Brexit: Creative Industries’ Access to European Markets

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Puttnam

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I think my noble friend would agree that they are two very different things.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government made an economic analysis of any kind regarding the potential damage to the UK’s creative industries that would be likely to result from a soft or a hard Brexit? This is no small thing, as it leaves many thousands of jobs at risk and a commensurate degree of enormous anxiety.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that it is no small thing. As many noble Lords will know, the Government produced two analyses of the economy as a whole in November last year and February this year. There has not been a separate economic analysis comparing the two scenarios he mentioned, but I think it is clear to everyone that a Brexit which involves an agreement with the EU is better, because it allows us more time to negotiate a future economic partnership which, crucially, involves reciprocity in many of the areas that concern the creative industries, such as movement of talent.

Broadcasting (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Puttnam

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, is there anything in the Ofcom response to indicate that any of these changes will benefit the UK production economy, or indeed the UK economy in general? Is there anything in the Ofcom response that suggests this is not negative?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am very grateful for all those interesting points and particularly for the speed at which they were delivered. We might set a record on this SI, with any luck.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Puttnam

Report: 3rd sitting Hansard: House of Lords
Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, the last time I cleared a room like this, it was a very bad film indeed.

Amendment 103A is connected to Amendments 103B, 103C, 124A, 124B and 125A, and I move it with the support of my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Holmes. In a well-run world, this group of amendments should not really need to be moved or pressed. They are designed purely to ensure that we have the data commissioner—and the office of that commissioner—that we need. Frankly, they are the natural consequence of all the debates that have occurred during the passage of the data protection legislation.

There can be no more important role over the next few years than that of the Data Commissioner. The organisation she is being asked to regulate is the largest in the world. A quite extraordinary statistic is that the four largest companies—Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple—have between them a larger market capitalisation than the FTSE 100. That is the scale of the businesses we are asking the Data Commissioner to regulate. At the same time, under the Bill at present the resources available to her are wholly inadequate to that task. We went through a similar operation 15 years ago with Ofcom, and out of that, and through the collective wisdom of this House, we were able to ensure that Ofcom had the resources to become what is genuinely the gold standard of any media and telecoms industry regulator in the world. That is an achievement of this House of which we should be very proud. The purpose of these amendments is to achieve exactly the same for our ICO—something we can be proud of and that can do the job given to it.

During the passage of the Bill, we have loaded the ICO with significant new and additional responsibilities. The idea that we might have an underfunded and underresourced regulator that is not adequate to the task we are giving it is unthinkable. The purpose of these amendments is to prevent that. I could go on at some length, but I think the mood of the House is that it wishes to move on, so I shall listen to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

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

My Lords, it might be for the convenience of the House if I speak now as I have some information which may help the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and other noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments.

As I have repeatedly said during the debates on the Bill, the Government are committed to ensuring that the commissioner has adequate resources to fulfil her role as a world-class regulator and to take on the extra regulatory responsibilities set out in this Bill, so I agree with pretty well everything the noble Lord said. That is why we legislated for a new, GDPR-compliant charging regime in the Digital Economy Act, which we will turn to in the next group, but it is also why the commissioner needs to be able to recruit and retain expert staff.

I am therefore very pleased to announce that the Government have today granted the Information Commissioner’s Office pay flexibility up to 2020-21 so that it can review its pay and grading structure. The commissioner will have the independence to determine the levels of pay necessary for the ICO to maintain the expertise it needs to fulfil its new and revised functions as a supervisory authority, subject to the standard public spending principles. I am also pleased to say that the Information Commissioner has agreed these arrangements. She said:

“I welcome the positive response to my business case for pay flexibility at the ICO. I am confident that this will allow me to prepare the ICO for its critical role under the new data protection regime ensuring that the UK has a strong and expert regulator in an area recognised for its importance to the digital economy and society as a whole”.


This flexibility underscores the UK’s commitment to an independent and effective data protection regulator, and I think goes a long way in responding to the points raised by the noble Lord’s amendments. We all want an efficient, well-resourced ICO, so I am very pleased that this agreement has been reached. I should have said at the outset that I am very grateful to the noble Lord for coming to talk to me about it. I am glad to say he was pushing at an open door.

