Broadcasting: Recent Developments

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for securing this important debate. I want to draw your Lordships’ attention to an important decision now affecting broadcasting generally and the stakeholder forum that has been established by DCMS regarding the future of the UK’s digital terrestrial television service. This is the system, as your Lordships know, by which most households receive television, providing free-to-air public service broadcasting to almost 99% of homes in the UK. It plays a vital role in how people access news and information in this country. It remains especially important for older viewers, people on low incomes and those living in rural and remote communities. For millions of people, it is not a secondary service or some kind of legacy platform; it is their main way of watching television, whether the BBC, ITV or whatever. It is familiar and generally universal.

The current policy commitment to terrestrial digital extends only to 2034. Calls for switch-off and a forced move to an entirely internet-based model of television are increasing. Yet while surveys show that there is overwhelming support for the continuation of digital terrestrial television, the vast majority of people affected in the UK are unaware of the potential uncertainty that is arising. In my view, forcing households to get a high-speed fixed broadband connection simply to continue watching television is wrong. For many people such as those whom I have mentioned—older viewers and people on lower incomes—there will be an increase in their cost of living with monthly broadband costs, installation charges and exposure to price rises. Many households manage by relying on mobile data for essential online tasks while continuing to use digital terrestrial for television. Removing that option would place additional costs on them.

I want to draw your Lordships’ attention to the regional impact of any switch-off. In Northern Ireland, for instance, 42% of homes rely on terrestrial television, nine percentage points higher than the UK average. We have the highest level of live broadcast viewing of any UK nation. The same challenges exist in Scotland and Wales and in parts of England where connectivity remains inconsistent and broadband take-up is forecast to lag well behind urban areas. I found the work of the Broadcast 2040+ campaign helpful in setting out the evidence, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland. I want to make a plea to the Minister to address this issue when she replies. It has not been raised thus far in this debate, but it is important not only for the reasons I have set out; this is also a critical part of our national resilience so that emergency services, utilities and transport, and government and security systems continue to function when broadband and mobile networks are overloaded or fail. We have seen that happen too often. I plead with the Minister to bring some clarity on when a decision will be taken on the future of digital terrestrial television. I hope that the decision will be positive, providing certainty and protecting free-to-air terrestrial television.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I want to focus primarily on the safeguarding of children. I support the general provisions and intent of this Bill; it is clearly going to be a very important tool in keeping children safe online.

While the internet has so many benefits, it exposes children to myriad harmful content, such as pornography and content promoting self-harm and suicide, as well as targeted abuse and grooming. Molly Russell’s name has become synonymous with the Bill, and it is important that we get this legislation right so that harms online, such as those Molly encountered, are not just reduced but eliminated. We need to make the online world as safe as it can be for our children.

We know that young children are able to sign up for accounts on social media platforms with little or no protection from the harms they face; they are able to freely access pornography without restriction. It is shocking that over 60% of children under 13 have accessed harmful content online by accident. To safeguard children and young people thoroughly, we need to ensure that the protections for children offline are mirrored online. I fully endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said and I will be supporting him in the amendments he brings forward. I also support those that will be brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.

In the offline sphere, under the Video Recordings Act, the British Board of Film Classification, for example, is responsible for classifying pornographic content to ensure that it is not only not illegal but meets established standards. None of these offline standards is applied online at all.

The online pornography industry has developed and evolved without any—never mind robust—regulatory oversight. But, given what is available online, much of which is illegal, oversight is greatly needed and overdue. The Bill provides the opportunity to put that right, and we must not miss this opportunity because, as we have heard, this may not return for some years.

Age verification was supposed to be implemented under the Digital Economy Act. As a result of the Government’s decision not to implement Part 3 of that Act, children have had unfettered access to pornographic content. Therefore, in my view, age verification needs to be implemented as swiftly as possible. A coalition of charities are proposing that Ofcom must prepare and issue a code of practice within four months of Royal Assent and that age verification should be implemented within six months. That is the very minimum that we should expect. We owe it to our children that they are not exposed to any more harm than they have been already.

Much of the debate in the other place on the issue of free speech focused on the Bill’s provisions to regulate what is legal but harmful. It is important that we ensure that the provisions of this Bill protect free speech, while at the same time protecting vulnerable people against deeply damaging material and content. The Bill now places a duty on user-to-user services

“to have particular regard to the importance of protecting users’ right to freedom of expression within the law”.

We need to examine the operation of this duty very carefully. The Bill must reflect the principle and the law must reflect the principle that whatever you can say offline on the street should be protected online. Large internet companies should not have the power to decide what is said and not said online. If a company removes speech that would be legal offline, it must be placed under an obligation to give reasons why that speech was removed and be held to the highest standard of accountability for removing it.

