S4C

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, speaking in minority languages is an important contribution from our broadcasters across the UK. The Government support the Welsh Government’s ambition to reach the target of 1 million people in Wales being able to speak Welsh by 2050, and S4C clearly plays an important part in that. On the broader question of other languages, I look forward to the debates we will be having on the Media Bill about the support our public service broadcasters can give.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

Given that Welsh is indigenous to one of the peoples of this country and has been since time began—indeed, probably before time began—would it not be sensible to take an investment in the ambition of the Welsh Government to boost the number of Welsh speakers, which is already considerable, as a template from which the other people referred to can make their own appeal: a kind of sounding board through which other dreams may be dreamed and hopes may be nourished?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks with the poeticism and lyricism of the Welsh language, even in the English tongue. He is right about the lessons that S4C can provide to other broadcasters on promoting minority languages and the indigenous languages of this isle. As I say, there are provisions in the Media Bill which I look forward to debating, so we can make sure that those lessons are learned.

Arts

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this the view from street level of someone who has never chaired very much or run huge organisations.

The late, revered Michael Parkinson once declared that of all the interviews he had done, his favourite was the one he did with Jacob Bronowski. Most of us will remember Jacob Bronowski’s ground-breaking television series “The Ascent of Man”, which was broadcast almost exactly 50 years ago. Here was a scientist of the first order who was marinated in the arts. Human values, a fascination with the work of William Blake, a writer of poetry himself and such an engaging personality—what a cocktail of qualities he possessed. He championed the idea that the best science was simply the material and physical outworking of deeply implanted human instincts. The arts were as important to him as his science.

Moving from then to now, Jamie Brownhill is the headmaster of the Central Foundation Boys’ School, a magnificent inner-city comprehensive in Islington. I was involved in its governance for 20 years, 10 of them as chairman of its trustees, but that is as grand as it gets. Ask Jamie about the history of his school and he will be bound to tell you how Jacob Bronowski is its most admired former pupil. This recognises the important place that Bronowski plays in the school’s past, but it is equally an indication of the spirit of the man still hovering over a community of learning which, for all the problems in our national education referred to by previous speakers, continues to live out the ideals of its former pupil.

I visited an exhibition of paintings done by the school’s pupils and put on by the Wellcome Foundation. I sat proud as punch at a concert in the Guildhall, where a range of musical skills were on display. Our trustees kept agreeing to buy pianos for rehearsal rooms and music lessons, and the drama put on by the pupils was wonderful. How can I ever forget the way that a 17 year-old Macbeth, just after stabbing the king, with the same facility of utterance that he might have shown in wiping his hands after consuming a burger at McDonald’s, lamented:

“No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine”?

The arts must surely be at the very core of our curriculum so that one generation after another can bring their creative, cultural, emotional and imaginative selves into the mix of their developing minds. It is vital for the well-being of society, as others have said, and for building the kind of world that we all want to live in. Again and again, Jacob Bronowski made reference in his great work to poets, musicians, philosophers, artists and dramatists. He ended one of his chapters with a favourite quatrain of mine from William Blake. He wanted people to be able:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour”—

or as I, in a pathetic contemporary version, might have it:

“To build a culture that is steeped in the arts

Where STEM plus A equals STEAM

Where the whole is more than the sum of its parts

And life rich beyond our wildest dreams”.

I salute my noble friend, a true Companion of Honour, and thank him for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important subject today.

Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been so much wisdom shared. I am a member of the committee, and I am glad to be surrounded by other members of the committee—it is like a Sunday School outing; we have can have a cream tea on the Terrace afterwards—particularly because we have been able to give force to the thinking incorporated in the report. At the end of a week when, with the debates on a certain Bill dominating the space, I have had nothing but murderous thoughts about people on the opposite Benches, the debate allows me to emphasise that I have such positive things to say about the chair of the committee. It is wonderful to have a nice antidote to some of my dark thoughts this week. Her skill is terrific. My noble friend Lady Rebuck has already talked about the consensual way that she had us all working, and that is certainly true. Beyond that, to take the recommendations of the report in January through to the Government’s response in April and then the Government’s statements in June, incorporating so much of the thinking of the report, suggests there was a bit more than simply consensual working and that there was focused thinking and follow-through, which seems to me to be very considerable. One quality of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—I will get it off my chest now—is that she knows the highways and byways of how politics works and she gets into the kind of web of things. We have our lovely thoughts, we shape them as we can, and then she takes them away and worries away in the right places so that we get some kind of progress.

