Consumer Rights Bill

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shields (Con)]

My Lords, I must say, from my position in government, that the Government take the issue of child safety online very seriously. My role is to engage with industry to solve this problem. A lot of information has been put forward this evening that is heartbreaking and shocking. That is why the Government chose to act in July 2013. They very bravely and boldly chose to take on this issue and to work with industry to solve the problem.

The work that has been done by the ISPs, on behalf of the country, to put forward the safe internet provisions has now been brought to bear. A lot of the cases that have been discussed this evening relate to a time when these internet filters were not active and functioning for all ISPs. However, over the course of the past year all the major ISPs have installed the internet filters as default-on. They have also reached out to all their clients and customers to advise them that the filters are available, and given them an option to turn them on again. This process has been under way for the past 18 months.

The same is true of the mobile operators, and Minister Vaizey has written to them all this past month to make sure that they are complying with age-related content filters. The points that have been made here are absolutely vital, but to add additional regulation when we are getting voluntary compliance from the industry is just not necessary.

We are working hard, and if there are cases which this is not addressing—the 10% that has been referenced from other parts of the country—we will take that on board and work with the service providers that address those markets and make sure that their customers have a safe internet situation.

Education is vital to ensuring that parents and teachers are involved. There is a big campaign, funded to the tune of £25 million, called Internet Matters. It is led by the major ISPs and my noble friend Lady Harding. The process of educating parents takes time. Most parents are very intimidated by the internet, and their kids are more savvy than they are. We must take this on; the education process has to continue because, as one of my noble friends said, kids are very smart and will find a way round it. The important thing is the education that has to take place with parents and teachers. We must all stay engaged in the process, because the moment we come up with a way of solving the problem, the children find a way round it.

I understand the reasons for the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, spoke so eloquently, and I appreciate it. We all believe that children need to be protected online. But I believe that the way to do that is to continue the work that we have been doing. The voluntary co-operation that we have had has been phenomenal. We can continue the process by identifying the areas where we still need to do work, and we make a commitment to do so.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall support the amendment if the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, decides to divide the House. I am grateful to her for so ably moving it and explaining it to us all. I am normally a loyal government supporter, but only a few days ago in this Chamber I expressed my deep and growing concern about the serious damage being done to the young minds of our children by what they are seeing and hearing online. I said then that I found the statistics relating to the problem alarming and horrifying. Your Lordships have heard one statistic this evening, but I am going to repeat it, because I also mentioned it in my speech the other day. In just one month, 44,000 children aged between six and 11 visited an adult website. I know that time is short, but I am going to say that again: in one month, 44,000 children aged between six and 11 visited an adult website.

I also said that we speak so often in this Chamber about the welfare of the child being paramount—I have heard that again today. I then asked what we were actually doing about it. Now is the chance for us to show that we mean it, and to actually do something. There may perhaps be some imperfections in the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe; it would be surprising if there were not. But it is an important step in the right direction—a step that surely we must take tonight. I repeat my support for the amendment, and I urge every Member of your Lordships’ House who really cares for the welfare of our youngest and most vulnerable children to do the same.

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, I will summarise where we are as regards this important Amendment 50D, as I spoke to it in greater detail in Committee; today I will make an additional comment on mobile phone operators.

I will quickly address some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, who clearly was not keen on filtering. However, we have moved beyond that discussion, because we have to recognise that the Government have already supported and encouraged filtering to cover 90% of the marketplace. Therefore, with all due respect, that is not the issue, as the argument has been superseded. The issue is how you make blocking consistent and avoid some of the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, raised. You do that by having a central mechanism to deal with over-blocking, which is what Amendment 50D provides for but self-regulation does not.

I welcomed the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, and welcome her to the House. I commend her work and her great expertise in this area. I suggest that the key point here is not about the expertise that noble Lords may have in the area of technology but about how we think we should close the gap of clear and present dangers to children. Given those dangers present, I argue that we should do it the other way round. In other words, we need to give children safety through that statutory protection, and if in one, two or five years’ there is a voluntary approach, that would be fantastic. However, the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, just made clear the amount of damage that can be done in just short periods of time when he quoted the statistic that 44,000 children between the ages of six and 11 view inappropriate adult content. That will damage our children, affect their adult behaviour for a lifetime and increase levels of violence in our society, and we should not accept that.

In a nutshell, therefore, the situation is the following. The Government think that default-on internet filtering is the best way to protect children from inappropriate adult content online. The Government are right. It is funny—how often do you hear Front-Bench spokesmen standing here and saying that? However, they are wrong to limit that to the big four ISPs by using a voluntary approach, which leaves more than 10% of the broadband market uncovered, as we have heard. Government policy, therefore, leaves a significant number of children uncovered and unprotected from adult content. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, outlined in another powerful intervention, that results in the following problems.

In the most extreme cases, children act out, in the real world, sadistic hardcore porn that they saw in the online world. That is not just a matter of opinion; as we heard, it is a matter of fact in our courts today. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referenced the 12 year-old boy who raped his seven year-old sister after he saw pornography online via Xbox. I would think that that one statement alone merits us taking urgent action on this. This is horrific, and we need to deal with it urgently. Even the self-regulatory system that is now in place does not use age verification, so it can easily be evaded by tech-savvy children. I take the point that they will get around these things, but we should not leave them an open goal, which it seems we are doing at the moment in some instances.

Therefore, not only is there no consistency but there is no logic. Amendment 50D would bring both consistency and logic to the Government’s approach to this problem. The lack of consistency is very clear when we look at mobile phone operators. I will not speak in any detail on that, because the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, did a very good job. Let it suffice to say that mobile operators have been flouting the provision in the code that they should provide adult default filters. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself—as the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, knows better than anyone else in this House—said in July that all mobile phones were already subject to default filters. However, at the time they were not. In the past 12 months, Tesco Mobile has been exposed, and so on.

I therefore say to Conservative Peers, and indeed to coalition Peers, that if they want to support not just the spirit of what their Prime Minister said but also the letter, they need to support this amendment. If there was ever a case for contravening your Whips and voting for what is right, it is surely on this amendment, which would extend greater protection to all children. I grant that you will be choosing between your Whips and your PM, but if I were you, I would stick with the PM. I quoted him in Committee on this. He said that this was about “protecting childhood itself” and he added that,

“I will do whatever it takes to keep our children safe”.

That is what the Prime Minister said. Well, the minimum it takes—the absolute minimum—is supporting Amendment 50D, which is tabled by a Cross-Bench Peer, a Conservative Peer, a Labour Peer and a Lib Dem Peer. This is not a party-political issue; this is a child protection issue.

I realise that my appeal will fall on deaf ears, but as the mother of four young children, I am one of the 82% of British mums surveyed who want the Government to tackle child protection online more urgently than they are doing at the moment. For that reason, I urge all Peers in this House to support Amendment 50D.