like—civic society, business, not-for-profits and charities—all of which must continue to play an important role in internet policing, as must the platforms themselves, where technology has improved in leaps and bounds. We have heard some of the criticisms of the technology they use and the impact it has on the people who are relied on by some of these technology companies to police content. Nevertheless, they have made progress. We must also remember that the platforms are not publishers or broadcasters; they are still new technology.

I unequivocally support the Bill—frankly, in whatever form it takes once your Lordships have fully considered it. It must be passed because it is time to regulate the internet. Ofcom is absolutely the right regulator to do this. I have been hugely impressed by the amount of work it has put into preparing for this role. The overall approach taken in the Bill is the right one: to police not every piece of content but the terms and conditions. This week, Ofcom published a very important document pointing out that transparency, holding the platforms to account and exposing how they regulate their content will make a massive difference.

The Government have made the right compromise on legal but harmful. I counsel against the Christmas tree effect of wanting to hang every single different concern on to the Bill; let us keep our eye on the prize. Having said that, I will fully support my noble friend Lord Bethell in his points on age verification and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with her amendment.

This is the end of the beginning. The Bill will not eradicate all the nasty things we see on the internet but, for the first time, the platforms will be accountable. It is very important to support this legislation. The Minister did not mention the European Union’s important legislation on this issue, but we are beginning to make progress across the world.

BBC: Future Funding (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in this debate and to be a member of the Communications and Digital Committee, which is so brilliantly chaired by my noble friend Lady Stowell. I sometimes have to pinch myself as I look around the room and see a committee made up of a top publisher, a top BBC executive, a top telecoms executive, a top Lib Dem, a top artist and a rock and roll Methodist minister. I declare my interest as a presenter on Times Radio, a superb competitor of the BBC which is eating the BBC’s lunch—at least as far as talk radio is concerned.

I have come not to denigrate the BBC but to praise it with heartfelt love. We are so lucky to have the BBC in this country. Yesterday I talked about our arts ecosystem and how lucky and privileged we are to have that. We are lucky as a country to have such a high-quality state-funded broadcaster that is completely independent of government and continues to raise the bar. We should never forget that.

I am delighted that my speech is almost identical to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hall, because that must mean I am on the right track. There are three reasons why we need to continue to support the BBC. The first, as the noble Lord has already articulated, is trust. In an internet-fragmented world of disinformation, we need more than ever a trusted brand that means that, when we turn on the news, we know we are getting as close to the truth as possible. Secondly, we need the BBC for quality. Reed Hastings, as the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, noted, has pointed out how the BBC continues to innovate and raise the bar for all commercial broadcasters in this country. Thirdly, and most importantly, the media is so important to our society that it is vital we hold on to home-grown media. While we have a plethora of media choices as consumers, the vast majority are owned in the United States. It is really important that we have, as an anchor tenant, a British media company.

It is true that we have a rich ecosystem and maybe, as an intellectual exercise, you would struggle to suggest that we should create a state-funded broadcaster today. The fact is that the BBC exists, and it is a vital part of that ecosystem. If it was removed, we would be so much poorer. It is very depressing to me that, in the 100th anniversary year of the BBC, there was barely any celebration. Even the BBC’s own celebrations were muted, but as one might perhaps expect in the political climate of today, politicians were few and far between in coming forward to celebrate this extraordinary institution.

The BBC is not above criticism. I also play the parlour game we all play in thinking about the BBC’s reach. I have already pointed out that I am a Times Radio presenter, but even before then I questioned—and I continue to question—whether Radio 1, Radio 2 and 6 Music is perhaps overegging the pudding in terms of popular music and what commercial radio can provide. I remember for many years having the Guardian complain to me about the reach of the BBC online. There are lots of British newspapers that have the opportunity of a global reach, but which find when they open in new markets that they have to compete against the BBC.

I raised in our committee whether the BBC was right to go so heavily into podcasts, which is an emerging market that could perhaps be catered for better by the private sector. These debates are very nuanced, and it is quite right that the BBC does not want to leave itself out of emerging markets where audiences are going. This speaks to a fundamental point: it really is not for politicians to start telling the BBC what it can and cannot do. Those are commercial and broadcasting judgments for the BBC. It is important for us all to avoid what I call the “Strictly” debate, whereby we quickly descend into deciding which programmes we like or do not like and extrapolate from that BBC policy.

However—again I am echoing what the noble Lord, Lord Hall, was saying much more subtly—the decision to cut back on local radio seems utterly nonsensical. It commands huge political support, but it is a vital community service. When I was an MP during the floods in 2008, I described BBC Radio Oxford as the fourth emergency service; it was a vital source of information for local people.

Huge challenges are facing the BBC, including the move to digital—as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, pointed out, Tim Davie made an important speech about how the BBC is going to face that challenge—and addressing the ongoing debate about how impartial it is. I have great confidence in the leadership of Richard Sharp as chair and Tim Davie as director-general. It is right and proper that they address those issues. Some people feel that they are selling the past by daring to talk about the BBC’s impartiality, but it is a live political debate, and silence from the BBC’s leadership would be a denigration of their duty. Having said that, I have some concerns about how Ofcom is leaning into the BBC. When Ofcom took over regulation of the BBC, I hoped that there would be cool, objective analysis of the services that it provides, but I sometimes worry that it has too much of a political slant.

Our in-depth inquiry into how the BBC is funded came up with a lot of arguments with which we are all familiar, and it came to conclusions which I think most of us can support: first, that we need a state-funded, taxpayer-funded broadcaster; secondly, that, rather like democracy, the licence fee appears often to be the least worst option but has its flaws; and, thirdly, that finding an alternative will be incredibly difficult. If we are to search for an alternative, something like a household levy which introduces an element of progressive taxation into the licence fee may be the way forward. The underlying conclusion of the report chimes with what I have thought for many years, which is that we need constantly to question whether the licence fee is the right solution to fund the BBC, but that to pretend that there is an easy answer and an easy alternative is a fool’s errand.

Arts Council England: Regional Distribution of Funding

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, let me declare my interests as a trustee of Tate and chairman of the Parthenon Project, the campaign to return the Parthenon sculptures back to Athens, where they so richly deserve to belong. May I also take this opportunity to be the first noble Lord to wish my noble friend Lord Valerian Freyberg a happy birthday. It is a depressing moment when your friend’s younger brother turns 52 and you realised just how old you are.

I want to begin with a positive note, which is to say that I am an enormous fan of the Arts Council and its leadership. I think Darren Henley has been, until recently, a chief executive without fault. He has handled an incredibly difficult brief extremely well, constantly having to manage a budget that is quite tight and narrow, managing cuts—cuts which I also imposed when I was an Arts Minister—and he has very rarely dropped the ball when dealing with hundreds of different arts organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendoza, pointed out. We have now an incredibly distinguished chairman of the Arts Council in Nick Serota, who led the Tate for so many years. We are blessed with many other arts quangos, if I can call them that, like English Heritage, which do an outstanding job.

I think we forget in this country that we have a fantastic system of arts funding. It sits neatly in between the US system of almost entirely private funding and the European system of almost entirely state funding. I think that tripartite system of government support, philanthropy and commercial income works extremely well. Government support acts as a catalyst for many of our arts organisations, but they still have room to be very entrepreneurial and innovative. I should mention in passing that I wrote to the Times a couple of weeks ago, to remind them of the existence of what was the Prince of Wales philanthropy medal. When King Charles was Prince of Wales, for about five or six years he awarded a medal every year to five philanthropists to recognise their contributions specifically to the arts. I hope at some stage the Minister, who is so brilliant at his job—he is really outstanding—will find a way to have a quiet word with the Palace about perhaps making this a proper honour to mark the start of the King’s reign.