By the way, it is lovely to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, who is clearly possessed of all the skills necessary to recognise a fine Methodist preacher when he sees one, and I must pay him my tribute.

My intellectual life was marked seriously by the novels of CP Snow and the idea of The Two Cultures. In those days, it was arts and science. I had a particular proclivity for pure maths, but I could not do it because it was a choice between arts or science, so I ended up with English, French and Latin. None of them gave me any mathematical scope at all. The idea of technology, possibly, and the humanities being two cultures is the one that our report seems to knock on the head. Cross-government working has been mentioned again and again; from a government end, the approach to creative industries must be generic, not departmentalised or compartmentalised. That is the first thing. The other thing is to recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, that creativity, technology and imagination all work together.

Others have great expertise and life experiences which I do not have; I have others, but not those. I will now share a couple of my experiences. In 10 days’ time, at the Old Street roundabout near Moorgate, a new school will be opened—or rather, a refurbished Victorian school in a very unprepossessing site will be opened. It is the Central Foundation Boys’ School. Around £51 million will produce a brand new school with a fantastic head teacher. The skills that have been referred to repeatedly and the need not to put the thinking of one discipline and another into silos are being incorporated. This is the kind of school that will be equipped with the necessary wherewithal to shape young minds in cross-referencing the ability to think outside the box with science and technology. This will be wonderfully provided for.

It is a state school, it is downtown and it is in Islington. There is nothing special about the catchment area, but the pupils will learn the skills we have been discussing today. I am happy to offer that information for the general interest. How can we do something like that? Because we had £51 million to spend. How many state schools across the land do not have and will not have the wherewithal? Some of their buildings are falling down and they do not have modern, state-of-the-art facilities.

We also have a Central Foundation Girls’ School. Twenty years of my life have gone into governance and the shaping of policy in both these schools. Out in Tower Hamlets, 85% of the girls are Bangladeshi and come to school in their hijabs. At that school, we are bringing back former pupils to remind those caught up in a culture that tends to be inward-looking about what will help them to break into new avenues of understanding, of self-development and of contribution to the common good.

I am very proud of those schools. It is 18 months since I stepped down from my responsibilities there, so I do not declare an interest as there is no conflict. It does, however, seem to incorporate a certain spirit at a young age. When I go for the opening in 10 days’ time, it will all begin with a concert. At one stage, they asked the trustees if we could help them to buy 20 pianos. I have never bought more than one in my life. They need 20 pianos so they can have rehearsal rooms and all the rest of it. That is my first experience.

The other is perhaps more homely. My wife would go over to Tower Hamlets to fetch my grandson, little Thomas—he is not little; he is a teenager now—from his primary school to take him home two days a week. On one occasion, holding his grandmother’s arm, he said, “Grandma, I am a chatterbox. I love talking. It is my grandpa, you know”. He went on to say, “But I’m going to be quiet for a few minutes. Please understand. Don’t worry. My head is bursting with imagination”. At home, his father, who is a mathematician, and his mother, who is a teacher, ensure that he has cross-references to every conceivable thing in the world. He has sat down and explained cosmology to me.

All I want people to understand is that the educational challenge for a nation such as ours is to open people’s minds from the earliest possible age—we heard about seven year-olds building greenhouses—to the possibilities of working with hand and brain, and thinking and feeling, so that the composite whole that comes out of all of that is a creative contribution to the well-being of the land and the improvement of the people who live in it.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

The Government accept that there is a problem. Internet users broadly accept that there is a problem. It must be sensible, in deciding on categorisation, to look at the risk of harm caused by the platforms. I beg to move.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 192A. There can be nothing more comfortable within the terms of parliamentary debate than to find oneself cossetted by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on one side and my noble friend Lord Stevenson on the other. I make no apology for repeating the thrust of the argument of the noble Baroness, but I will narrow the focus to matters that she hinted at which we need to think about in a particular way.

We have already debated suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content hosted by category 1 providers. There is a need for the Bill to do more here, particularly through strengthening the user empowerment duties in Clause 12 so that the safest option is the default. We have covered that ground. This amendment seeks to address the availability of this content on smaller services that will fall outside category 1, as the noble Baroness has said. The cut-off conditions under which services will be determined to fall within category 1 are still to be determined. We await further progress on that. However, there are medium-sized and small providers whose activities we need to look at. It is worth repeating—and I am aware that I am repeating—that these include suicide and eating disorder forums, whose main business is the sharing and discussion of methods and encouragement to engage in these practices. In other words, they are set up precisely to do that.