Social media companies are enormous cartels that dominate our culture. The Government, in bringing forward this Bill, have concluded that they cannot be trusted with users’ safety. They cannot be trusted to keep their platforms safe, and equally they should not be trusted with free speech. I want also to endorse those noble Lords and Baronesses who have called for action to be taken against the awful abuse and trolling of women and girls online, and particularly the use of anonymous accounts. This issue needs to be tackled, and I look forward to working with others in Committee to strengthen the Bill in all these safeguards.

Leaving the EU: Tourism and the Creative Industries

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing this debate. It is also a pleasure to follow such a passionate speech from my fellow musician, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). It is unusual for us both to be on the same stage as we have been exchanging places in MP4 recently.

The United Kingdom is a powerhouse when it comes to the creative industries and tourism; we punch far above our weight and we lead the world with some of the most innovative and advanced thinking that is out there in the creative sector. In 2016 the creative industries contributed a staggering £91.8 billion to the UK economy. The sector grew by 7.5% compared with growth of 3.5% for the UK economy as a whole. The sector provides for 6% of all UK jobs, and the total employment in the creative economy is around 3 million people. That includes around 76,000 jobs in Scotland and rising, contributing more than £4.5 billion to the Scottish economy. We in Scotland are proud to be a major contributor towards those figures.

Scotland saw the fastest growth in creative industries employment of all nations in the UK from 2015 to 2016, at about 13%. That is almost three times as high as in England, and more than England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. A report commissioned for Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen in 2014 found that the creative industries in the north-east of Scotland, where my constituency of Banff and Buchan is located, employ around 6,000 people in more than 1,500 businesses. In the north-east of Scotland alone the sector generated annual revenues in excess of £600 million. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West has called this debate to discuss the future of our creative industries and tourism after the UK leaves the EU. I agree that there are challenges to overcome.

The creative industries rely on cross-border working, and many people in those industries travel regularly for work in the EU, just as European citizens come here. We know that around 7% of people working in the creative sector are non-UK EU nationals, roughly in line with the average across all industries, but a significant number none the less. I ask the Government to keep the needs of this industry in mind when designing a future immigration system, whether that be the needs of the creative industry, tourism, hospitality or indeed those of the fishing and fish processing sectors and food and drink in general, which I have spoken up for in this place on several occasions.

So far I have talked mostly about the creative industries, but I also want to talk about tourism. For those who have not visited—I highly recommend that they do—my constituency of Banff and Buchan has 48 miles of stunning Scottish coastline, with one particular stretch, between Portsoy and Pennan, having been voted as one of the top 20 most iconic coastlines in the world. That stretch of coastline is interesting. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) talked extensively about the film industry. Portsoy was the site for the recent remake of the film “Whisky Galore!” and the old 17th-century harbour was almost a character in itself. Going back to the ’80s, “Local Hero”, a movie with Burt Lancaster, was set in Pennan. That goes to show how dramatic the coastline between those two villages is.

Also worth a special mention is the famous Aberdeenshire castle trail, which runs through my constituency via Duff House, Delgatie Castle and Fyvie Castle, among all the others across the north-east of Scotland. Banff and Buchan is also home to excellent heritage museums that highlight our traditional industries of fishing and farming. I should note that those museums show a living history, because those industries are far from dead in Banff and Buchan.

Golf is a popular pastime across Scotland—across the world, in fact—but Fraserburgh in my constituency has the seventh oldest, still operating, golf course in the world. National Geographic referred to the Banff and Buchan coast as

“one of the world’s outstanding coastlines”.

The local tourism board markets the area as “Scotland’s dolphin coast.” It is home to around 130 bottlenose dolphins, as well as 15 other species of cetaceans, including minke whales in the summer and autumn months. On a recent visit to Portsoy I saw someone with a telescope looking out to sea. I thought they were looking at dolphins, but it turned out they were looking for a bird that I had never heard of: the white-billed diver, which apparently comes south of Norway only very rarely. Portsoy is one of the few places south of Norway where that bird can be seen.

I very much hope that we can use Brexit as an opportunity to grow the industry and attract more visitors to our stunning shores. One example of this opportunity can be found in VAT rules. European VAT law currently limits the discretion of member states, including the UK before our exit, to set lower rates of VAT on some goods and services. That means we are limited in our ability to reduce so-called tourism tax below the current 20%. After we leave the EU, the Government will have the opportunity to reduce tourism VAT and make the UK an even more attractive destination for foreign visitors. I hope that they will consider seizing this opportunity and use Brexit as a springboard for our tourism industry.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I welcome what the hon. Gentleman has said and congratulate him on painting a very attractive picture of his constituency. On the opportunities after Brexit with regard to VAT, as he knows, we have been promoting that issue in respect of Northern Ireland, but there can also be opportunities right across the United Kingdom. We have heard a lot of pessimism, but there are opportunities to be grasped, particularly in tourism, and I commend him for what he said about VAT.

[David Duguid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree that we have an opportunity to be a lot more positive about Brexit.