I always complain that the Government do not fund the arts generously enough, but it is also important that we acknowledge that arts funding in its wider sense is extremely broad and deep. For example, we have the BBC and tax credits for theatres and museums and for television, video games and film—all of which I regard as arts subjects. We also have our regimental museums funded by the Ministry of Defence and the City of London putting approximately £100 million a year into the arts. We have our local councils and our universities—my noble friend Lord Mendoza mentioned that he is on the board of the Ashmolean, a university museum. We have charities: the National Trust runs more museums than any other organisation in the country. We have an incredibly rich ecosystem and very wide and deep arts funding—which, if you added it all up, would probably come to a couple of billion, if not £3 billion, a year—so we are incredibly lucky. Of course, we also have the private sector, including Sky Arts, the Bridge Theatre, a range of private organisations, a thriving music industry, and a publishing industry which never gets enough attention because it does not get an enormous amount of government money, if any. Again, we forget about the rich ecosystem we have in the private sector.

I will pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said when he opened the debate. I was pleased to listen to his speech, because, while he knows a lot more about Liverpool than me, I have spent a lot of time in the city and in Tate Liverpool. We can go to almost any city or big town in the country and see how arts funding can be transformative—and not just in Liverpool; I was thinking about NewcastleGateshead, which effectively created a tourism economy on the back of places such as the Baltic and Sage Gateshead. Another example is Yorkshire Sculpture Park. If you go to Margate, you will see the incredibly galvanising effect that Turner Contemporary has had on it. To complete the picture: there is the amazing work that Roger De Haan of Saga has done just down the road in Folkestone based purely on philanthropy. There you can see—in miniature, if you like—the incredibly galvanising effect that culture can have.

So, when we have complaints to make, we should all realise just how lucky we are in this country. My first complaint is that we never have enough leadership from the Government to make that point about the arts again and again. It remains, on both sides of the House, an embarrassment for politicians to be seen engaging in and supporting the arts; they are still regarded—ridiculously, in my view—as too elitist, but we should sing from the rooftops the contributions that the arts make all over the country. I pause here to praise my noble friend Lord Mendoza on the incredible work he has done as cultural commissioner, particularly during Covid. He was kind enough to mention my White Paper, but, in the privacy of the Chamber, I reveal that he actually wrote it—please do not tell anyone else.

Before she speaks, I also praise my noble friend Lady Fleet, who has done some fantastic work on music education. I was not able to be present in her debate on music education, but her 10-year review has been widely welcomed and is much needed. Again, that is a good example of how government departments can join up—in that case, the Department for Education and DCMS—to push an important agenda.

Talking about music education, I must segue into the one misstep that the Arts Council has made: its absurd decision on the English National Opera, which was taken at short notice and with no consultation at all. People are involved in that decision, not just the singers and orchestra but all the backroom staff. I must also mention the chairman, Harry Brünjes, who has led the ENO for nine years. Not only is he unpaid, but he has put his own money into ENO. It has been a pretty thankless task for him to turn around an organisation that was at a very low ebb nine years ago and widely derided, to get it to the position it is in now: a popular organisation welcoming many young people through its doors who have never seen opera before, engaging in health—for example, through its ENO Breathe campaign to help people with long Covid—and getting out to the regions. He has done everything and more that any Government could ask. His reward, effectively, was a kick in the teeth from the Arts Council. It is unforgiveable—and I say that as someone who has the utmost respect for Darren Henley and the Arts Council.

That was a terrible decision, and it should have been given with much more notice. If there will ever be another decision like that, it should be made as part of a wider strategy stating what the provision for opera is, how we deliver opera as a product—I know this sounds very managerial—most effectively around the country and what role the ENO can play in that. It may sound sentimental to cite individuals, including Stuart Murphy, the chief executive officer, but that is no way to treat people; it sends a terrible signal, and the Arts Council must look again at that decision.

I want to mention two or three other things, very quickly. It is the 70th anniversary of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. If any noble Lord gets the chance to serve on it, do—it is wonderful. It is like “The Generation Game”: various arts and treasures come in front of you and you decide whether they are part of our cultural fabric. I was lucky enough to stop Jane Austen’s ring being exported to the American popstar Kelly Clarkson; she was very decent about it. It is a reminder that we care very much about cultural objects being linked to our island’s story, just as our friends the Greeks care very much about the Parthenon sculptures, which should be reunited with the frieze in Athens. As the Minister knows full well, although he cannot say so as he is feeling sort of butch and robust about the whole thing, the frieze is like a movie that has been cut in half, with half of it having been taken, against the will of its owners, to another country. That is another thing that must be remedied.

Finally—as the yellow lights flash—one of the key things about levelling up that we should never forget is digital: we can and should get organisations based in London to audiences outside London. It is difficult to measure what a “London organisation” is: Tate has an SW1 address but a presence in Liverpool and St Ives; the National Theatre has an SE1 address but National Theatre Digital is in all our schools, for free.

In conclusion, I fully endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said about touring. It really is ridiculous, when we have this incredible cultural scene in this country, that we cannot sort out any help for our musicians for touring in Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord McNally on obtaining this debate—I am just sorry that he is not here to participate—and my noble friend Lord Storey on his brilliant introduction to it. Debates on culture and levelling up are obviously like buses: you wait for ages and then two come along in quick succession. Perhaps I could tempt the Minister to treat this like the Report stage of a Bill, when he attempts to give a better answer to questions than he gave during the previous debate.

As my noble friend Lord Storey said, today’s debate is an opportunity to celebrate and highlight the role of culture and the arts in levelling up in the regions. We have heard some great examples of the positive role of cultural levelling up in the regions. He talked about the role of the arts in regeneration in Liverpool and about the Prescot theatre of the north. He talked about culture and the arts as a powerful engine of economic growth, with benefits beyond the economy in health and education. He also talked about the experience of being the European Capital of Culture.

It was a pleasure to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Mendoza. He illustrated some great examples in Bradford, Blackburn, Rotherham, and Tyne and Wear, and the success of the City of Culture programme in Hull and Coventry. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, who no doubt we all should listen to on Friday evenings, talked about Gateshead, Margate and Folkestone. The noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, talked about Buxton Opera House.

So there were some wonderful examples there, but it is not all roses, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made clear, even in the regions—I will come to London shortly—and not just because we are in a post-Covid situation. There are problems with touring post Brexit, and inflation was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. A number of factors are contributing, but Arts Council decisions have impacted on the regions as well. Liverpool has lost its main access to opera because the Welsh National Opera has had its funding for work across the border cut. It also performs in Bristol, Birmingham, Southampton and Oxford, but it has suffered a 35% cut. How is that levelling up? Glyndebourne, which has had a fantastic touring programme in our towns and cities for 50 years, has had a 50% cut in its funding too.

Manchester should have its own opera company, of course. I was very interested in the phrase used by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about a “slap in the face for Opera North”. Abolishing the grant to the Britten Sinfonia removes support for the only serious orchestra serving eastern England, and Plymouth Music Zone has lost its entire funding. I do not believe that is a good catalogue that will encourage levelling up.

In particular, as a number of noble Lords have made clear, levelling up should not be at the expense of a vibrant London creative community and our brilliant London theatres and opera houses. My noble friend started by making that absolutely clear. The phrase used, I think by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. That is the wrong way to go. There is nothing to be gained by cutting the funding for creativity in London.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also described the role of our London institutions as centres of excellence. Many of the big London-based arts organisations take their productions and exhibitions on tour throughout the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and my noble friend Lord Storey acknowledged. The noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, seemed extraordinarily conflicted in what she had to say, but I think she would agree with Caroline Norbury, CEO of Creative UK, that

“levelling up cannot mean levelling down, and a rapid reduction in support for world-class cultural organisations in London is short-sighted.”