[Lord Puttnam]

I thank the noble Lord, who has been extraordinarily generous with his time. He and his officials could not have been more helpful in reaching what I regard as a perfectly satisfactory conclusion. My only wish is that we have a regulator that can do the job required of it and tackle the abuses along the way confidently and competently. I am extraordinarily grateful for this outcome. I am very happy to withdraw the amendment.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Puttnam

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

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, whose long experience in education I acknowledge, and to all noble Lords who have contributed. I could not agree more about the importance of children and young people fully understanding how their data is collected, stored and used. That is why the Government have already taken steps to ensure that key aspects of data protection are taught in maintained schools. In 2014 we established a new and more rigorous national computing curriculum covering ages five to 16. It is compulsory in maintained schools in England and sets an ambitious benchmark that autonomous academies and free schools can use and improve on.

The new computing curriculum was developed by industry experts and includes safety, which helps to give children the tools that they need to make sensible choices online. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and my noble friend Lord Lucas that they were a bit pessimistic about what we are doing; we are certainly not doing nothing, as my noble friend implied. Children are taught how to use technology safely, respectfully and responsibly; how to recognise unacceptable behaviour; and how to report concerns about content and contact. Importantly, the curriculum also includes keeping personal information private and protecting their online identity and privacy, both of which are important parts of data protection. All schools can choose to teach children about data collection, storage and usage as part of these topics.

I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, that the digital economy is actually not doing too badly; it is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy. The Government are spending to improve skills at all levels, including at PhD level, to prevent social exclusion. So we get the issues that he is talking about, and in my answer to the debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, I outlined some of the things that we are doing.

[Lord Puttnam]

I accept entirely that the economic drivers for the digital economy are being handled quite well. I am suggesting that the societal end of that debate is not keeping pace with the commercial and that, if we allow too great a disconnect to occur between societal impacts and commercial success, we will reap a very unfortunate harvest. The Minister was good enough to see me last week, together with an official from the Department for Education. I am not pretending for a moment that nothing is being done, but I am suggesting that there is nothing like enough urgency in trying to correct the societal aspects of this issue.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I take that point. I also understand the difference that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, highlighted between digital skills and digital understanding, and we need to address that. One of the issues that the data ethics body is going to look at is how society deals with these technical problems, albeit that they are changing incredibly fast.

I have talked about younger pupils. Older pupils are also taught citizenship as part of the national curriculum. That equips pupils to take their place in society as active and responsible citizens, including providing them with the knowledge and skills that they need to think critically and to research and interrogate evidence. These vital skills help our children understand how their data can be used and why data protection is important.

Amendment 20 would require the Secretary of State for Education to make changes to the current maintained schools national curriculum, and would create new requirements for independent schools and academies. In our view, now is not the time to make further changes to these subjects. We need to allow schools to fully embed the new curriculum in order to provide a period of stability for schools so that they can focus on ensuring that pupils are taught this new curriculum well, including the new aspects on data protection.

Having said that, we are not complacent. We realise that companies’ use of data in the online world is increasingly complex and that we need to support children to understand that. The changes introduced in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 represent a step change in education on online safety. For the first time it will be compulsory for all primary-aged children at school in England to be taught relationships education, and all secondary-school children will be taught relationships and sex education. In addition, we will carefully consider whether also to make personal, social, health and economic education compulsory in all schools.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, took my lines to a certain extent. I was going to confirm that the Department for Education confirmed today that it has begun its engagement with stakeholders. This is a point that has come up before: that will help it reach evidence-based decisions on the content. I can tell the noble Lord that the head teacher who is running it will advise the Department for Education on what will be included in relationships and sex education and PSHE, whether it should be compulsory and, if so, what content may be included. It will be live to online issues and include what children need to know to be safe online, beyond what is already in the computing curriculum.

The Government will ensure that these new compulsory subjects in England address the challenges experienced by young people online and are seeking views to work out exactly what this should cover and how best to do so. The Department for Education will support schools to ensure that content is pitched at the right level for each school year and builds knowledge as children grow up. Engagement and consultation will help us to get the detail right.

