Telecommunications Legislation: Human Rights

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following their announcement about the involvement of Huawei in UK telecommunications, what steps they are taking to include a human rights threshold in telecommunications legislation.

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

My Lords, we want respect for human rights to be at the centre of all business that takes place in this country. As I said on Report of the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill, we are committed to bringing back the matter of human rights and modern slavery at Third Reading. The Government are also taking action to ensure the security and resilience of our telecoms networks, with our recent announcement on Huawei and work to develop the telecoms security Bill.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, has the Minister had the opportunity to watch the video recording I sent her last Wednesday, which appears to show shackled and blindfolded Uighur Muslims in China being led from trains to camps? The Board of Deputies of British Jews has stated:

“The World will neither forgive nor forget a genocide against the Uighur people.”


The Foreign Secretary has said that this is,

“reminiscent of something not seen for a long time.”

What progress has the Minister made in pursing my request to ask British Telecom how it verifies Huawei’s denials of the use of slave labour or the use of Huawei technology in oppressing Uighur people?

[Baroness Barran]

It is impossible to have watched the footage to which the noble Lord referred without a sense of horror and deep concern. As my noble friend Lord Ahmad said in answer to an earlier Question, the Government will not look away from human rights abuses in Xinjiang. We are working actively with the Home Office and the Public Bill Office to work out what can be within scope for an amendment on the issues the noble Lord raises about the supply chain.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th June 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

5: Clause 1, page 2, line 14, at end insert—
“( ) there are no grounds to suspect the operator intends to use the telecommunications infrastructure, or any part of it, to breach human rights after 31 December 2023.”Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment seeks to prevent companies from using UK telecommunications infrastructure to facilitate human rights abuse. This seeks to build on the transparency in supply chain provisions of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 by including the digital supply chain in telecommunications infrastructure.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in returning to an issue which I raised in Committee on 19 May, I first thank the Minister the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for making good on her promise to meet and to draw in Ministers from the Home Office and Foreign Office. We have held three such meetings and had several other conversations to scope out the issues. Throughout, she has been attentive, courteous and generous with her time. I am grateful to her.

I also thank the co-sponsors of this cross-party amendment: the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lady Falkner of Margravine. Their advice and that of Luke de Pulford, the founder of both the anti-slavery charity Arise and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, whose work in defence of the Uighur people has been outstanding, has been invaluable.

I greatly appreciate the encouragement of all noble Lords who have indicated their support for this amendment, some of whom we will hear from during the debate. My noble friends Lady Cox, Lady Finlay and Lady O’Loan will speak with great knowledge and conviction about why a human rights threshold must be placed in this legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who is in his place, kindly emailed me to say that he and his noble friend Lord Fox would be encouraging their Liberal Democrat colleagues to support the amendment; the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has indicated the support of the Green Party parliamentarians; and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, has given wise advice in seeking to persuade the Government to accept the principle, if not the detail, of the amendment. I am also heartened to have the vocal support of senior members of the Conservative Party, including that of one former party leader. I should declare that I am vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Xinjiang and the Uighurs.

Noble Lords should be prepared during the debate for opponents to claim, as Governments always claim about Back-Bench amendments, that there are technical issues with the drafting and that the time is not right—but the time is never right. If the Government agree with the principle and believe that it is something that should be enshrined in legislation, I hope that during our debate they will be persuaded that it should be given further thought, and avail themselves of the opportunity which Third Reading presents in your Lordships’ House to make good on the principles, if not the detail, of amendments.

Let me divide my remarks into three parts: what the amendment actually does; what the arguments are for and against it; and why a human rights threshold is needed at all. Turning to the first of those, the amendment is necessarily limited to the scope of this Bill, which deals with leased properties—for example, blocks of flats. If accepted, Amendment 5 would introduce a human rights threshold which would prevent companies involved in human rights abuses using such buildings’ telecommunications infrastructure to carry out such violations. On the face of it, this feels a very narrow Bill for an amendment that is conceptually extremely broad. I will explain later why that is not so.

The broader context to this amendment will not have passed noble Lords by. It was drawn up in response to mounting evidence that certain companies are complicit in the atrocities suffered by Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Its purpose is to prevent such companies gaining further access, however small, to our telecommunications infrastructure. Our amendment couples with new paragraph 27B, which sets out conditions under which providers may supply internet to leasehold properties. By preventing companies using “any part” of this telecommunications infrastructure in procuring human rights abuse, the amendment necessarily includes the digital supply chain. Let us consider that for a moment.

It may not be plainly obvious to all that, when we speak of telecommunications infrastructure, we are not speaking merely about hardware. “Digital infra- structure” does not just mean wires, lest noble Lords were thinking that this amendment would prevent companies using only our actual wires or the boxes containing them to perpetrate abuses. As one common definition has it, telecommunications infrastructure means:

“Organizations, personnel, procedures, facilities and networks employed to transmit and receive information by electrical or electronic means.”


To some extent, the Government must concede this because the Bill before us also deals with personnel and facilities, not just hardware. I mention this merely to make a simple point: if companies supplying our leasehold infrastructure with internet services are also abusing human rights, our infrastructure therefore becomes a tool in that abuse.

The notion that we can carve up a digital company into the parts that are abusing human rights and the parts that are not is palpably absurd. This argument might have more credibility in a different industry, but against a background of allegations about Huawei maintaining a repository of data in China on those who use their mobile devices in other countries, it quickly falls apart.

The amendment does two significant things. It would empower the Government to deny infrastructure access to operators that they believe are abusing human rights, and it begins an important new conversation about how our modern slavery legislation might apply to the digital economy, especially regarding supply chain transparency.