We know that that there are smaller platforms where users share detailed information about methods of suicide. One of these in particular has been highlighted by families and coroners as playing a role in the suicides of individuals in the UK. Regulation 28 reports—that is, an official request for action—have been issued to DCMS and DHSC by coroners to prevent future comparable deaths.

A recent systematic review, looking at the impact of suicide and self-harm-related videos and photographs, showed that potentially harmful content concentrated specifically on sites with low levels of moderation. Much of the material which promotes and glorifies this behaviour is unlikely to be criminalised through the Government’s proposed new offence of encouragement to serious self-harm. For example, we would not expect all material which provides explicit instructional information on how to take one’s life using novel and effective methods to be covered by it.

The content has real-world implications. There is clear evidence that when a particular suicide method becomes better known, the effect is not simply that suicidal people switch from one intended method to the novel one, but that suicides occur in people who would not otherwise have taken their own lives. There are, therefore, important public health reasons to minimise the discussion of dangerous and effective suicide methods.

The Bill’s pre-legislative scrutiny committee recommended that the legislation

“adopt a more nuanced approach, based not just on size and high-level functionality, but factors such as risk, reach, user base, safety performance, and business model”.

This amendment is in line with that recommendation, seeking to extend category 1 regulation to services that carry a high level of risk.

The previous Secretary of State appeared to accept this argument—but we have had a lot of Secretaries of State since—and announced a deferred power that would have allowed for the most dangerous forums to be regulated; but the removal of the “legal but harmful” provisions from the legislation means that this power is no longer applicable, as its function related to the “adult risk assessment” duty, which is no longer in the Bill.

This amendment would not shut down dangerous services, but it would make them accountable to Ofcom. It would require them to warn their users of what they were about to see, and it would require them to give users control over the type of content that they see. That is, the Government’s proposed triple shield would apply to them. We would expect that this increased regulatory burden on small platforms would make them more challenging to operate and less appealing to potential users, and would diminish their size and reach over time.

This amendment is entirely in line with the Government’s own approach to dangerous content. It simply seeks to extend the regulatory position that they themselves have arrived at to the very places where much of the most dangerous content resides. Amendment 192A is supported by the Mental Health Foundation, the Samaritans and others that we have been able to consult. It is similar to Amendment 192, which we also support, but this one specifies that the harmful material that Ofcom must take account of relates to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders. I would now be more than happy to give way—eventually, when he chooses to do it—to my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who is not expected at this moment to use the true and full extent of his abilities at being cunning.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to offer support for all the amendments in this group, but I will speak principally to Amendment 192A, to which I have added my name and which the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, has just explained so clearly. It is unfortunate that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, cannot be in her place today. She always adds value in any debate, but on this issue in particular I know she would have made a very compelling case for this amendment. I will speak principally about eating disorders, because the issues of self-harm have already been covered and the hour is already late.

The Bill as it stands presumes a direct relationship between the size of a platform and its potential to cause harm. This is simply not the case: a systematic review which we heard mentioned confirmed what all users of the internet already know—that potentially harmful content is often and easily found on smaller, niche sites that will fall outside the scope of category 1. These sites are absolutely not hard to find—they come up on the first page of a Google search—and some hide in plain sight, masquerading, particularly in the case of eating disorder forums, as sources of support, solace or factual information when in fact they encourage and assist people towards dangerous practices. Without this amendment, those sites will continue spreading their harm and eating disorders will continue to have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses in the UK.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

These two amendments would ensure that platforms’ design involves the safest options being on by default. They are two straightforward, common-sense amendments that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville—who is not here now—said, balance the understandable concerns about freedom of speech with safety. They do not stop the publication of this objectionable material, but they offer others, particularly the most vulnerable, a real choice about whether they see it. I would argue that it is our minimum duty to make sure these safety protections are on by default. I beg to move.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to be collaborating with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. We seem to have been briefed by the same people, been to the same meetings and drawn the same conclusions. However, there are some things that are worth saying twice and, although I will try to avoid a carbon copy of what the noble Baroness said, I hope the central points will make themselves.

The internet simply must be made to work for its users above all else—that is the thrust of the two amendments that stand in our names. Through education and communication, the internet can be a powerful means of improving our lives, but it must always be a safe platform on which to enjoy a basic right. It cannot be said often enough that to protect users online is to protect them offline. To create a strict division between the virtual and the public realms is to risk ignoring how actions online can have life and death repercussions, and that is at the heart of what these amendments seek to bring to our attention.