That diminishes us all, including our international reputation for creativity.

We come on to what has actually happened with the funding. Two London theatres mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the Hampstead Theatre and the Donmar—both such extraordinary centres of new writing for decades—have lost their entire grant. The Gate, just recently moved to Camden, has had its entire grant removed too. I noted the optimism of the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, but as a result of these developments, Roxana Silbert has quit as the Hampstead Theatre’s artistic director.

If anything, the ENO has been treated worse, with the total loss of its £12.6 million core annual funding. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley, Lord Vaizey—by the way, I absolutely endorse his praise for Harry Brunjes, who has done an incredible job for the ENO—and Lord Freyberg, my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, focused a great deal on the entire situation as far as the ENO is concerned.

Last week, the Minister acknowledged that London plays a special role and gave a number of inspiring examples. As he said:

“Those institutions perform a levelling-up function in providing a national stage on which people can perform.”—[Official Report, 8/12/22; col. 306.]


He then paid fulsome tribute to the ENO during the debate. That is very little consolation, given the gun that has now been put to the ENO’s head by the Arts Council. It is as if opera itself was being singled out for ill treatment, and this is where I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. Surely the massive efforts the ENO has made over the years to bring opera and performance to diverse audiences—11% of ENO’s audience is ethnically diverse—should have been recognised. It has the most diverse full-time chorus in the country and provides free tickets for under-21s. I could go on about its extraordinary education programme, which was praised by Darren Henley himself. At the same time, ENO’s productions are world beating, as anyone who has seen its version of Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” will attest to.

As it happens, the Major Government bought the Coliseum for ENO. It now makes no sense at all to undermine that investment. As the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, indicated, is this an opera thing? Berlin, Paris and Vienna have three opera houses. Is it beyond our wit to fund two? Three of the five largest reductions in funding were imposed on opera companies. Cutting public support makes opera more elitist, not less.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, also paid tribute—he is very good at paying tribute to people, by the way—to Darren Henley, and I—

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I use this opportunity to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and ask him specifically why he has not replied to my text message inviting him to appear as my guest this Friday on my Times Radio show.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

That is because I have not received it, but I look forward to reading my text.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, paid tribute to Darren Henley, as do I, but he did not say that he now pays tribute; he paid tribute to Darren Henley in the past. This has been a bungled funding round with what I fear will be very adverse consequences for the UK’s creative community. I liked the phrase from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox: forced through at speed.

Last week, the Minister talked about cherishing the arm’s-length relationship, but there is very little evidence of that. Arts Council England is clearly having to work to the Government’s strategy and timing, as Darren Henley said in his evidence to the Communications and Digital Committee, and as was referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg:

“We were asked by the Government to move some money out of London”—


it sounds almost illicit, does it not?—

“£16 million in year 1 and £24 million by the end of year 3.”

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, this important legislation has indeed been a long time coming. I was a special adviser in the Home Office when it was first proposed and was in Downing Street when it was first put in the Conservative manifesto in 2017. Like the noble Baroness, I am very keen to see it in your Lordships’ House so that it can be properly scrutinised, so that we can deliver the protections that we all want to see for children and vulnerable people. The noble Baroness is tireless in her defence of these people. She served excellently on the Joint Committee, which has already looked at the Bill. Like her, I am very keen to get it before your Lordships’ House so that we can continue.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I register an interest as an adviser to Common Sense Media. I am delighted to see my noble friend the Minister in his place, although I am sad to see that his predecessor has lost his place. Anyway, he is in and he is out.

I regard the Online Safety Bill as the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Mindful that the excellent chair of Ofcom is in the Chamber, I say this: is it not time to get on, expedite the Bill and allow Ofcom, finally, to start to regulate these platforms and social media sites? We have seen Elon Musk taking over Twitter—we need some action now. The Bill is effectively being scrutinised in the other place, and it is ready to come here. Let us get on with it.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right to point to the noble Lord, Lord Grade of Yarmouth, as one of many voices in your Lordships’ House who will help us in the important scrutiny of this Bill. We are very keen for that to take place. Of course, the other place has to finish its scrutiny before this happens. Once it has done that, we can debate it here.

Freedom of Expression (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I join in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, for steering this excellent report through the committee. It was very much his idea; he was ahead of his time in alighting on this as a big gap in terms of how we debate online safety regulation. Let it not be forgotten that now I have a new leader—my noble friend Lady Stowell—and I duly genuflect to her for the few months that I have remaining to serve on this excellent committee, which does some excellent work. It has been a wonderful way in which to be introduced to your Lordships’ House.

I echo a lot of the points made already by people who are extremely well informed in this arena. First, on the point made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, about the Digital Markets Unit, it is obviously very important that we update competition regulation. It is interesting that the analogue Competition and Markets Authority still managed to take a swipe at Meta/Facebook and forced it to divest itself of Giphy, which is a site that produces lots of memes. No doubt the decision produced its own memes—but it has been a very bad week for Mark Zuckerberg, and I gather that he is now down to $38 billion in net worth. He has lost $100 billion and is now merely worth his age, 38, so we hope that it does not go any lower. I am not generally in favour of the competition authorities getting involved in these kinds of issues, but it is a good reflection that the acquisition of small companies, such as Instagram, can sometimes shut off competition at an early stage.

I also want to get off my chest this issue about digital citizenship. By the way, as mentioned in the register of interests, I work with Common Sense Media, a US not-for-profit organisation that promotes digital citizenship, as well as NewsGuard, which combats fake news sites. I find the phrase “digital citizenship” intensely annoying, because it has become completely meaningless. That is not to be rude about Common Sense Media, the organisation that I work for, which provides very useful videos and training for young people on how to handle online bullying, and so on. It also means that we miss the point about how still clunky technology is. For me, the biggest change that we could make in digital citizenship would be to take the 120 pages of terms and conditions that you sign up to when you buy a new phone and turn them into five principles, so you know exactly, in effect, what you are signing up for.

I would like to see the Government—and, indeed, this Minister, in the few hours he remains in his current post, although I am sure he will be moved to an equally good department—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I am only teasing about the endless reshuffle. My jokes do not always work in this place. I would love the Minister to say what the Government are doing to encourage technology companies to be more user-friendly. That may involve digital citizenship training for the Home Secretary, who I gather finds it difficult even to use email. Clearly, there are issues here for people of every level of experience.

At the heart of this debate is, of course, what we mean by “legal but harmful”. I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I was hoping to disagree with her, because she is very provocative, but she is right to a certain extent about moral panic. The rise of Trump was actually aided by CNN more than anybody else. We sometimes load too much on to the platforms in terms of what they do. Nevertheless, I strongly support internet regulation of some kind. We need to make platforms accountable. The best example is, when you have a Twitter pile-on and you have the most vile abuse—particularly as a politician—there is simply no way in which to get redress. There has to be a regulatory backstop for you to be able to do that. But let us be clear: this is not broadcast regulation and it is not going to take every tweet and adjudicate; it is systems regulation and it is long overdue.

The final point that I would make to the Minister—and I shall not make another joke about him moving—is that I would love to hear what more the Government are doing on age verification and identity. It is such an important issue, and we simply cannot seem to get to a clear answer. It is about dealing with the issue of adult content, which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, raised—and it seems unbelievable that we still do not have proper age verification procedures in place for this kind of thing.