I move to the second part of what I want to say to your Lordships: the arguments for and against the amendment. In Committee and during the meetings with the noble Baroness and other Ministers, it was readily conceded that Huawei poses significant human rights concerns. A principal argument was that we should kick this down the road to the telecommunications security Bill. However, one of the benefits of those meetings is that I learned from the Bill manager of the telecommunications security Bill that it will not be wide enough for such a human rights amendment to be placed on its face and to be in scope. Fortunately, this amendment is in scope and gives us an immediate opportunity to act and to set a precedent for what follows.

Two former Conservative Cabinet Ministers who support the amendment have both said, one directly to the Minister, that telling parliamentarians to wait for some other vehicle is the oldest argument in the book—they both said that they had used it in their time. We all know that kicking things down the road rarely brings a result. Indeed, it was suggested that an entirely new Bill based on the Modern Slavery Act 2015 might be the appropriate vehicle, but there is no timetable, no certainty and no urgency. An imperfect vehicle it may be, but this is the legislative vehicle currently before your Lordships’ House. It can and should be used to preclude further involvement of human rights-abusing companies in our telecommunications industry.

A further argument is that the Government would not wish to introduce a human rights standard for one sector that would be different from that for other sectors. They mentioned the garment sector and said that a single set of human rights principles is required, not piecemeal legislation. This was the very argument used to justify excluding more concrete measures from Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which, incidentally, does not apply to all business, just those with a turnover in excess of £36 million—a point regularly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, who we will hear from later, and by me. In addition, one of the failings of the Act is that the supply chain transparency provisions do not really make sense to industries, such as financial services or telecommunications, that do not have traditional supply mechanisms.

A strengthening of the modern slavery legislation would be very welcome, but it is not an argument for not taking action in this sector now. I am, as the Minister knows, an incrementalist by nature—I have used the phrase to her in our conversations. If this amendment became a benchmark for other measures and industries, it would set a fine precedent, not create an anomaly. Waiting for new Acts of Parliament is like waiting for Godot. We have an opportunity to make a start by passing a declaratory amendment that will have an immediate impact—an opportunity we should take.

We have also been told that operators will face “uncertainty” because of “undefined terminology”. This will therefore have a “chilling effect”, which would lead to court cases. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, with his huge experience of serving on the boards of major companies, has said to me that any company offered such advice should sack the person who gave it. All of us can distinguish between minor infringements of human rights and egregious violations of human rights, such as those involving the use of slave labour in Xinjiang. Operators would have only to read Hansard, which is often cited in legal actions, to see what Parliament’s intention had been in incorporating this amendment or one like it. If the issue ever did go to the courts, a judge would have no difficulty in marking the difference. This will not be a problem unless all our telecommunications operators are perpetrating human rights abuses. I certainly do not believe that is the case.

Throughout, I have made clear to the Government my willingness to withdraw the amendment in favour of one from them if it would help to better target and catch the sharks. I was initially told that that would not be possible because the department had been given legal advice that it would not be able to get an amendment in scope, but how can that be when this amendment is in scope? Even at this late hour it is still open to the Government to come forward with their own amendments at Third Reading. If the Minister can concede the principle and give such an assurance, I am sure it would be possible to postpone a Division today while further work is undertaken on a human rights threshold.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran]

My Lords, I start again by thanking your Lordships for giving me the opportunity to speak, rather unusually, in the middle of this very important debate. In no way was there any intention to shut down the debate. I hoped that clarifying the Government’s position would allow noble Lords to focus their remarks. I offer my thanks again for that flexibility.

I would like to address two things. First, a number of noble Lords raised the point about companies needing to do the right thing. Of course the companies that we are talking about are in compliance with the Modern Slavery Act and Section 54 but, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, knows better than probably the rest of us put together, there are problems and issues with the teeth of Section 54; that is, in a way, at the heart of his amendment and will be at the heart of our response to the consultation later this summer. Secondly, I would like to reflect on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and others, so as to bring absolute clarity to my remarks.

I hope that I echo exactly the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, if I confirm that I am happy and content to bring this issue back at Third Reading. We will also allow time for the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Stevenson, and others who have spoken today to address the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his amendment. We will endeavour to find all the time possible to have sufficient ground to bring back a government amendment. I hope that the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will be rooted in that amendment and with that, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, we have been privileged to hear outstanding speeches from many outstanding Members of your Lordships’ House. We have heard moving, powerful and well-informed contributions throughout the debate. I have great admiration for the sincerity and integrity of the Minister, and the House will be relieved to know that the word “but” does not now follow—at least, not just yet.

I am not precious about the wording of the amendment but I am determined about the principle. The Minister will understand that the House has been determined about that in speech after speech today. The frustration that her noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Balfe expressed about our procedures and the inadequate way—inevitably, because of the current circumstances—in which we have dealt with this has, I think, not been lost on her either. I have to tell the Minister that a flurry of messages I have been receiving, from those who contributed to the debate and people outside the Chamber, are saying “Please press this to a vote”. It is therefore a tricky thing to decide what to do in these circumstances. After 40 years of battles on the Floors of both our Houses, I am long enough in the tooth to recognise a change of heart when I see it. I see the beginning of a change of heart in what the Minister has said to us today. I am pragmatic about these things; I believe one should accept that in the spirit in which it has been given and try to build on it.

This is where the “but” falls. The four sponsors of the amendment may be called many things—indeed, we all have from time to time been called many things—but I think we have never been described as naive and none of us are gullible. We are all seasoned in the practical art of politics and will of course be wary of Greeks and their gifts. In other words, if the Government are able to produce a human rights threshold with teeth —as the Minister has been urged to do by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench; by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, speaking for the Liberal Democrats; by my noble friend Lady Falkner and many of the Cross-Benchers who contributed to the debate; and, most notably really, by many of her own noble friends because this goes left, right and centre, not just in your Lordships’ House but in the House of Commons—we must find a way to catch the sharks but not the minnows. That is at the heart of what the Minister was saying, and I agree with her about that. We have to catch those who collaborate, aid and abet in these egregious violations of human rights that we have heard about today.