I was first made aware of these amendments at a briefing from the Samaritans, where we got to know each other. There I heard the tragic accounts of those whose loved ones had taken their own lives due to exposure to harmful content online. I will not repeat their accounts—this is not the place to do that—but understanding only a modicum of their grief made it obvious to me that the principle of “safest option by default” must underline all our decision-making on this.

I applaud the work already done by Members of this House to ensure the safety of young people online. Yet it is vital, as the noble Baroness has said, that we do not create a drop-off point for future users—one in which turning 18 means sudden exposure to the most harmful content lurking online, as it is always there. Those most at risk of suicide due to exposure to harmful content are aged between their late teens and early 20s. In fact, a 2017 inquiry into the suicides of young people found harmful content accessed online in 26% of the deaths of under 20s and 13% of the deaths of 20 to 24 year-olds. It is vital for us to empower users from their earliest years.

In the Select Committee—I see fellow members sitting here today—we have been looking at digital exclusion and the need for education at all levels for those using the internet. Looking for good habits established in the earliest years is the right way to start, but it goes on after that, because the world that young people go on to inhabit in adulthood is one where they are already in control of the internet—if they had the education earlier. Adulthood comes with the freedom to choose how one expresses oneself online—of course it does—but this must not be at the cost of their continuing freedom from the most insidious content that puts their mental health at risk. Much mention has been made of the triple shield and I need not go there again. Its origins and perhaps deficiencies have been mentioned already.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently conducted an experiment, creating new social media accounts that showed interest in body image and mental health. This study found that TikTok served suicide-related content to new accounts within 2.6 minutes, with eating disorder content being recommended within 8 minutes. At the very least, these disturbing statistics tell us that users should have the option to opt in to such content, and not have to suffer this harm before later opting out. While the option to filter out certain categories of content is essential, it must be toggled on by default if safety is to be our primary concern.

The principle of safest by default creates not only a less harmful environment, but one in which users are in a position to define their own online experience. The space in which we carry out our public life is increasingly located on a small number of social media platforms—those category 1 platforms already mentioned several times—which everyone, from children to pensioners, uses to communicate and share their experiences.

We must then ensure that the protections we benefit from offline continue online: namely, protection from the harm and hate that pose a threat to our physical and mental well-being. When a child steps into school or a parent into their place of work, they must be confident that those with the power to do so have created the safest possible environment for them to carry out their interactions. This basic confidence must be maintained when we log in to Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any other social media giant.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, my Amendment 43 tackles Clause 12(1), which expressly says that the duties in Clause 12 are to “empower” users. My concern is to ensure that, first, users are empowered and, secondly, legitimate criticism around the characteristics listed in Clause 12(11) and (12), for example, is not automatically treated as abusive or inciting hatred, as I fear it could be. My Amendment 283ZA specifies that, in judging content that is to be filtered out after a user has chosen to switch on various filters, the providers act reasonably and pause to consider whether they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that the content is of the kind in question—namely, abusive or problematic.

Anything under the title “empower adult users” sounds appealing—how can I oppose that? After all, I am a fan of the “taking back control” form of politics, and here is surely a way for users to be in control. On paper, replacing the “legal but harmful” clause with giving adults the opportunity to engage with controversial content if they wish, through enhanced empowerment tools, sounds positive. In an earlier discussion of the Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, said that we should treat adults as adults, allowing them to confront ideas with the

“better ethics, reason and evidence”—[Official Report, 1/2/23; col. 735.]

that has been the most effective way to deal with ideas from Socrates onwards. I say, “Hear, hear” to that. However, I worry that, rather than users being in control, there is a danger that the filter system might infantilise adult users and disempower them by hard-wiring into the Bill a duty and tendency to hide content from users.

There is a general weakness in the Bill. I have noted that some platforms are based on users moderating their own sites, which I am quite keen on, but this will be detrimentally affected by the Bill. It would leave users in charge of their own moderation, with no powers to decide what is in, for example, Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, which are added to, organised and edited by a decentralised community of users. So I will certainly not take the phrase “user empowerment” at face value.