Finally, as a committed remainer, I celebrate, along with the noble Lord, Lord Allan, the fact that these terrible EU bureaucrats who can barely tie their own shoelaces have managed to pass much more quickly than us sensible regulations on internet and competition regulation, while we see the Online Safety Bill tortuously stuck in the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Gilbert for moving this debate on the committee’s report. I also thank noble Lords who are members of that committee for having the foresight to place digital regulation at the centre of public debate, especially in their report. Let me also thank all noble Lords, whether or not they are on the committee, for their contributions.

Before I turn to the specific recommendations made in the report, as noble Lords asked about one fundamental issue that lies at the heart of this debate—freedom of expression—I think it is worth looking at that. Your Lordships’ committee highlighted the importance of protecting freedom of expression online and, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, this is an age in which the internet has brought huge opportunities for freedom of expression. It allows people from all over the world to exchange ideas at a speed and scale never seen before. We should not throw that out.

When I was lecturing on international business courses, we used to talk about this concept in academic terms as space-time compression leading to globalisation. This has been of huge benefit to mankind, and one of the challenges for countries where we have reasonably good internet access is how to spread that to the rest of the world. Sometimes that is via mobile devices, if the landlines are not good enough, but we should not forget the important progress we have made. We should also remember how we can harness the good side of that technology.

As a result, as my noble friend Lord Gilbert said, the largest tech platforms exercise great influence over public discourse. They determine what content people encounter online and can arbitrarily remove content, with no accountability and few routes for users to appeal. One of the interesting questions around this debate is that there are always tensions. We are talking about freedom of expression against security or safety, and also how we behave towards other people and who has the right to remove content or to be an arbiter. Sometimes we see a tension between property rights and freedom of expression, and we have to address how much we give those platforms, which can argue, “Well, it’s our space, we have a right to arbitrate on who can have that debate here”. We see that in the physical world as well, where certain schools and campuses ban speakers. There is a tension between freedom of expression and property rights. The number of issues just shows how difficult this is.

This is why the Online Safety Bill is so important. We will bring it back soon—as soon as possible. By that I mean sooner than possible, and “possible” is not “probable”, if that makes sense. I wish I could say more, but I am always warned by my officials to be very careful what I say, because of various processes. Noble Lords who have been in government will understand this.

For the first time, tech companies are going to be accountable to an independent regulator for the protection of children and tackling of illegal content, while also protecting freedom of expression. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allan, for his points on the challenges and difficult issues that companies will have to overcome. It is not as simple as it sounds: we all want children to be protected, but it brings up lots of tensions and debate about how you do that and what the trade-offs are. But I am confident, having taken one Bill through this House, that we can rely on the wisdom of noble Lords to find an appropriate balance and address that tension. There is almost universal consensus on protecting children online but, as I said to the House yesterday, for adults we have to straddle that difficult tension between freedom of expression and protecting the vulnerable.

I hope that noble Lords will allow me to summarise some key changes to the Bill since the committee’s report. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about fraud. That is covered under illegal content. I know that the committee made recommendations on content, and most noble Lords agree on the need to ensure that the Online Safety Bill includes strong protections against illegal content and criminal activity, while avoiding the removal of legal speech.

The Government have added provisions in the other place to establish how providers should determine whether content is illegal. We clarified how companies should determine whether content is illegal, protecting against both under-removal and over-removal of content, as the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, alluded to. The Bill also includes strong protections for freedom of expression. Companies must have regard to freedom of expression when discharging their illegal content duties. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Allan, and I will have debates about what “due regard” means. Again, that is one of the issues we must address, and the largest platforms must set out what they are going to do to safeguard free speech.

The Government also welcome the committee’s endorsement of the importance of child safety. The strongest protections in the Bill remain those for children, but as the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, said, how do we achieve that? How do we get there?

We have also addressed the committee’s concern that pornographic services were not captured in the Bill. We have made changes to require all websites which publish or host pornography to put robust checks in place to ensure that users are 18 years old or over. Again, as with many of these things, the question is how we deal with determined teenagers, who are often more tech-savvy than their parents and can run rings around them. We can put the best protections in place, but even the world’s best cybersecurity experts cannot stop hackers. So, we have to reduce this as much as possible, but I have to be honest: are we going to prevent the most determined and tech-savvy teenager from accessing content that we do not want them to access? That is a challenge, but we have to be honest about what we can and cannot do: what we can do through regulation, what companies themselves can do, but also what we can all do as society, as parents, as neighbours.

Let me turn to the committee’s recommendations on adult safety. We agree that platforms’ moderation decisions are inconsistent and opaque. That is why the duties in the Bill require major platforms to be transparent about and accountable for how they treat users’ content. We will continue to ensure that the Bill strikes the appropriate balance between safety and freedom of expression, but that will move in this House. We have also added measures to give adults more control over who can contact them. Adult users will be given options to verify their identity—the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked about this—and to decide whether to interact with unverified users. We hope that this will empower adults to manage their personal online experience, while protecting the anonymity of those who may need it, such as victims of abuse. Again, there is a very difficult balance to strike: we must make sure that we can tackle those who are anonymous and malicious, but we also have to protect those who have to remain anonymous for fear of abuse turning into something worse.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, mentioned a point that the committee rightly highlighted: the importance of platform design in keeping users safe online. We hope that the Bill will ensure that companies design their services to mitigate the risk of harm from illegal content, and to protect children. This has always been the policy intent. We clarified this in the other place by amending the Bill to include an explicit duty on companies to take measures relating to the design of their services. These changes will ensure that companies build in safety by design, managing the risk of illegal content and activity on their services, rather than mostly focusing on content moderation.

My noble friend Lady Stowell, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and others talked about digital markets regulation. The committee made a number of recommendations. The Government remain committed to establishing a pro-competition regime to boost competition in digital markets. We want to introduce new, faster, more effective tools to address the unique barriers to competition in digital markets. The Government will set out their plans for the new regime in a draft Bill during this legislative Session. As set out in the Plan for Digital Regulation, the Government are committed to ensuring that our regulators have the capacity and expertise to regulate effectively and proportionately.

The committee also recommended the creation of a new parliamentary Joint Committee to scrutinise the work of digital regulators. I am afraid I have to refer noble Lords back to the position the Government adopted in their response. The Government believe that such a permanent Joint Committee it is unnecessary when we already have rigorous scrutiny provided by established committees, such as your Lordships’ committee and the DCMS Select Committee in the other place. However, the Government intend to work with Parliament to support scrutiny of the Online Safety Bill in a way that captures the skills and expertise in both Houses. We welcome further views during the passage of this Bill.

I turn to a number of the points raised specifically by noble Lords. I will start with my noble friend Lord Vaizey. I would like to ask him: what does he know that others do not know about the reshuffle? I hope this is not fake news to drive traffic to his podcast.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

On a slightly serious point, I know that the Minister in the Commons, Damian Collins, has left his post, which is a very sad reflection on how seriously the Government are taking the progress of the Online Safety Bill.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I should take this opportunity to pay tribute to my honourable friend Damian Collins for his expertise. I sat in on a fascinating meeting that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, organised last week with children’s groups. It was clear that he was on top of his brief. I have to admit that there will be a gap to fill, but I hope we will be able to fill it.