If the Minister is able at Third Reading to come back with an amendment that does those things, then I for one will be the first to stand and applaud it, and to support her. If she is unable to do that, this amendment, thanks to the procedures of your Lordships’ House, will stay in contention. It is important for some of our noble friends and colleagues to realise that if we vote now and this amendment is lost, that will be the end of the matter. There is nothing then to send back to the House of Commons; nothing that people in another place can consider further. But if the matter stays in contention, as the Minister has offered, for another week or 10 days—however long it is before the Bill comes back for Third Reading—then under our procedures this amendment will appear again on the Order Paper, alongside whatever she is able to provide for us.

I hope that the Minister can provide an amendment that cuts to the core of what my noble friend Lady Cox described as a battle of beliefs. I hope that it will do something to overcome some of the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, raised. These are not insuperable problems; they can all be overcome. Perhaps most importantly of all, such an amendment would set a benchmark and a threshold, showing that we will not do business with people who incarcerate, torture, abduct and silence. We are not prepared to tolerate those things—why should we?

Our values are something that this House has stood for down the generations; although those values have sometimes been tarnished, generally, we have tried in this parliamentary democracy to show what it is we believe in. We have been united in that, in good times and in bad. However, I fear that we have had a crisis of belief. In recent times, we seem to have forgotten the nature of liberal democracy and the things that we stand for as a nation: the rule of law and human rights. My noble friend Lady O’Loan spoke so eloquently about such universal values, as enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This amendment is a modest attempt—in this Bill and in all the Bills that will follow, on this issue and others—not just for a review, as some have called for, but for a legislative provision with teeth. We have an opportunity. Because of the good will that the Minister has shown, and because I am not naive or gullible and know that there will be a chance to come back on another occasion to both this amendment and to whatever the Government can offer, we will postpone—not cancel—the Division. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

Therefore we are looking to the Minister to explain to us how the latest crisis impacts on the Government’s thinking in respect of allowing Huawei to participate in what the Government have termed non-critical infrastructure, but which many of us think is critical infrastructure if it relates to the rollout of 5G and superfast broadband.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I am extremely happy to be able to support Amendments 9 and 14, standing in the name of my good friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, and so ably moved by her this afternoon.

In tackling risks posed by high-risk vendors, she opens an extraordinarily important debate. Amendment 9 imposes a deadline on operators, and Amendment 14 puts in place a mechanism to ensure their removal should it be shown that they pose a national security concern. To pick up on a point the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, just made, I am delighted that the clerks have ruled the amendments to be within scope, and I hope that it will be possible, as I shall suggest in my later remarks, for us to build on them further on Report. However, in addition to supporting the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, I too am grateful to the Government for facilitating Second Reading speeches this afternoon.

These proceedings take me back to 1981, when in the House of Commons I served on the Standing Committee which considered the British Telecommunications Act 1981. It was a steep learning curve for me. Plessey was based in my Liverpool constituency, and it was inspiring to see British technology and companies at the very cutting edge. It is lamentable to see how far we have fallen back in manufacturing capacity. If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is surely that we must become more resilient and less dependent in our supply chains, especially when so many authoritarian countries mock our liberal values. Even worse, it cannot be in the United Kingdom’s interests to have become so dependent on authoritarian regimes for the manufacture of technology which can be utilised by them for anti-democratic purposes, to undermine free societies, human rights and the rule of law.

That is why I hope to build on these two admirable amendments when we come to Report. I am grateful to have received through correspondence over the weekend the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Adonis.

We should all do more to ensure that high-risk vendors credibly accused of egregious abuses of human rights, such as complicity in the modern slavery of Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, will be excluded from being beneficiaries of the provisions of this legislation. In this context, I should mention that I am a vice-chairman of the APPG on Uighurs and human rights in Xinjiang and that, on 15 occasions since 2018, I have raised in your Lordships’ House the plight of the Uighurs: their incarceration, forced re-education and use as slave labour in various ways.

In January, in relation to Huawei and 5G, I asked the Government

“what assessment they have made in relation to their decision to award contracts to Huawei and other companies of the implications of the government of China’s National Intelligence Law requiring Chinese organisations and citizens to support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.”

I also asked the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, and the Government about

“Huawei’s compliance with the Modern Slavery Act”

and

“what consideration they have given to such compliance in regard to their decision to award contracts to Huawei”.

She replied:

“The UK Government expressed its concerns about China’s systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang, including credible and growing reports of forced labour, during the recent UN Human Rights Council.”


That deftly dodged my question and the issue of what we are going to do about the use of slave labour in our supply chains. Profiteering on the broken backs of enslaved Uighurs is either a criminal offence under British law or it is not. Either it is a nice slogan and good public relations or we take it deadly seriously and refuse to profit from it.

Be in no doubt about what we know. As long ago as December 2018, I pointed to reports that

“suggest that up to 1 million Uighurs have been incarcerated without trial in a network of sinister re-education camps: these are bristling with barbed wire and watchtowers, with torture and brainwashing that demands renouncing god and embracing Communism.”—[Official Report, 19/12/18; col. 1804.]

The Government do not disagree with these descriptions.

On 18 March 2020, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, about the use of Uighur forced labour and what assessment the Government had made

“of reports that the government of China transferred Uighurs from detention centres to work in factories where products are produced for global brands; and what plans they have to take action against such companies under the provisions of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.”