I am slightly concerned about linguistic double-speak, or at least confusion. The whole Bill is being brought forward in a climate in which language is weaponised in a toxic minefield—a climate of, “You can’t say that”. More nerve-rackingly, words and ideas are seen as dangerous and interchangeable with violent acts, in a way that needs to be unpicked before we pass this legislation. Speakers can be cancelled for words deemed to threaten listeners’ safety—but not physical safety; the opinions are said to be unsafe. Opinions are treated as though they cause damage or harm as viscerally as physical aggression. So lawmakers have to recognise the cultural context and realise that the law will be understood and applied in it, not in the abstract.

I am afraid that the language in Clause 12(1) and (2) shows no awareness of this wider backdrop—it is worryingly woolly and vague. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, talked about dangerous content, and all the time we have to ask, “Who will interpret what is dangerous? What do we mean by ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful’?”. Surely a term such as “abusive”, which is used in the legislation, is open to wide interpretation. Dictionary definitions of “abusive” include words such as “rude”, “insulting” and “offensive”, and it is certainly subjective. We have to query what we mean by the terms when some commentators complain that they have been victims of online abuse, but when you check their timelines you notice that, actually, they have been subject just to angry, and sometimes justified, criticism.

I recently saw a whole thread arguing that the Labour Party’s recent attack ads against the Prime Minister were an example of abusive hate speech. I am not making a point about this; I am asking who gets to decide. If this is the threshold for filtering content, there is a danger of institutionalising safe space echo chambers. It can also be a confusing word for users, because if someone applies a user empowerment tool to protect themselves from abuse, the threshold at which the filter operates could be much lower than they intend or envisage but, by definition, the user would not know what had been filtered out in their name, and they have no control over the filtering because they never see the filtered content.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made possibly one of the truest statements that has ever been uttered in this House when she told us that this is a very complicated Bill. It is complicated to the extent that I have no confidence that I fully understand it and all its ramifications, and a number of other speakers have said the same. For that reason—because I am aware of my own limitations, and I am pretty sure they are shared by others—it is important to have a statement of purpose at the outset to provide the co-ordinates for the discussion we are going to have; I concur with the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Allan. Because there is then a framework within which we can be sure, we hope, that we will manage to achieve an outcome that is both comprehensive and coherent. As a number of noble Lords have said, there are a number of completely different, or nearly different, aspects to what we are discussing, yet the whole lot have to link together. In the words of EM Forster, we have to

“connect the prose and the passion”.

The Minister may say, “We can’t do that at the outset”. I am not so sure. If necessary, we should actually draft this opening section, or any successor to it, as the last amendment to the Bill, because then we would be able to provide an overview. That overview will be important because, just as I am prepared to concede that I do not think I understand it all now, there is a very real chance that I will not understand it all then either. If we have this at the head of the Bill, I think that will be a great help not only to us but to all those who are subsequently going to have to make use of it.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to say something simple in support of what has already been said. If it is true that the Bill’s purposes are already scattered in the course of the Bill and throughout its substance, I cannot see what possible objection there can be to having them extracted and put at the beginning. They are not contentious—they are there already—so let us have them at the beginning to set a direction of travel. It seems so obvious to me.

It is an important Bill. I thank the Minister and his colleagues because they have put an enormous amount of work into this, and of course the Joint Committee has done its work. We have all been sent I cannot say how many briefing papers from interested bodies and so on. It is vital that, as we try to hold as much of this together as we possibly can in taking this very important Bill forward, we should have a sense of purpose and criteria against which we can measure what we eventually go on to discuss, make decisions about and introduce into the body of the Bill. I cannot see that the logic of all that can possibly be faulted.

Of course, there will be words that are slippery, as has been said. I cannot think of a single word, and I have been a lexicographer in my life, that does not lend itself to slipperiness. I could use words that everybody thinks we have in common in a way that would befuddle noble Lords in two minutes. It seems to me self-evident that these purposes, as stated here at the outset of our consideration in Committee, are logical and sensible. I will be hoping, as the Bill proceeds, to contribute to and build on the astounding work that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has laid before us, with prodigious energy, in alerting all kinds of people, not just in your Lordships’ House but across the country, to the issues at stake here. I hope that she will sense that the Committee is rallying behind her in the astute way that she is bringing this matter before us. But again, I will judge outcomes against the provisions in this opening statement, a criterion for judging even the things that I feel passionate about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and I have been in our own discussions about different parts of the Bill, about things such as suicide and self-harm. That is content. There are amendments. We will discuss them. Again, we can hold our own decisions about those matters against what we are seeking to achieve as stated so clearly at the outset of the Bill.