On that, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in her absence, for organising that round table, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, others who attended for their comments. It was touching, moving and gave me lots to think about. When I met Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, I said to him that we will do all we can to try to ensure this does not happen again. That is something I am sure noble Lords across the House agree on. We might disagree on how we do that, but let us keep that in mind as we go through the Online Safety Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, was absolutely right: we have to equip our children to be robust enough to stand up to difficult arguments. I teach international politics. In my academic job, which I am on leave of absence from, my boss is a Marxist and I am a libertarian-minded Conservative, so we are at two different ends of the political spectrum. But we both agree that it is important to try not to indoctrinate our children but to expose them to arguments from across the political spectrum, and to let them decide and to argue and debate with each other. That gives them robustness, but it also allows them to think intellectually and develop. I agreed with the noble Baroness when she said that this is really important. We have to be very careful about mollycoddling our children and overprotecting them. We should expose them to arguments but also to tools to argue back against people. I know that some noble Lords will disagree. Once again, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made those remarks.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, made some fascinating points about respect and civility—I can tell why she is a philosopher. We also need to understand the issue of subjectivity. If someone says something and you are harmed, does that give you cause for redress? There is also an awful lot of hypocrisy in discussing freedom of speech. People often say that they are in favour of freedom of expression until they are offended, and then they are suddenly against it. I remember when I was in the European Parliament and there were the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. I am a practising Muslim. I was offended by some of the cartoons and I actually found some of them funny, but I did not think that they should be banned. I was happy to see the debate around them in a free society.

Then I took part in a debate and talked about the whiteness of the European political space, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity, some of the imperial ambitions of the EU and racism across the spectrum, including on the left, and I was asked to apologise because I had offended some people. The same people who extolled the virtues of freedom of expression were suddenly asking me to apologise because they did not like what I said. We have to be clear when we are concerned about something or are harmed or offended. We talk about freedom of expression: let us make sure we are consistent. Let us make sure that not only do we think we should feel free to say things, so long as they are not encouraging violence against others, for example, but at the same time are willing to be open to criticism in our own right. That makes for a stronger, more robust and more intellectually challenging society. From discourse comes liberty. That is an important point that we should not forget.

I can try to beat the clock. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, talked about media literacy. It is a crucial skill for everyone in the digital age. Key media literacy skills are taught through a number of compulsory subjects in the national curriculum, but we need to be careful about it. We have to make sure that it is always up to date. There are new challenges. We have to make sure that these curricula are updated. We have the computing national curriculum, which builds digital literacy and citizenship education—some noble Lords do not like the idea of that. We want to make sure that there is critical thinking in debates in relation to the proper functioning of democracy. The Department for Education is reviewing its Teaching Online Safety in Schools guidance and its non-statutory guidance, which provide advice and support on how to teach children to stay safe online. The DCMS and the Department for Education work closely to create a holistic, whole-of-government approach to supporting media literacy.

The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, asked about an Australian-style bargaining code. We are committed to defending media freedom and enhancing the sustainability of the press sector, and we hope that the pro-competition regime conduct requirements will improve transparency and allow large platforms to provide the businesses that rely on them with fair and reasonable terms. This will make an important contribution to the sustainability of the press. In addition, we are minded to pursue the use of a binding final-offer mechanism as a backstop to resolve challenging price-related disputes where needed. We will design the mechanism to boost competition in all digital markets and have been engaging with the Australian Government to understand the impact of their news media bargaining code on platforms and publishers. This regime presents just one aspect of the Government’s wider support for news publishers, and we will continue to consider all possible options in the interests of promoting and sustaining the sector. Once again, we are open to the wisdom and knowledge of noble Lords in this House on how we do that.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Strathcarron, Lord Vaizey and Lord Londesborough, asked about age verification. There will be clear requirements for companies to prevent children accessing harmful content, such as online pornography. Companies that are likely to be accessed by children will need to use a range of technology, including age verification, to comply with the new requirement. Age assurance and age verification have now been referenced in the Bill, which provides clear direction to Ofcom and companies about the measures we expect may be used where proportionate. The Bill will not mandate that companies use specific technologies to comply with their new duties. It is important the Bill is future-proofed as much as possible, and what is most effective today may not be effective in the future. Once again noble Lords talked about issues such as VPNs, and there are ways around them, and there are other technologies that will challenge people’s safety. For example, I was told about face-scanning technologies and iris recognition for age verification, but is there something eerie about using that sort of technology? Do people feel concerned about that technology and the way the data is stored? Does it feel like a Big Brother society or is it useful to society? There will be different views among noble Lords in this Chamber, but we have to understand the spectrum of views. We know that age-assurance technologies are developing rapidly and there is growing usage.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talked about JS Mill. He knows that I am classically liberal-minded, so it is worth quoting Mill, who said that

“the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.

But there is disagreement over what is harmful, and JS Mill acknowledged that. When I was reading about this, I remember one paper saying that Mill does not say that the Government must always intervene to prevent one person harming another. Clearly, that is a philosophical discussion and there are a number of interpretations of JS Mill, but it is important that we recognise some of those issues. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for bringing that up so that I could digress into political philosophy.

This has been a fascinating debate. It has highlighted the arguments and tensions between online safety and freedom of expression, which I know we will return to during debates on the Online Safety Bill very soon. Let me once again thank all noble Lords for their wise contributions today and for exposing some of the challenges that we are going to face as we take that Bill through the Lords. I end by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, for moving this debate. I look forward to continuing the debate and to working constructively with noble Lords as we chart our course through these new challenges.

National Heritage Act 1983

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the National Heritage Act 1983.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is obviously time to get cracking. We have only one hour, but we have a stellar cast of Peers here to debate this important issue, including the first major speech by my noble friend Lord Parkinson since he was so cruelly ejected by this temporary Government.

It is hard to believe that 40 years ago some of our greatest museums were simply adjuncts of government departments—much as I admire government departments. The V&A was actually a section of the Department of Education and Science, as was the Science Museum; the Royal Armouries was part of the Department of the Environment; and Kew Gardens was part of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Heritage Act 1983 did a great thing and set them free, following the model of many other Acts which had put in place the governance of our national museums, including the famous British Museum Act 1963 and many others before. The Heritage Act meant, effectively, that the micromanagement of museums by government departments was to become a thing of the past, and that our museums would become broadly autonomous, steered in all their complexity by engaged directors and trustees—which reminds me that I have to declare my interests. I am a trustee of Tate, and I was appointed today as chairman of the Parthenon Project, for which I am not paid, which is a campaign to return the Parthenon sculptures to the Parthenon. I am sure that I have lots of other interests that encroach, but those are the two that spring to mind immediately.

This approach of making our museums as autonomous as possible has been an unequivocal success. As people know, UK museums are some of the most popular in the world, with 50 million people visiting DCMS-sponsored museums. The British Museum, Tate Modern, the Natural History Museum and the V&A are in the top 10 most popular art museums in the world. We have the best of both worlds: we do not micromanage our institutions, as do the French, and we do not simply leave them to the whims of wealthy benefactors, as to a certain extent our American cousins do.

With the 40th anniversary of the Act falling next year, there is now a chance to reflect on the remaining restrictions that still bind some of our museums. I am talking in particular about the disposal of objects in a museum’s collection. In the 1980s, it was quite right for the Government to impose these kinds of restrictions, just as they were establishing freedom for national museums. That has been very successful. The collections in our museums, which are for research as well as display, are unrivalled by institutions all over the world.

But in the last few years, the debate has moved on to include a sophisticated and important debate about restitution: how cultural objects were acquired and where they might ultimately reside. It has moved on also because, even going back to a time as recent as the 1980s, the ability to travel around the world to look at objects and the ability to study objects through technology have leapt on exponentially.

We need to debate whether the Act still works for what we need today. In 1983, what was not accounted for or considered were restitution requests and the idea that trustees might want, to put it bluntly, to do the right thing and return artefacts to their place of origin.