He replied:

“Recent reports indicating that Uyghurs are being used as a source of forced labour add to the growing body of evidence about the disturbing situation that Uyghurs and other minorities are facing in Xinjiang. Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires companies operating in the UK with a turnover of £36m or more to publish annual statements setting out what steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their organisation and supply chains. The Home Office keeps compliance under active review.”


In a Westminster Hall debate on 11 March, Nigel Adams, the Minister for Asia, said:

“We have also seen credible evidence to suggest that Uighurs are being used as a source of forced labour in Xinjiang and across China, and that if individuals refuse to participate, they and their families are threatened with extra-judicial detention.”


He went on to say:

“Our intelligence is that families are also obliged to host Chinese officials in their homes for extended periods, to demonstrate their loyalty to the Communist party. On the streets, Uighurs and other minorities are continuously watched by police, supported by extensive use of facial recognition technology and restrictions on movement.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/3/20; cols. 149-50WH.]


That was the Government, but in a report entitled Uyghurs for sale, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute outlined how Uighurs and other ethnic Muslim minorities are uprooted, wrenched from their villages, separated from their loved ones, and coercively transported under guard, across China, to work in factories. That report estimates that, between 2017 and 2019, around 80,000 Uighurs were transferred from detention centres in Xinjiang to factories throughout China. Far from their homes, devoid of family contact, incarcerated in segregated dormitories and subjected to propaganda and systematic attempts to destroy their culture, religion and identity, the labourers are kept under 24-hour surveillance. The report examines the direct and indirect supply chains of 83 leading global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, such as Apple, BMW, Huawei, Nike and others.

Are these companies directly complicit? One of the Australian institute’s researchers, Vicky Xu, says that the idea that Huawei is not working directly with local governments in Xinjiang is “just straight-up nonsense”. The 2018 announcement of one Huawei public security project in Xinjiang—as posted on a Chinese government website in Urumqi—quoted a Huawei director as saying:

“Together with the Public Security Bureau, Huawei will unlock a new era of smart policing and help build a safer, smarter society.”


This is not speculation, or evidence extrapolated from big data. This is straight from the horse’s mouth. We all know that safer, smarter policing is a euphemism that would make George Orwell roll in his grave. Huawei is making huge profits from Xinjiang’s unique techno-totalitarianism.

In December, our Government were alerted to the Australian report in a joint letter from parliamentarians from across both Houses, but again they sidestepped the issue. Their reply to us ignored the need for the Government to conduct the same human rights due diligence that they now demand of corporations. Where is that due diligence in the Bill? The more dependent we become on firms whose ties with the Chinese state extend as far as the construction of Xinjiang’s surveillance technology, the harder it will become to take a credible stance. The deeper our dependency becomes, the harder it is to stand up for our values. Huawei’s activities in Xinjiang should alert us to its true allegiances and values: its willingness to create mass surveillance technology and its devotion to, and dependency on, the Chinese Communist Party.

The most striking thing in the Government’s Statement to Parliament in January was the repeated admission of the risks involved, but where is that reflected in the Bill? And why take risks when alternatives are available? In January, like the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, I asked the Government to consider whether, in former times, the United Kingdom would have been willing to put its technology into the hands of the Kremlin, knowing what crimes were being committed in the gulags of Siberia, as in The Gulag Archipelago. The human rights-focused Helsinki process helped to bring an end to the Cold War and liberated the people suffering under the yoke of communist ideology. Today we need Helsinki with Chinese characteristics. We do not need to betray our values.

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day this year, I read Corrie ten Boom’s memoir, The Hiding Place. After sheltering Jews from the Nazi regime, Ms ten Boom was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She describes her experience of doing forced labour for Siemens in the camps where her sister and many others died. The Holocaust saw state-sponsored mass enslavement on an appalling scale. Ironically, on the morning following Holocaust Memorial Day, the United Kingdom National Security Council committed to sign over up to 35% of our 5G infrastructure to Huawei, a company that the Government know actively partners with the Xinjiang Government to make the world’s most dystopian system of governance possible. Is what happened at Ravensbrück, or in The Gulag Archipelago, so very different from the plight of these 1 million Uighur Muslims, incarcerated and forced to work for nothing? It is surely our duty to ensure that legislation such as this does not further entrench what academics have described as the world’s worst incident of state-sanctioned slavery.

The United Kingdom Government have, admirably, expressed their ambition to lead the world in their anti-slavery commitment. When we come to Report, I hope that the Government will put flesh on the bones of that commitment and ensure that no deals are made with any company for which there are credible reports of slave labour. For now, I support the amendment standing in the noble Baroness’s name.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran]

I apologise to the noble Lord. We have said that we will introduce the Bill as soon as possible, but the Covid situation has caused some disruption to the parliamentary timetable. The commitment to do it as quickly as possible stands, however.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for the way she has responded to the debate, particularly her remarks about how important this question is. What she just said to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is particularly interesting. If there has been slippage in the legislative timetable, and I recognise the reasons for it, surely that makes it even more important that this paving Bill—that is what this is, effectively—is the right place to address these questions. If it is not, they will go off into the future and we know that the future can be the long grass.

It is the age-old argument about the right place and the right time but, given the Minister’s welcome remarks about the importance of this issue, may I ask her to do one thing between now and Report? I would be very grateful if she could assure the Committee that she will liaise with the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, at the Foreign Office and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, at the Home Office about our obligations, referred to in my remarks, under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. These require any company with a turnover of more than £36 million to publish details of what steps they are taking to prevent modern slavery. Perhaps in that period there could also be a meeting with me, my noble friend Lady Falkner and the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, who was appointed by the Government. He could come in and talk further to the Minister about our obligations and why we really need to act now, rather than push the matter off into the future.

UK Telecommunications

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State has made it clear that there are many risks in taking this decision about Huawei. Can she give the House some idea of what additional costs will be involved in monitoring technology and equipment manufactured and imposed on this country by a communist regime?