I remember working with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. It is so fabulous to have him back; the place feels right when he is here. When I was a bit of a greenhorn—he was the organ grinder and I was the monkey—I remember him pleading at the beginning of what was at that time the Data Protection Bill to have a statement like this at the beginning of that Bill. We were told, “Oh, but it is all in the Bill; all the words are there”. Then why not put them at the beginning, so that we can see them clearly and have something against which to measure our progress?

With all these things said, I hope we will not spend too much time on this. I hope we will nod it through, and then I hope we will remind ourselves of what it seeks to achieve as we go on in the interminable days that lie ahead of us. I have one last word as an old, old preacher remembering what I was told when I started preaching: “First, you tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em; then you tell ‘em; and then you tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em”. Let us take at least the first of those steps now.

BBC: Future Funding (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my voice to those who have already articulated a response to this committee report, and I add my voice also in expressing appreciation for the chairing of our committee—some wild and disparate spirits were brought into focus together to achieve some reasonable outcomes, to which many people have now referred.

I am so glad that I have not even caught an echo in any contributor’s speech suggesting anything that would threaten the BBC’s future. It is integral to our national life and it would be like selling the family silver if we were too light-hearted about sacrificing it in some silly way. We need a commitment to the BBC, just as the BBC seeks to find a way of committing itself to enhancing its role as a part of our national ethos.

I have noted from the various contributions some pressure points. First, from the noble Baroness herself, the pressure on the BBC to get some strategic thinking done and get something coherent out for us all to consider, recognising that some progress has been made but that more needs to be made. The noble Lord, Lord Hall, added to that by suggesting that pressure needs to be put on all who might have views about what the BBC might need, so as to channel towards the BBC some expressions of hope and suggestions about content and other ways forward. It is not just the BBC in isolation producing its plan; rather, it is some kind of dialectic with the public at large, and the institutions that are part of the public at large, which can be helpful and symbiotic and can create something that is far richer.

The pressure on the Government has also been expressed. A much-promised review needs to take place. I add my voice to those who have expressed hope that the Minister, when he pops up, is going to have something helpful and hopeful to say that we can feel the debate has led towards. The review needs to happen, and the Government need to do their thinking. They have responded to our report but, on the other hand, more thinking needs to be done and targets need to be set.

While I am on my feet, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hall. Paragraph 83, on page 31 of our report, talks about the challenges that face the BBC in the next decade. All the challenges that are listed there, and others, were pretty much on the shoulders of the noble Lord, Lord Hall, while he was running the BBC. Therefore, the changes are not going to happen once the other pressures are resolved and a way forward is traced. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Hall, he had to respond to them as they were happening, including modifying the way the licence fee would be applied to 75 year-olds, with inflationary levels set for the next however many years until the renewal of the charter. I pay a simple tribute to the noble Lord for actually doing it as best he could, without the advantage of the process we are now involved in. We should bear that in mind.

A final pressure is that on Ofcom to be more nimble—I think that was the word—in looking at regulatory changes that may occur from time to time.

If all those pressures are responded to and produce progress that will equip those renewing the charter in 2027 with the background material and thought-through ideas that would be very useful for that process, then all the better. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkley, said, if the report and other materials can serve their purpose and act as a launching pad, then so much the better.

I am not going to take up my seven minutes; it will be a historic moment for a Welsh Methodist preacher to show that he can curtail. On the other hand, perhaps it would be indicative of a wise man who, knowing that things have already been said, does not give himself the luxury of saying them again. I end with just one word. This morning, I contributed to BBC Radio Wales’s “Breakfast” show; it is a kind of equivalent of “Thought for the Day”, which I did for 17 years for the BBC nationally, until I accepted the Labour Whip and was eliminated from its framework of reference and no longer allowed to do it because, as everybody knows, I would be desperately unbalanced—yet here I am, standing on two feet and perfectly balanced. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that, this morning on the BBC, as I gave a little Christmas meditation. I was no longer the rock Methodist minister; I had changed my genre—it was more soul and gospel.