Things are beginning to move and the museums that do not have restrictions are able to make these decisions. This week alone, the Smithsonian museum decided to return 29 Benin bronzes, taken from Nigeria during the 1897 British raid on Benin City, to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria. Nigeria has also made a restitution agreement with Germany that included the handover of two Benin bronzes. Oxford and Cambridge Universities have agreed to repatriate more than 200 Benin bronze items, and the University of Aberdeen has already returned two bronzes—the first British university to do so. The Horniman Museum has agreed to return 72 objects. Glasgow City Council has returned Benin bronzes and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter has returned some sacred regalia to the Siksika Nation in Alberta. Many museums, if they are not restricted in the way our national museums are, are getting ahead of the game and leaning into this issue.

Let me show you an anomaly that exists today. The V&A has the “Head of Eros”. The British military consul in Anatolia, Charles Wilson, took it from a Roman sarcophagus in 1879 and loaned it to the V&A. It was then gifted to the V&A by his daughter, but Wilson himself had expressed the wish that the head be returned to whoever ended up caring for the sarcophagus. As long ago as 1934, the V&A tried to return it to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. It has taken almost a century to physically return it, but it was returned in 2021—but of course as a loan rather than a transfer of ownership. And of course, the Parthenon sculptures have been endlessly debated for the last 200 years. I am not going to get into that in my opening remarks.

The stalemate of the Parthenon marbles is nevertheless a useful issue to look at. If your view is simply binary, either you own them and keep them or you do not own them. The debate around returning artefacts is complex, but it is hard to argue that the “retain and explain” policy on contested heritage that the previous Government put in place has been a success. That policy involved writing to museums, galleries and arm’s-length bodies, even those outside the 1983 Act, advising them not to remove contested heritage from their collections. This was effectively a backwards step on the independence and scholarship of directors and trustees.

One question that is frequently asked when one discusses this issue is whether one will go from one extreme to another, from not giving back any object back to giving back everything so that museum shelves and display cases are stripped clear. That will not be the case. The V&A, which holds more than 2.7 million items in its collections, has received a total of nine restitution cases since 1999. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, which returns Nazi-looted art and is a good example of where the Government stepped up to do the right thing, has returned only 22 objects. I think the Spoliation panel and the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, where we ourselves say an object is part of our cultural identity and should not leave our shores, are very good models for the Government to follow, should they wish to amend these Acts and put in place a new procedure. One is not—without wishing to contradict myself in my own speech—saying that the trustees would simply have carte blanche to return an object. There would be a reviewing mechanism. It could be an independent body, such as the Reviewing Committee for the Export of Works of Art, which would simply give a view on whether this was a wise disposal.

We know there is much talk about a supposed loophole that has appeared in the Charities Act 2022 to allow museums to make a moral disposal but, even under that, it would require an application to the Attorney-General and the agreement of the Charity Commission. The Horniman Museum’s decision to return the Benin bronzes was still subject, in effect, to approval by the Charity Commission; there will, therefore, always be a backstop to allow a director or a board of trustees to think again about a decision.

In these opening remarks, I simply ask the Minister to consider how times have changed. Our world-class national museums are run by world-class directors and curators. The debate on the provenance of objects and their location has become much more sophisticated, technology has changed and travel has changed. We in this House can have a mature debate about that. The Minister has a perfect opportunity, particularly with the debate about the Charities Act loophole and as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Mendoza review into national museums’ policy—which certainly needs to be updated and its implementation reviewed—to take a holistic view of our national museums in the 21st century and to put on the table the opportunity to give our museums and their directors and trustees greater freedom to dispose of or to return objects of questionable provenance to their rightful owners or location.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and his ability to generate publicity for this debate. I also pay tribute to my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I would not go so far as to say that he is a national treasure but he is treasured by many of us for his knowledge and the way in which he went about his duties.

Before I respond, it might be worth recalling some of the origins of the National Heritage Act 1983. I say this as a new Minister for Heritage; I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, would describe me as the temporary Minister for Heritage. Indeed, in some ways all Ministers are temporary—we are the opposite of puppies. People say that puppies are for life, not for Christmas; we are just for Christmas. We recognise our ephemeral nature. In my new role I am the Minister for Heritage, but my honourable friend Stuart Andrew is the Minister responsible for museums. Of course, there is overlap, and we talk all the time about these issues, but I focus on heritage. I have been reminded by my department to stop getting so excited about heritage railways and canals; there is far more to our heritage, as Historic England reminds me.

It is worth remembering that this Act established the Royal Armouries, the Science Museum, the V&A and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, as many noble Lords have mentioned, as non-departmental public bodies. We have to remember that, under the provisions of the Act, the bodies are governed by the trustees, not the UK Government. Many noble Lords may well question that, but it is a principle that we have to be quite clear about. The Act outlines the responsibilities of trustees of these institutions, which includes caring for objects in their collections and exhibiting them to the public, supporting research but also promoting public enjoyment and understanding of the unique and special subjects covered by their collections, as well of course as, rightly, generating much debate. Noble Lords have spoken about some of that debate today.

The Act also sets out the board’s duties about the acquisition and disposal of objects. It provides that the board of trustees may not dispose of an object in its collection unless they are duplicates,

“unsuitable for retention in their collection and can be disposed of without detriment to the interests of students or other members of the public”

or

“useless for the purposes of their collection by reason of damage”.

The Act exists to protect the objects and artworks in our national museums to ensure that they are preserved for public benefit now and in the future. As my noble friend is aware, this is one of several Acts that govern our national museums.

Clearly, the underlying question of where cultural objects belong is an important and, as my noble friend acknowledges, highly complex issue. Complexity should not be used as an excuse for inaction; it just means that we have to unpack some of that complexity and look at some of the issues. As someone who grew up in an immigrant household and is from a non-white and non-European background, it is very easy for me to see the feeling of superiority of white European culture over the rest of the world—you sometimes saw this in the referendum, for example—and to feel baffled by this question, given the rich histories of many other countries. I remember my parents telling me when I was a child, “We’ll go to the British Museum, but remember there’s nothing British in the British Museum.” I acknowledge that when I actually turned up there, that was not true, but many of the collections came from around the world, and many of those items are subject to much debate and ongoing discussions.

In the UK, of course, given that the trustees operate independently, it is up to the museum’s own trustees to respond to restitution claims. Of course, in our national museums there is also legislation, including the Act that we are discussing today, that prevents them from removing items. But there are two exceptions—my noble friend rightly acknowledged the case of art looted by German national socialists in the 1930s and 1940s. Of course, in 2000 we had the Spoliation Advisory Panel to consider the claims for the return of these objects. So far, it has advised on 20 claims, and 13 cultural objects have been returned to families. Therefore it is of course important that there are exceptions and to recognise that such claims are deserving of special consideration.

Of course, there are also legal measures in place to allow human remains under 1,000 years old to be returned to their descendants around the world. Since the introduction of this measure, there have been a number of successful repatriations of human remains from our national museums. As recently as July 2022, the Natural History Museum transferred the custodianship and care of the ancestral remains of 113 Moriori and Maori individuals to their descendants in New Zealand.

Given all this, I now turn to the questions from my noble friend Lord Parkinson and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, about the potential implications of the new measures in the Charities Act. I am aware that it has been reported that the two provisions, Sections 15 and 16 of the Act, have the effect of enabling national museums for the first time to restitute items from their collections, based on moral grounds. However, I am also advised that when your Lordships and the House of Commons debated the Charities Bill, no such intent was considered, nor agreed on. Given this, the Government are deferring the commencement of the sections of the Act, which we initially expected to be part of the first tranche of commencements in the autumn, until we fully understand the implications for national museums and other charities. I hope that noble Lords will respect that decision; we really want to understand the implications. Whatever one thinks of the debate, it is important that we understand the legal implications for that.