Yesterday I raised human rights with the Secretary of State, and I wonder what consideration has been given to the anti-slavery academics who describe what is happening in Xinjiang—where, as we have heard, probably 1 million Uighur Muslims are incarcerated and where Huawei is a key player—as the world’s worst incidence of state-sponsored slavery. What due diligence will be done on Huawei to ensure compliance with the UK’s legislation, which is world class and leading on anti-slavery and modern-day slavery issues? Can the Secretary of State say what consideration has been given to unbridled surveillance, mass imprisonment, relentless propaganda and egregious human rights violations, which are too high a price to pay for subsidised technology that endangers our security and compromises British values and a belief in human rights?

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank the noble Lord. His latter point picks up on some of the points he made yesterday afternoon, when I was also standing in this position. To start with his first question, on the cost of compliance, thanks to the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre oversight board, there are already costs incurred of monitoring the use of Huawei technology in our networks. I cannot give him a specific figure now; if we are able to, I suspect it will be partly as a result of the necessary impact assessment that will have to be prepared by government and Ministers when putting legislation before this House. If I am able to give him anything approaching a figure at this stage, I will write to him with that information.

Yesterday, in this House, the noble Lord quite rightly raised the human rights abuses. The UK has been clear that China’s approach in Xinjiang must stop. We have led international condemnation of the systematic human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims and other minorities in China. Ministers and senior officials regularly raise our concerns with the Chinese, and in October, the UK read a statement of concern on behalf of 23 countries at the United Nations in New York.

The challenge of today’s decision—and the reason Ministers rightly wanted to take a good length of time to consider it, and wanted there to be a secure and reliable evidence base on which to make it—is that although this is a decision about telecoms, it is set in a wider geopolitical context, some factors of which the noble Lord has highlighted. I do not agree with him that is an either/or situation. As a country, we have a relationship with China that gives us the ability to make statements to the United Nations of the sort I mentioned. Equally, Huawei is already in our networks. What we are doing today is constraining its use on the edge of the networks, which will also help with further market diversification so that we do not need to rely on Huawei in the future.

Huawei: UK’s 5G Network

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank my noble friend, who is right to pick up on diversity. Diversification of supply is a critical issue in this whole debate. Obviously I cannot pre-empt decisions that might be made tomorrow or the discussions to be had, but that is of course one of the factors. The Prime Minister has said that it would help if those who wish us to take a particular decision had a particular alternative. There are other suppliers but I hope to say more if and when a decision is taken.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the anxiety of our US allies, will the Minister say something about the anxieties expressed in your Lordships’ House on two occasions last week about human rights concerns and the surveillance technology that has been developed by Huawei in places such as Xinjiang, where over 1 million Uighur Muslims have been incarcerated? Will she cast her mind back to ask this question: would we in former times have made this kind of deal and opened up our technology, our security and the possibility of human rights abuses to the Soviet Union if we had known then what we knew later about what it was doing in places such as the Gulag Archipelago?

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. I said in answer to the question just now that there will be a number of factors involved in making a decision of this importance. We will obviously take all of the advice from the services on a number of different issues. It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt the decisions or some of the detailed factors, but I am absolutely certain that we will return to some of the issues he raised in this place.

Online Safety

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate, and that is something the Government are considering.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the response that Matt Hancock has given to the father of 14 year-old Molly Russell, who took her life in 2017, having visited one of these suicide sites. That was a year in which the suicide rate among young females increased by 38%. As long ago as 7 December 2006, I asked the Government to amend the Suicide Act 1961 to enable the,

“banning of internet sites which may incite people to, or advise people on how to, commit suicide”.—[Official Report, 7/12/2006; col. WA 157.]

This is an issue I have raised on a dozen occasions since then, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. While I welcome the White Paper and legislation, will the Minister confirm that this is an urgent issue, which ought to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree that it is extremely important; we should expect social media companies to have responsibility, and we should hold them to account. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has met social media companies, and written to them on this issue. He had a round table on 7 February to discuss what more can be done, and his department will be hosting a follow-up round table in two months to review progress, so they are taking it seriously. In addition, bearing in mind what the right reverend Prelate said, we are thinking about those issues, as the noble Lord will see when the White Paper comes out.

Gambling: Advertising Ban

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Lord. Part of the gambling licensing conditions that betting organisations have to abide by are that they should act responsibly and specifically not target young and vulnerable people. It is up to the Gambling Commission to make sure they abide by their licensing conditions.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, when the Minister looks at the effect of gambling on young people, will he take into account the survey conducted by ParentZone yesterday about a new phenomenon called skin gambling? It said:

“Our survey confirmed it is wide-spread, with 10% of children across the UK aged 13-18 revealing they have gambled skins in some form. This percentage amounts to approximately 448,744 children”.


This is surely one of the new phenomena now appearing in social media and elsewhere targeted at young people, and the Government need always to be ahead of the game in these kinds of circumstances.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The Government are aware of that, and when in-game items such as skins can be used to place a bet or gamble, and be converted into cash, it is considered gambling and requires a licence. The Gambling Commission has taken action and prosecuted unlicensed gambling of in-game items known as skins. We are seeking to work with the video games industry to raise awareness of that and explore solutions, but I take the noble Lord’s point. We are aware of gambling in games and it is a new issue of which we are taking account.

Online Gambling

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I too warmly welcome this debate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, on his speech and on initiating the debate. I wholeheartedly agree with and endorse his remarks, along with those of the other preceding speakers.

