Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Jolly

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, not least because of the discussion that some of us were able to take part in earlier about this very issue. However, a debate and a review, of course, are no substitute for legislation, as she will agree. Will she at least commit, not about debates or reviews but about what the Government can commit to themselves, which is legislation if the review does not bring forward the necessary mechanisms to control this disease which has been described by so many noble Lords today as affecting so many people?

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, I do not dispute for one minute that we would all like to see this problem go away. Regrettably, these decisions are made by Treasury Ministers and this is well above my pay grade.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Jolly

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that the Government remain committed to improving the safety of children online and have a strong track record of working with the internet industry to drive progress. I thank her for her continued interest in this area. I am aware that this amendment is drawn from a Private Member’s Bill and that similar provisions were debated earlier this year as part of the Children and Families Bill. Speaking as a parent and grandparent, this issue is close to my heart. I know that many noble Lords will feel similarly and I am pleased to update the Committee on recent progress in this area.

The Prime Minister’s speech in July last year set out a series of measures, to which he asked the industry to commit, to help parents to limit their children’s access to age-inappropriate and potentially harmful material. We have seen excellent progress in all these. As the noble Baroness said, the four major ISPs, which cover almost 90% of the UK’s broadband market—BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media—have delivered on their commitment to provide parents with the ability to easily filter content. They all now present new customers with an unavoidable choice about whether to use free, family-friendly network-level filters. Existing companies are making good headway with the rollout of these provisions. Smaller providers are also stepping up: for example, KC launched a free parental control service for its broadband customers last month. This has been a huge and complex undertaking, but it has seen results.

The noble Baroness might be interested in public wi-fi providers. The six major providers, covering more than 90% of the market, now provide family-friendly public wi-fi wherever children are likely to be. This summer, the Registered Digital Institute launched the Friendly WiFi logo, giving parents the assurance that a particular business, retailer or public space is filtering out inappropriate material.

Three of the UK’s four major mobile network operators already automatically provide adult content filters for pay-as-you-go and contract customers, with the remaining provider, Three, committed to doing so by July 2015. This means that the great majority of mobile customers are already covered by default-on filters. The Government have also been working with mobile virtual network operators to ensure that they are doing the same. These measures could not have been achieved as quickly through legislation, given the pace of change in this complex environment.

I thank the noble Baroness for setting out the reasons why she feels that further action is needed. The Government are of course open to considering different options and it would be appropriate if we had a meeting between now and Report.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

The Minister will recall that I asked her specifically how many people are not currently covered by this legislation. How many families and children do the 10% represent?

[Baroness Jolly]

I have many answers here to the noble Lord’s questions. It is vital to understand the full implications of any actions that we take and whether they are likely to be effective. I am sure that the noble Baroness will agree that it is vital that we encourage parents to talk about these important issues with their children. Parents told us that they do not always feel aware of the risks that their children face when online. This is why, in May, the four major ISPs launched Internet Matters, a multimillion-pound campaign aimed at helping parents to understand filters and a range of issues related to online safety.

Education is key in all this and we are doing more to educate children. Since the start of the school year in September, the new computing curriculum has included information for five to 16 year-olds—key stages 1 to 5—about how to stay safe online. Some schools are also promoting child safety at special events for parents. As the noble Lord said, children are often savvier than their parents. Ofcom is monitoring progress in this area. Its latest report, published in October, showed that nine in 10 parents mediate their child’s access to the internet in some way, with most parents using a combination of approaches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I was just about to ask the noble Baroness that very thing. If she would be good enough to write to Members of the Committee telling us exactly how many families and how many children the Government estimate will not be covered by these arrangements, that would help to inform the debate before we get to Report.

[Baroness Jolly]

That is a fair point. However, the noble Lord is suggesting that more than 10% of ISPs are opposing child protection, but the four major ISPs cover pretty much 90%. We have also heard that KCOM, which is quite a large player in this market as well, now offers child protection. We are working on it; we are picking off all these ISPs one by one. Perhaps the noble Baroness could let us know which provider sees it as a badge on honour not to do this; that would be useful. However, it certainly is not the case at all that 10% are against this. That is not a fair statement. For the moment, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. We would be more than happy to sit down and talk with her to see where we could meet.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Jolly

Monday 3rd November 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly]

Indeed. However, advertising of payday loans is less targeted towards children currently than it may have been in times past. There is also a larger issue here around parents helping children to understand. These adverts are shown in all houses, whether or not the parents have a problem with payday loans. There is an issue for parents to teach their children that this is not the way to go, even though for the majority of parents, that is not the case. However, the Government believe that regulation rather than statutory legislation is the way to move forward in these particular cases.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for her response to what has been, as she rightly said, a really excellent debate and one which I think has united opinion on many sides of the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was right when he said earlier on that if this matter could not be successfully resolved in Committee today, it would undoubtedly be returned to on Report. I get the sense, having just heard the concluding remarks from the Minister, that we will want to bring these amendments back on Report, because many of us do not think that regulation will be sufficient to deal with something that needs to be put on a firm statutory basis.

The thing that I will take away from the debate this afternoon is that, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said earlier, four out of five children are not receiving money management education. I was particularly struck by the graphic example that he gave of people taking out a loan in order to pay for a pizza. That underlines where we are and why we have to do something about this situation.

Positive points have come out of the debate as well. The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, touched on the issue of credit unions. I intended to do precisely that. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, is right to say that once we dispose of the usurious rates of interest that are being charged by payday loan sharks, that will be replaced by the sort of people described by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, offering all sorts of forms of violence. Organised crime may well move into this slot if we do not take preventive measures. We need a fundamental decision on how to give additional support to the welcome support given by the noble Baroness to credit unions, as well as dealing with pester power, dancing puppets and the watershed issue—all the sorts of things raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, my noble friend Lady Howe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, who, rightly with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, reminded us of the importance of free debt advice services.

I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, about the destruction of the age of innocence, and what was said elsewhere about the importance of updating the language of children’s protection. I made the point in my opening remarks that if we can do these things on a statutory basis for alcohol and gambling, there is no reason why we cannot do it for payday loan advertising targeted at children as well. I hope that in the period now elapsing between Committee and Report the Government will think again about this and perhaps have discussions across the Chamber to see what can be done to reach consensus. I get the sense that we all want to reach the same conclusion. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.