My department, DCMS, and the Department for Education are working together on the online safety aspects of these subjects. We will work with partners, including social media and technology companies, subject experts, law enforcement—

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Puttnam

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to make two observations, one of which makes me feel very old. I worked with the then Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, on looking at the whole issue of free-to-air sporting events in terms of where they penetrated and where they had to be retained. It is interesting to note that last week it was announced that the Six Nations competition is broadcast free to air not only to all the countries involved, but also has the largest live audience for any sport anywhere in the world. So there is no, as it were, collision between the appeal of a sport, the size of the arenas and the number of people attending the events, and the fact that these events are also available on free-to-air television. I sense that sometimes it feels like it might be a trade-off: you have to get the money in or you will not get a sufficient audience. The Six Nations competition is a classic example of something that succeeds at every level.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield, for moving this amendment and I hope that I can provide some reassurance to noble Lords. Indeed, I fear we may all be in danger of violently agreeing with each other. Listed sporting events is an issue we have discussed before. As the Minister for Culture made very clear in the other place, the current listed events regime is not under threat at this time and I confirm that we will not let it be under threat. I hope that that directly answers the question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Wood, and I therefore do not believe that these amendments are needed at this time.

I submit that it would be particularly undesirable to act in the way that Amendment 224 suggests, because it would lock in the incumbents’ position, since the requirement to be watched by 90% of the population would narrow considerably the number of channels that could ever qualify. It would narrow it to channels which had already achieved mass appeal to audiences—and that is not a step we should take rashly. The requirement in Amendment 224A that channels qualify if they are capable of reaching the vast majority of the population and likely to achieve a significant audience is, I respectfully suggest—I would certainly never use the word “sloppy” of the noble Lord, Lord Gordon—perhaps too vague to provide a workable system. Ofcom would be forever subject to challenge by channels arguing over its assessment. It would create enormous flux in the regime, meaning that sports federations could not be sure whether the channels they were negotiating with met the qualifying conditions.

However, I assure the Committee that we are keeping this area under review and we will consider how we can best ensure that any risks can be managed successfully in future. To that effect, we will consider carefully before Report the issues raised and the contributions made by noble Lords today. With that commitment, I hope that both noble Lords will withdraw their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate. I have to warn the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, that despite his very kind remarks I may not be so amenable. My speech may contain some upsetting content—we broadcasters have to issue warnings.

Amendment 226A would extend the prominence provisions that currently exist for linear channels to on-demand electronic programme services, which are the lists of on-demand services available for selection on television interfaces. This issue was debated at length in the other place, although I note that this amendment goes further in integrating new provisions into the existing statutory framework for both EPGs and the PSB prominence regime. But I believe that the key issue remains as it was.

The Minister reassured Members in the other place then—and I reassure the Committee today—that the Government gave this issue considerable thought during last year’s balance of payments consultation, the response to which was published in August last year. Our conclusion was—and we remain of the view—that we have not seen compelling evidence of harm to PSBs to date. Creating a new regulatory regime that defines the user interfaces or submenus that should be caught, particularly in a fast-moving technological landscape, is likely to be complex. At the time of consultation, Ministers were not convinced of the benefit of regulation that might extend to, for instance, smart TV manufacturers’ user interfaces, which are developed with a global market in mind. We therefore decided not to extend the EPG prominence regime for PSBs to on-demand.

When PSBs make excellent content, generally audiences will find that content. This is true of both catch-up and live content. For example, the BBC’s award-winning children’s services are much viewed by children throughout the UK. We do not believe that further protections are necessary to ensure that children find these services. A recurring theme in the debates on the Bill has been how much more competent children are than many adults in the digital world.

Furthermore, acting in this area is extremely complicated and the fact that the amendment spans more than a page demonstrates some of the difficulties inherent in legislating in this area. The technological landscape is shifting quickly and, with it, the business models of those who seek to cater to changing audience tastes. Detailed regulations about how exactly audiences need to be guided through menus cannot be the answer here. Regulations would be outdated as soon as they came into force.

Moreover, this amendment would give prominence to the PSBs’ on-demand programme services, which include not only the PSB content of the commercial PSBs, but also content originating from their non- PSB channels. If the intention was to put on-demand EPG prominence on the same footing as linear EPG prominence, this amendment goes far beyond what we have in place for linear TV. It is therefore, in our view, not justifiable.

With that explanation—and I appreciate that the noble Lord may not be happy—I hope that tonight he will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Puttnam]

I am looking at the general duties of Ofcom and I am failing to understand in whose interests the Government are taking this position. It is very clear to me that the general duties of Ofcom are to further the interests of citizens and to further the interests of consumers. They do not include furthering the interests of manufacturers. Is the Minister saying that in fact the interests of manufacturers and suppliers are trumping the interests of the consumer and the citizen?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

No, what I am saying is that we do not see that there is compelling evidence of harm to PSBs.