In preparing for the debate I have been struck by the fact that the problem gamblers I have spoken to are also passionately against the two-tier system referred to by the noble Lord. One of them, Justyn Larcombe, emailed me this morning, giving me permission to quote him. He said:

“I am at a loss to understand why the Gambling Commission would have settled for this approach. Given that some companies own multiple sites, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why the industry might have pressured the commission into this bizarre arrangement … When you want to self-exclude, you are desperate and, by definition, you want to cut yourself off from all gambling opportunities. The idea that anyone reaches that point and wants to cut themselves off from bet365, but not Paddy Power, is farcical”.


Endorsing a point that we have heard in preceding speeches, he adds:

“It is in the middle of the night that the most destructive online gambling takes place. If it could be shut down overnight in the UK, as in Finland, that would really help increase protections for problem gamblers”.


I will return to each of Mr Larcombe’s points in my remarks.

For 25 years, as a city councillor or Member of the House of Commons, I represented inner-city neighbourhoods in Liverpool. Time and again, I saw the destructive effects of various forms of addiction. Addictive gambling had a corrosive and pernicious effect, with men in particular gambling wages or benefits that their wives and families desperately needed to keep hearth and home together.

Fast forward to today and into the world of anti-social media; and as the Gambling Commission reminds us, the overall prevalence of at-risk gambling is at its worst among those who are enticed into online gambling. That tears lives, families and communities apart—and we should all reflect on the sometimes tragic consequences, which include suicide and other well-documented mental, physical and emotional consequences, as we have heard. We have been reminded of tragic cases: the 23 year-old trainee accountant, Joshua Jones, who in the summer of 2015 leapt from the ninth storey of a London skyscraper to his death because his gambling debts had risen to £30,000; the 18 year-old, Omair Abbas, who committed suicide in 2016, having accumulated just over £5,000 of online gambling debts; and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, reminded us of the death of a young man in Fermanagh who had accumulated staggering debts. This waste of life, full of promise, is desperately unnecessary. Gambling addiction destroys lives, but it can also destroy communities.

Fast forward again to 2017 and visit our hollowed-out high streets, where the dominating prevalence of charity shops and betting shops tells its own story of modern Britain. In a telling and sharp contrast, as local communities are disfigured and struggle for resources, the Local Government Association is right to remind us that the gross gambling yield from fixed-odds betting terminals rose from £1.05 billion in April 2008 to £1.73 billion in March 2016—an increase of 65%. Those figures hardly suggest that the Gambling Act has struck the right balance between the needs of local communities and the rights of multimillion-pound businesses. I particularly agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, who told us that we ought to enforce many more restrictions on gambling advertising.

The fact that our laws lack balance is also illustrated by the findings of the Gambling Commission, which tells us that the UK now has the largest regulated online gambling market in the world. In one recent year, the remote gambling sector generated a gross gambling yield—defined as the amount retained by operators after the payment of winnings but before the deduction of costs—of a staggering £4.5 billion. That is a 32% market share of an even more staggering £13.8 billion generated over the same period by the gambling industry as a whole. Again, it was the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, who reminded us of the obscene levels of remuneration by some of the captains of this industry.

Problem gamblers in Great Britain—defined as those who gamble to a degree that compromises, disrupts or damages family, personal or recreational pursuits—are estimated to comprise some 430,000 people, mainly men, with a further 2 million deemed “at risk” of problem gambling. To combat that, the commission says that we can harness technology to provide some degree of protection; in particular, it points to the online multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, mentioned by noble Lords in the debate, scheduled to be in place by 2018. However, again, as Justyn Larcombe told me:

“I am at a loss to understand why the commission would have settled for this approach”.


The Gambling Commission licence conditions and codes of practice, in paragraphs 3.5.4 and 3.5.5, appear to suggest that individual sites should continue to run their own self-exclusion system in addition to MOSES. I am underlining the point of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, which is extremely important. I can see that the Minister may be tempted to suggest that having two systems is better than one; in some situations there can be wisdom in a belt-and-braces approach, but not here. The existence of two systems is likely to generate confusion, whereas problem gamblers, such as Mr Larcombe, want to be able to self-exclude from all legal sites at the same time. I very much hope that we are misreading paragraphs 3.5.4 and 3.5.5 and that GAMSTOP will replace all individual online self-exclusion provisions. However, if it does not, I must ask what evidence the Gambling Commission and the Government have from genuine problem gamblers that there is a desire for a two-tier system. I hope the Minister will reflect on that.

As others have done, let me say something about the statutory levy. I particularly endorse what my noble friend Lady Howe said to the House a little while ago. I raised the issue of the Government’s Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper in another context with the Minister who will reply to the debate. I find it quite extraordinary that, without a hint of irony, at the conclusion of page 16 and beginning of page 17, the paper states:

“While the Secretary of State has the power in legislation to bring forward a gambling levy, in practice the sector provides voluntary contributions and support. The majority of these voluntary payments go to GambleAware, a leading charity in Britain committed to minimising gambling-related harm”.


Reading that, it sounds as if the Government are relaying a good-news story of successful self-regulation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The industry is supposed generously to contribute 0.1% of gross gambling yield, £14 million, and yet it cannot manage even that. Last year, it managed only £8 million, sufficient to enable GambleAware to fund treatment for 8,000 people. Yet there are 430,000 problem gamblers in Great Britain. The Secretary of State should use the regulation-making powers afforded to her by Section 123 of the Gambling Act to give effect to the statutory levy. In my judgment, it should be at least at the level of the problem prevalence figure: 0.8% of gross gambling yield.

Justyn Larcombe also told me:

“It is in the middle of the night that the most destructive online gambling takes place”.