Arts and Creative Industries Strategy

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I too must express my gratitude to my noble friend for allowing us to debate this very important issue. Mention has been made, lavish mention, of the opera as an art form and of lavish places where opera has been given to the people, even sometimes at marathon length. The night before last, I was present in Birmingham Town Hall to listen to some operatic singers. I am the patron of the Black British Classical Foundation, which seeks to find ways for artists of colour to enter the rarefied world of classical music. Five finalists in an awards evening were truly stunning in the range of material they sang, all ably supported by the phenomenal qualities of the Welsh National Opera orchestra. So, my recent experience has touched base with some of the things that have been said, but in a humbler and more demanding way for someone like myself, who is not naturally in tune with opera at all. I like the songs.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Foster—I call him my noble friend—I am a member of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, which is focusing on the creative industries aspect of this debate. It is said that this country is among the world leaders in the field of innovation and the technology that stands behind the creative industries, but one committee interviewee after another kept reminding us that we are in danger of losing our top spot because of developments in other countries and a fragmentation of support. That fragmentation is important to note. Lots of things happen, but in a very diverse and unconnected way. We have been promised throughout this calendar year, for example, the sector vision to which my noble friend referred. Again and again, and of course with a different Minister enunciating the delay each time, the sector vision has been put off. We are now promised that it will be issued early in 2023. Perhaps this debate should happen all over again when that sector vision report has been published; it will afford us material that we can look at in a co-ordinated way. All I hope is that when it is eventually published, it will meet the criterion set out in the original vision: to

“set out a vision for high-growth sectors and technologies where we are well-placed to develop a globally competitive advantage.”

That was said in March 2021, three Prime Ministers ago.

We have mentioned already the relationship between our education system and its formation of young people, and the skills shortage in the creative industries. Again and again, witnesses we spoke to at the Select Committee reminded us that the need for skills was paramount for the development of the sector. It is important, therefore, that there should be a co-ordinated effort between the world of education and meeting the needs of the workplace in the creative industries. That needs to be thought through in much greater depth, and I hope to see more evidence of that when the sector vision report eventually comes before us.

In 2018, the Arts and Humanities Research Council launched its creative industries clusters programme, which linked universities and businesses together to drive innovation. Witnesses have spoken to us of the huge success of this initiative; the committee was left scratching its collective head as to why the project, granted its evidential success, will last just five years and be wound up in 2023. Those operating and taking advantage of the clustering idea do not know how to set their budgets beyond that date. That uncertainty undermines their activity in general.

A few of us on the committee paid a visit some time ago to Cambridge. We went around the start-up companies and high-tech people there, who are doing fantastic things. I suppose that Cambridge is the nearest we have to Silicon Valley in this country; certainly, the energy, inputs and outputs were terrific. However, we were told in one place we visited that the normal critical path for a start-up is to bring the activity to a head at a point when it can be sold on to whoever will buy it—that is, to invest in the part of development that yields the possibility of success, but then to let someone else reap that success. We should be protecting those industries and allowing them to grow.

I am a great devotee of Professor Ha-Joon Chang, late of Cambridge University, who showed how South Korea and other countries like it grew their phenomenal industrial base because of government protection through the critical phases of growth. Once an industry can take off under its own steam, it must fend for itself. The Government need to pay more attention to the fact that some of the brilliant work being done in Cambridge and other places should be protected rather further and that the clustering idea should be extended beyond 2023.

Freedom of Expression (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and to pay my thanks to the outgoing chair and, indeed, my obeisance to the incoming chair, as I seek to behave appropriately as a member of the committee.

My first point is an observation on how long it takes for a committee report to get its day in the Chamber. It is two years since we did this work. I think of our work on the future funding of the BBC, the future of Channel 4, the position of regulators and now our report on the creative industries and wonder just how old I will be by the time we get to the end of that list.

So it is good to have the report here. In a sense, rereading it with the advantage of two years’ space makes me aware of just how good a report it is. It makes as good reading now as it did then. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, subtly made a point that I will take home and think about. Yes, we had the age-old debate about the need to wed ourselves to the idea of freedom of expression as a human right, but we also had impeccable debates about the misuse of people’s data.

They were two debates that were truly impeccable, each adumbrating a principle which we should stand by with every fibre of our being. It seems to me that, since one seems like an unstoppable force and the other an immovable object, it would need the wisdom of Solomon to decide in particular instances how to favour the rights of those who feel their privacy has been invaded over the advocates—of whom I am one—of freedom of speech. But originators and recipients will go home with me, and I shall think seriously about it.

The digital equivalent of the public square is how social media platforms have been described, and indeed they are, yet the irony is that they are controlled by private companies. Out of that paradox come all the difficulties that we are wrestling with as we seek to get legislation that deals with this complicated world.