We also recognise that restitution cases are complex and that every situation is different. Given that, at the moment the Government are not changing their position. However, as noble Lords have rightly acknowledged, we are seeing museums exploring other circumstances in which they may be able to return objects in their care. This is to be encouraged. Noble Lords have already talked about the return of the Benin bronzes to Nigeria by the Horniman museum in August this year. The complexity of deciding what is Benin, who the rightful owners are and where the bronzes should be returned to has also been shared with noble Lords. There are many issues such as these when people call for restitution. Some claim to speak for others; many people have claims on restitution. That does not mean that we should not try, but it exposes the complications and the complexity of the debate.

Let me be quite clear: I understand the powerful argument that often museums are willing to return objects to countries but are prevented from doing so due to existing law. Many people—indeed many noble Lords—feel that there will sometimes be very good reasons why an object should not be returned, such as concerns over preservation, curation, storage or who to return it to. But they also feel that a law preventing items being returned should not be the only justification about returning those items. I understand that debate and these arguments completely.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I see that my noble friend Lord Vaizey is getting very excited for his next podcast.

I understand these arguments. However, the Government’s position remains unchanged. The Government will continue to abide by the long-standing principle and legal position supported by successive UK Governments that claims should be considered on a case-by-case basis. I remind your Lordships once again that we believe that it is the trustees, not the Government, who are responsible for these decisions—not as a way out, but to clearly state that factor as a part of these considerations.

We are committed to supporting museums and trustees in delivering their duties in care of their collections. Noble Lords will be aware that our national development agency for museums and cultural property and Arts Council England, which is sponsored by the DCMS, published the museum guidance, under the title, Restitution and Repatriation: A Practical Guide for Museums in England. I am sure it is a bestseller. This guidance offers museums a technical framework to evaluate claims on a case-by-case basis, and it advises on a spectrum of outcomes, including returning, not returning and making long-term loans and partnerships.

We understand that claims often also lead to opportunities for enhancing understanding for all parties involved in the discussions, including improving knowledge, contributing to research, building mutually beneficial international partnerships and relationships with the originating communities, and opening up a dialogue and discussions about cultural heritage. For example, as my noble friend Lord Vaizey said about the return of the marble head of the Greek god Eros to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, these two institutions have been co-operating since the 1930s—this is nothing new. However, this agreement is part of an ambitious new cultural partnership between the V&A and the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, and the Government support the V&A with its arrangements of renewable cultural partnerships, which are a pragmatic way of—

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

What is the answer?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend was a government Minister; he knows that it takes a bit of time to come to the answer.

I know that noble Lords are proud of our world-class national museums and the fact that we have more than 24 million overseas visits to DCMS-supported museums, accounting for 50% of all visits, despite the closure of museums due to national lockdown measures. The global public also benefit from our collections, because let us remember that between 2019 and 2020 the UK national museums lent more than 71,000 objects to more than 2,000 venues around the world. It is not black and white or inaction compared with action. Some of these things are already going on. These are deep, complex conversations, but they also provide opportunities for cultural partnerships. Noble Lords talked about global Britain. What a great example of soft power it is if we can be seen to be co-operating and tackling those sometimes difficult discussions head-on. Surely it is better that we have some of those conversations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, technology plays a vital role. Much of our national collection is available online. We recognise the importance of that, which is why my department supported the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s successful bid for £90 million to advance the use of digital technology. These initiatives demonstrate that our museums are dedicated to making their collections accessible, so that as many people as possible can experience, engage with and even be touched or inspired by them.

These collections are also the focus of scholarship and research. In fact, the national museums are internationally recognised as leaders in their academic fields—but, once again, they partner with universities, museums and other research organisations around the world. They collaborated with more than 1,000 UK and international academic and research institutions between 2019 and 2020.

Much of the research is focused on the provenance of museum collections. It is amazing; it shows just show complex these issues are that we have almost a whole new academic field looking at the provenance of the collections, the issues and whether whoever gave it in the first place—or claimed to give it—had any legitimacy. There are a number of other complex issues, as many people would acknowledge. Today we are also committed to combating the illicit trade in cultural property, so that we do not make the same mistake.

In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, we are aware of the positive discussions between Cambodia and some of the national museums. Once again, we welcome conversations such as these. I pledge to write to noble Lords to answer the questions I was unable to answer due to my verbosity.

Our museums co-operate extensively with partner institutions. They share their knowledge and collections, which has enabled our museums to co-operate internationally, to lead programmes, to collaborate and to consider issues case by case, but also, with our research on provenance, to ask whether we can unpack some of the difficult debates around those issues and to consider future claims. The law exists to protect the objects in our national museums, but we want to share these wonderful objects with the rest of the world, whether in person, digitally or through bilateral conversations.

I am afraid that for these reasons the Government have no current plans to amend this Act. It took me 12 and a half minutes, but we got there. Do not worry; we will have much more time to discuss it on one of my noble friend’s podcasts.

Digital Regulation: Communications and Digital Committee Report

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to welcome this report. As my noble friend Lady Stowell knows, I am always here for her, which is why I am here today. I notice lurking in the shadows another former member of our committee who took part in this report, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. We wait to see whether he will make a contribution. We note that he has shaved and had a haircut, and that bodes well for some important contribution later in this debate—that did not go down so well, but it was meant in affection.

It has been a pleasure to serve on this committee for the past couple of years. I can say this because I am not responsible for the direction of travel of the committee’s reports, but it seems the committee has a history of leaning into policy and helping to move things along, not least, for example, in calling for the Digital Markets Unit to be set up—which is still a work in progress, but one that is much needed.

It goes without saying—it is a trite thing to say—that everything is now digital, so trying to bring some coherence into how one regulates a world of digital is extremely important. The advent of the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum—my noble friend Lady Stowell is quite right that it is a mouthful whether one uses its full title or its acronym—is a welcome development. Anyone who has ever worked with government knows the extraordinary frustration at the way that Whitehall is currently configured, with departments working in silos and with the only co-ordinating mechanism appearing to be the Cabinet or the Cabinet Office. It is extremely difficult to get joined-up government, and it is equally difficult to get joined-up regulation, so anything that moves the dial in that respect has to be welcomed. I often think that perhaps one day we could use technology to abolish all government departments and at last have government by task, where we can mix and match the right people to achieve the right outcomes for our country—but I digress.

The point about the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum is that it is here, and this report is a welcome intervention in the beginning of this process to ask how it can be improved and made better. That is the spirit with which this report should be read. It is in no way a criticism of anything, but simply looking at the existing situation and thinking how it could be improved and built upon. In that respect, I hope the Government and indeed the regulators will regard it as something they can keep referring to when they think about the next steps.

The first and most obvious point, given that there are four regulators involved in the DRCF, is how many more regulators should be involved. Given what I said earlier about digital being everything, the list is almost endless, but the report details six or seven other regulators that could have a role in the DRCF. That made me think a bit about the progress of the European Economic Community and later the European Union. At what point does one reach optimal membership? I started to speculate that perhaps in 25 years’ time we might have the head of the Information Commissioner’s Office demanding a referendum so that it could leave the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum—but, again, I digress. It is certainly something that the forum has to keep in mind: which additional regulators could and should be members?

The other important point the report makes is that there are additional stakeholders who are not necessarily formal non-departmental public bodies or quangos but which still have huge degree of expertise that they can bring to the debate about digital regulation. One of those cited, for example, is the Internet Watch Foundation, which I used to work with closely and which I think is technically a charity. That is a classic example of something that is not a government body but which nevertheless contains an enormous amount of expertise and takes action in the important area of child sexual abuse.