He referred to the situation in Finland. To deal with this challenge will necessitate legislation requiring gambling sites not to accept bets between midnight and 6 am, and financial transaction providers not to process gambling transactions between those hours. As well as reducing the hours during which people can gamble, I hope the Minister will consider reducing maximum stakes on fixed-odds betting terminals—B2 gaming machines—to just £2. The current maximum stake of £100 is significantly out of line with the maximum amounts that can be staked on other types of gaming machines. There is also credible evidence that these machines may be addictive particularly to problem gamblers and therefore pose a greater risk to them, as well as being linked to anti-social behaviour and crime in betting shops.

Then there is the role of the commission. The commission notes, as others have observed, that in 2008 public confidence and trust in gambling stood at 49%. Today, it stands at just 34%. The commission needs to ask why there has been that decline in public confidence. Along with others in your Lordships’ House, I think that we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for giving us the chance to raise these points and ask these questions today.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

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

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My noble friend made a very strong case. The internet was designed for adults, but I think I am right in saying that 25% of time spent online is spent by children. A child is a child, whether online or offline, and we cannot treat a 13 year-old as an adult. It is quite straightforward: the internet needs to be designed for safety. That means it must be age appropriate, and the technology companies need to do something about it. I support the amendments very strongly.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lady Kidron. Last week, with her and my noble friend Lord Best, I was able to attend a briefing session with the right honourable Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State. I found that very helpful. We were looking at the Green Paper on internet safety published on 11 October. It is curious that we are here in Committee talking about some of the same issues when that significant consultation is being undertaken by the Government. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, comes to reply to the debate, he will say something about how the Government intend to synchronise the discussion of and consultation on the Green Paper that is under way with the moving horse of legislation that is proceeding through your Lordships’ House.

During our discussions last week, my noble friend raised again the duty to protect. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just said about this providing an elegant way forward. I guess that many of us would want to turn the clock back if that were possible, but we recognise that it is not, and this may well be, therefore, a better way to proceed. It is certainly one to which the Government should be giving considerable attention.

While I am on my feet, perhaps I may remind the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, of the amendment that I moved with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss during the debate in April on the digital legislation. I particularly draw his attention to col. 40 on 20 March and the remarks made by his right honourable friend the Minister of State for Digital in the other place on 26 April, when he described the question of prohibited material and definitions, which we had argued should be consistent across varying media platforms. They both said that this was unfinished business that would be returned to. I have studied the Green Paper but have not been able to find the solution to that unfinished business, and wonder whether it will be addressed as the legislation proceeds.

Perhaps I may also ask the Minister about the protection of minors. It has been stated again and again, by all noble Lords who have participated so far, including the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the protection of children should be a paramount consideration at all times. The Minister may recall the case, which I raised with the Secretary of State and in your Lordships’ House, of some young people who had visited suicide sites. I was horrified to learn from the headmaster of a school in Lancashire, where I arrived to distribute prizes, that a child who had visited a suicide site had taken their own life only that morning. What further protections are being provided to require service providers, for whom self-regulation is clearly not enough, to do rather more about that question?

It has been said that parents do not have a chance in this situation; that is absolutely right. As my noble friend Lady Hollins said, young people spend a vast amount of time on the internet. Many parents do not understand how it works. It is therefore crucial that we do all we can to place pressure on the service providers. I remind the House of the advice that Aristotle gave parents. He said that only a bad parent would place their children in the hands of a foolish storyteller. I fear that many of us, maybe inadvertently and without knowing the full consequences of placing our children in the hands of the Twittersphere and the digital world, with all the information that pours into their minds on a massive scale, have placed them into bad hands. We need to do more to protect them. This is what my noble friend is trying to do and I commend her amendment to the House.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the aim of these amendments, as do other noble Lords who have spoken. They were extraordinarily well introduced, given the scope of what they are intended to achieve. As I said at Second Reading, I do not have the same authority and technical background in the industry as many noble Lords who have taken part, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Harding. However, I have a legitimate question for the noble Baroness. The Minister, who will have heard the general support around the House, will also be aware of this. However good the intentions of the amendments—and I support their aims—it is difficult to regulate in a world in which technical capacity is international. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, these matters are rather low on the agendas of the major, global corporations which are responsible for producing the technology, delivering the content and organising the platforms that children may be accessing, appropriately or not. It is legitimate to ask, as she did, whether what we say and how we regulate in this country can be a beacon. I think she said that this could be the beginning of a geographical spread of better regulation. It would be pointless to ignore the fact that we are dealing not with an internal issue of domestic regulation as we would be with terrestrial broadcasting, but with global corporations, most of them based on the west coast of the United States, which do not necessarily even agree with the aims of these amendments—which I very certainly do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

There may be some confusion now. I am not saying that children’s data is not important or that data protection for children is not important: clearly they are. However, the internet safety strategy addresses an overall, comprehensive range of measures that is about more than just data protection. We want to have a comprehensive strategy, which I am going to come to, to talk about safety. Nobody in their right mind is saying that we should not protect children, not only on the domestic front but internationally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said. Let me continue and I am sure all will become clear. If it does not, I am sure that the noble Baroness and others will cross-question me. If I have misunderstood what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is getting at, I will look at Hansard and get back to him. I am sure we will come to this again.

We have a clear plan of action to raise the level of safety online for all users, as set out in the internet safety strategy. We are consulting on a new code of practice for the providers of online social media platforms, as required by the Digital Economy Act. That will set best practice for platform providers in offering adequate online protection policies, including minimum standards. Approaching the problem in this way as a safety matter, rather than a data protection matter, ensures we can tackle the problem while avoiding a debate over whether we are compliant with the GDPR. The internet safety strategy also outlines the Government’s promotion of “Think safety first” for online services. This will aim to educate and encourage new start-ups and developers to ensure that safety and privacy are built into their products from the design phase. Examples of this type of approach include having robust reporting mechanisms for users. We are looking at whether extra considerations should be in place on devices that are registered as being used by a child.