The protection of children has been adequately mentioned, and so it should be. I heard the Minister at Question Time yesterday talk again and again about the fact that looking after the interests of children is the predominant feature of the Government’s mind as they take legislation forward in this area. So I hope that the 5Rights work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, will be incorporated in that thinking and play a major part. Age verification is what she is very concerned about. I believe that her foundation has made significant progress towards getting something that we could work with, and I hope she has assurance on that point.

Early in this report, we were pointing the way forward, presciently I think, towards the Online Safety Bill that will soon be before us—or will it be soon? It has been put off so many times. I have no idea when it will finally be taken on the Floor of the House of Commons. Looking towards such a Bill, we emphasise the need for three aspects of consideration that we should take very seriously: the design of legislation, the nature of competition and the need for improved education in what the phenomenon of the internet and its applications means, not just in terms of helping children and adults to press the right buttons and to activate the machinery to do their will, but to understand outcomes and the essential nature of what anonymous contributions to conversations—or are they conversations if the contributors are anonymous?—can lead to. Well, I am very glad that this is before us.

I walk quite regularly under the statue of George Orwell at the BBC. I have almost memorised and thought a lot about the inscription from Animal Farm that is written on the wall behind the statue:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”


That is fair enough. I have stood at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park many a time and have had a fair few things hurled at me. However, I want to add as a corollary, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right of people to tell me what I don’t want to hear”. I think that that might be a complementary way of looking at a very important principle.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Before we go any further, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that there is a speaking limit and that this is a time-limited debate, so we will be squeezing Minister’s summing-up at the end. With the exception of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, everybody has gone over today.

Digital Technology (Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the authoritative words spoken by previous speakers; I am grateful to them. It is also an unexpected delight to see the leprechaun-like figure of Lord Puttnam sitting on the steps of the Throne and sense his spirit in the report that we are considering today.

For me, the unusual thing was that I read this report following the work that the successor committee, the Communications and Digital Committee, has been doing. It has produced its own reports on freedom of expression online and regulating the regulators, which have been published and which, I suppose, must await some nether date in some distant calendar before they will be looked at and considered on the Floor of this Chamber. Reading them that way round, I definitely got the sense that the reports we have been working on have been suffused with and taken further the questions and issues raised in this report. There is a kind of organic feel about them. All of that, of course, is feeding into the debate on the online safety Bill, about which we have both fears and hopes. We will have to see what happens before the balance between those attitudes of mind can be worked out. There is something going on.

Having paid tribute to all that, I confess that I was attracted to speak in this debate by the fact that the report is called Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust. I could have spent my five minutes talking about the resurrection, but thought that might not be the right thing to do—although if anybody would sign up for that, we will find a room and do it, as I keep saying. Instead, let us consider trust.

The report pays tribute to and weaves into its entire narrative the Nolan principles on standards in public life. I am a great believer that probity, as well as charity, begins at home. I find it very difficult looking at such things as integrity, honesty and openness at a time—a political moment—like this, when trust has been eroded by leadership in this country that leaves much to be desired in terms of integrity, honesty and openness. We lecture the world about how to make the world a better and safer place, as if objectively and beyond us we could throw our voices in the direction of the issues, without taking account that we who make the suggestions must examine ourselves and the integrity, honesty and openness that run through the political body to which we belong. It is a difficult thing.

I offer one example to take it away from the rather personal observations I have just made. I have not had occasion to stay up until 3.30 am, but I see some of the demands made on Members of this House. It is almost institutional bullying to keep them up until 3.30 am, at our age, debating matters that, for an extra parliamentary day, could have been done in a more civilised way. There is no point in shrugging it off or frowning about it. I have seen the result in some Members of this House as, day after day and week after week, they have struggled with the heavy legislative programme imposed on us.

I put my toe in the waters of the Nationality and Borders Bill and asked a simple question, to which I have not had an answer. There are two narratives in play in the Nationality and Borders Bill. One, from the UNHCR and all the legal establishment—the Law Society, the barristers, everybody—is that the Bill offends against the tenets of international law and is an abnegation of the finest principles of the Geneva convention on refugees. On questioning the Minister, I hear that it is up to Governments to interpret the convention and that their legal advice allows them to put forward the suggestions they have. The two narratives are at odds with each other. I do not know and cannot tell which is true. I have asked noble and learned Lords in this House to help us to know which is true. If, as a reasonably intelligent man, I cannot understand which of those two narratives is true, where has truth gone and what is trust all about? Look to ourselves to weigh up the answers to the questions we ask of others.