Given that the DRCF has been established, it again goes without saying that accountability and transparency, which the report touches on, are extremely important. It is important that we know what is the DRCF’s remit, the issues that it is looking at, and its plans for this year and years to come. Again, it is important, given what I said earlier about stakeholders, that even if they do not have a formal role, people can input into the work plan, if you like, of the DRCF and the regulators that sit on it.

It is also important, as the report says, that we have a rigorous process in the DRCF. Its greatest opportunity is to look at conflicts of regulation to try to work out where one regulator’s remit begins and another’s ends—I was going to say “turf wars” but that would be an inappropriate term. For example, I remember bringing together Ofcom and the ICO to discuss the important issue of nuisance calls, which affects the day-to-day lives of many people. Bringing those two regulators into a room to work together provided a much more impactful response to that. However, it is important that one regulator does not go off on a particular campaign without having at least had some engagement with other regulators, who may have locus and expertise to bring to bear, and it is important that those conflicts are resolved.

One of the other interesting aspects of the report is how one constitutes the DRCF formally. It now has a well-respected chief executive who comes from industry but it does not have a board, and the report recommends an independent non-executive chair and a number of other non-executives. I note that your Lordships’ House has provided Ofcom with a fantastic chair, and no doubt it will be able to provide the DRCF with a superb, independent, non-executive chair in the months and years to come—a process, of course, like the previous one, that will be completely free from political interference and which will simply seek out the best candidate.

It is also important that the DRCF provides an opportunity for regulators to share information. When I had a briefing from the DRCF before we even started our report, one of the things that I was struck by, which is a lesson that I have taken elsewhere with other organisations I worked with, was the idea of joint hiring, which struck me as a brilliant albeit obvious opportunity—although obvious only once it has been explained—in the world of technology. Hiring people who know about and can work with technology, who can therefore command pretty high salaries from technology companies, is very difficult for regulators, who are quite rightly constrained by public sector pay restraint. However, the opportunity to hire highly talented people who can work across those regulators is obvious. With that naturally flow other ways of co-operating, such as joint regulation and joint powers explicitly set out. However, as the report makes clear, that needs to be set out potentially in legislation.

Finally, the report is quite right to focus in its opening paragraphs on the opportunity for this forum to be an organisation that does horizon scanning—that looks at what is coming down the line. I noticed that the Government, for example, published yesterday their plans to support artificial intelligence in the years to come—I think I only noticed it on a tweet; I must sign up for the DCMS emails. Those kinds of reports coming out of DCMS are extremely valuable and important. However, it struck me that, with the DRCF in place, here is a perfect opportunity to involve the regulators on the ground floor, as it were, when DCMS is doing this kind of work, looking at particular sectors of technology. Getting regulation right is just as important as getting right government financial support, fiscal support, skills or whatever. A great regulatory climate is just as important when we are leaning into technology.

As my noble friend Lady Stowell outlined in her excellent speech, it is quite right as well that there be a parliamentary Joint Committee to scrutinise the work. It could bring together the heads of the various Select Committees that have a place in talking about digital regulation, so that they can meet regularly, scrutinise what is going on and compare their knowledge and information.

This is an incredibly useful report on a pretty niche and narrow issue that fascinates a few of us but not necessarily a general audience. Nevertheless, it is the kind of thing that can really make an extraordinary difference to UK plc—to use that terrible phrase—in creating a forward-looking, dynamic regulatory climate for technology and digital in this country.

My noble friend the Minister will no doubt cover this brief for many years to come. I know that he has been asked to tell us about the progress of the Online Safety Bill, about which I will be extremely interested to hear. I will leave him with one final thought: the DRCF also could be a prompt to the Government to shine a light on the plethora of digital bodies and committees that now exist to supervise technology policy in government. Many of them are excellent individual bodies in themselves, but there appears to be no particular coherence in how they work together. Just as with the regulators, there appears to be no clear road map of where one research or grant-giving body’s remit ends and another one begins. I know that my noble friend never puts his feet up, so I urge him to turn his mind to that work over the Summer Recess, which might save the Government some money and give them much more bang for their buck.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

I shall speak in the gap; I am sorry that I did not get my name down early enough to speak properly. I have one or two quick comments. First, I welcome this useful and excellent report, which will be a useful step forward if something happens about it. I notice that DCMS has responded to it but, actually, regulation involving digital issues runs across all departments, so it almost ought to be a joint response from every single department. That is something that we miss; “divide and rule” in the Executive is very dangerous.

From the summary, I picked out references to

“unnecessary regulatory burdens which could limit the benefits of digital innovation”—

that remains very true—and

“a lack of overarching coordination and oversight of regulatory objectives.”

That is also extremely true, and I have hit it several times. Paragraph 9 states:

“The solution was not to be found in more regulation, but in a different approach to regulation, with a coordinated response across policy areas.”


Therefore, the Government’s response—they are not down as saying that they actually want this to happen—really worries me. I thoroughly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, when she said that we should set out the principles in what we do sometimes. We cannot control complex systems using rules, as they start conflicting and alter in unpredictable ways; there is a lot of theory around this. We have to realise that we must set out the objectives and principles behind them.

Paragraph 62 is about “power to resolve conflicts”. Someone needs to have that power. I will illustrate that with a real example. Among other interests, I have been involved in the whole thing about age verification for many years, going back to Bills on ID cards and things like that—although that was not so much about age verification. One of the challenges is that the civil servants who know all about it tend to move within a year and a half to two years, so you lose your expertise the whole time. All those who worked on Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act—we had to get them up to speed—have gone. I do not know where; they are probably desperately hiding somewhere else.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

They have gone to the metaverse.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

Exactly—we will never see them again. This is the big problem. I chaired the British Standards Institute’s publicly available specification—PAS—1296 on anonymous age verification; we solved the problem, and it is out there. The sad thing is that this is now being elevated to international standards used by Europe, but I do not know whether we still recognise that it exists. In 2020-21, the French started implementing the protection of children in legislation—I am not up to speed on exactly where they are—so it is actually happening there. But what have we done? We have said that we will stop it in the Online Safety Bill, repealing the part that was going to work in the Digital Economy Act. This is complete lunacy and, in fact, goes against the principle of the supremacy of Parliament—but I will not go into constitutional issues.

Looking forwards, the benefits and potential risks of AI will not be a single-department thing; this will run across all departments, because it involves everyone and everything. A lot of people mean different things when they say “AI”, so this is huge.

Finally, yes, we need some horizon scanning, but we do not want to get bogged down in trying to anticipate futures that may not exist. As someone said, a lot of other people are doing this. If you have knowledgeable people in the committee and in the Lords, they can help to spot where things are coming from and go from there. I welcome this report.

Channel 4: Annual Report

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we want Channel 4 to continue what it is doing in terms of commissioning from the independent sector. The difficulty is that, because of the global streaming giants driving up the costs of our thriving and very successful independent production sector, Channel 4 needs access to larger sums of money in the decades to come. That is why we want to ensure that it is able to raise that private capital and continue to compete in the global market.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, including my work with LionTree. When I was Minister, I would regularly review the reports and accounts of the bodies that I oversaw and we regularly had huge rows, mainly because there were not enough photos of me or sections detailing my excellent work as a Minister. Is it not the case that while the Government own Channel 4 they are perfectly entitled to see a draft of its report and accounts and perfectly entitled to have a grown-up discussion with Channel 4’s very grown-up board, which of course includes my wonderful noble friend Lord Holmes?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right. I have been looking through the annual reports of many arm’s-length bodies that it is my responsibility to lay before Parliament. The Government are entitled to make representations to Channel 4 as its current owner. Of course, if it were privately owned, we would not have that role. We cannot force it to change things but we are perfectly entitled to disagree. In this instance, Channel 4 laid the annual report it had originally drafted.