It is essential that we take a careful and considered approach to affecting the design standard of online services. Making overly complex or demanding requirements may result in negative consequences. Let me explain why. Amendments 18 and 19 essentially offer website operators a stark choice. Websites will need to either invest in upgrading standards and design or withdraw their services for use by under-16s. This is dangerous for the following reasons.

First, it could cause a displacement effect where children move to less popular platforms that would potentially not comply with such requirements—the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, talked about foreign sites. It is often more difficult to monitor these services and to ensure they have the basic protections that we expect from more legitimate sites. Platforms comply either because they are responsible or because they believe that the regulator will take enforcement action against them. Platforms hosted overseas may not always comply, because to do so would reduce the volume of users and potential monetisation, and the risk of enforcement action may be low.

Secondly, it is likely that young people, particularly those who already use these sites, may lie about their age to circumvent restrictions. This could have negative consequences for the prosecution of online grooming and underage sex: teenagers would be vulnerable to the assumption that they are over 16; adults could use this as a defence for their conduct; and sites may not be as accountable for the content that children are exposed to. This is not an imaginary problem. There have been cases of acquittal at trial, where men have had sexual relations with underage girls after meeting them on sites for over-18s only, using their presence on the site as a defence for believing them to be adults.

Thirdly, circumvention may be sought through the use of mechanisms to anonymise—I am having a problem with my pronunciation too—the use of the internet. Young people may adopt anonymising tools such as VPNs to access non-UK versions of the sites. This would make it more difficult for law enforcement to investigate, should they be exploited or subject to crime.

Fourthly, there is already in place a variety of legislation to safeguard children. Any change brought in through this Bill would have potential ramifications for other statutes. Altering how children make use of online service providers would need to be carefully worked through with law enforcement agencies to ensure that it did not damage the effectiveness of safeguarding vulnerable people.

Fifthly, these amendments do not just apply to social media services. A broad range of online services would be affected by this proposal, from media players to commerce sites. The kinds of services that would be caught by this amendment include many that develop content specifically for young people, including educational materials, not to mention the wider impact on digital skills if children are forced offline.

I move on now to more practical considerations. I am concerned that the amendments as drafted, while an elegant proposal, could serve to create confusion about what sites have to do. We know that the GDPR will apply from 25 May, and I am not convinced that this will allow enough time for the commissioner to consult on the guidance, prepare it, agree it and lay it before Parliament, and for companies to be compliant with it. Online service providers will need to adhere to the new requirements from May 2018, and may have existing customers that the new provisions will apply to. They will need some time to make any necessary changes in advance. Even with the transition period available in the amendment, this would lead to considerable uncertainty and confusion from online services about the rules they will have to follow come May. This could result in the problems that I have already laid out.

Finally, the Information Commissioner has raised a technical point. These amendments would apply only where consent is the lawful basis for processing data. Children also have access to online services where the data controller relies on a contractual basis or vital interests to offer services, rather than reliance on consent. Therefore, the amendments may have less reach than seems to be envisaged and are likely to lead to confusion as to which services the requirements apply to.

In summary, in spite of our appreciation of the aims of these amendments, we have concerns. They may prove dangerous to the online safety of children and young people. Creating unnecessary and isolated requirements runs the risk of being counterproductive to other work in this space. There needs to be some serious and detailed discussion on this before any changes are made. Furthermore, the technical and legal drafting of the amendments remains in question.

There is no doubt that further work needs to be done in the online safety space to ensure the robust and sustainable protection of our children and young people online. We have demonstrated commitment to this through the work on the internet safety strategy and the Digital Economy Act. We are working on these issues as a matter of priority, but strongly believe that it is better to address them as a whole rather than pursue them through the narrow lens of data protection. We need to work collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that we get the right approach. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for example, was among those who attended the parliamentarians’ round table on the internet safety strategy, which she mentioned, hosted by the Secretary of State last week. We are engaged on this issue and are not pursuing the work behind locked doors. These specific amendments, however, are not the right course of action to take at this time.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the Minister has just referred to the round table. He will recall that I mentioned in my remarks the issue of definitions and suicide sites that were raised during that round table last week. Can he tell the House any more about that?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I was not at the round table, and I am afraid that I would require some notice to answer that question. I am certainly happy to write to the Committee about that. I had not forgotten; I just do not have an answer.

Given the arguments that I have laid out, I would like to reassure the House that this issue remains high priority. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked whether GOV.UK’s Verify site could be used for age verification. Verify confirms identity against records held by mobile phone companies, HM Passport Office, the DVLA and credit agencies, so it is not designed for use by children. We will continue to work with interested parties to improve internet safety, but in a coherent and systematic way. For the moment, and in anticipation of further discussions, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

I now move to Amendment 20A from the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Kennedy, on the requirement for a review of Clause 8. Again, the Government agree with the spirit of this amendment in ensuring that the legislation we are creating offers the protections that we desire. However, there are a few issues that we would like to address.

First, it is government practice to review and report in cases of new legislation like this. Bringing about a mandatory report in this case is therefore unnecessary. Furthermore, prescribing the specific content of such a report at this stage is counterproductive. This is especially true given the complex and wide-ranging nature of child online safety and the work being conducted by the Government in this space.

Secondly, on timings, as noble Lords are aware, we must comply with the GDPR from 25 May next year, by which time the Bill must be passed. I am concerned, therefore, that to require a review to be published within 12 months of the Bill passing would not leave sufficient time to produce a meaningful report. Companies need the time to bring in new mechanisms to be compliant with the regulation. For data to be created and collected, time must be given for the sites to be tested and used following the new regulations. This will allow for the comparison of robust data and that which will reflect other work around online safety, which is still being developed. For those reasons, I ask the noble Lords not to press their amendments.