Media Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

After today’s debate, we may not get the gushing write-up in a national newspaper that some may be hoping for, but there are thousands of people who have experienced the worst kinds of press abuse and are relying on us to speak up for them and to show some courage. I think of my own family and all those who have experienced press wrongdoing. We owe it to them to make progress today.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, my name appears on all three amendments in this group and therefore it is very tempting to make a long speech on all of them. But I will not do that; I am going to confine myself to the absolutely ghastly procedural and constitutional hole we are in.

I think that for a lot of this stuff to go through wash-up is a breach of the constitution and the understanding of the constitution that we all hold firm to. If this is not looked at in future, we will get into this hot water yet again and burn our toes.

I will take a couple of points, although I could say a number of things. One of the reasons why this House always accedes to the will of the elected House is that it is an elected House. One of the reasons why a manifesto pledge is regarded as game over is that it is the clearest reflection of the will of the people as expressed at the last general election. But we are about to have another general election. The people could have been given another chance to express a view on whatever is in the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem manifestos, but instead this tag-end of a Government—going down their smoke-rising hole and out of the people’s memory, thank goodness—are still able to make decisions on this. I really am sorry that my noble friend Lord Bassam, who knows what a great admirer of his I am, and the Labour Party as a concerted whole have not put up more of a fight on this.

Secondly, this was avoided in one of the earlier speeches, but wash-up is meant to be about consensus. The Minister said that he would discuss this with the Opposition, but in this House we have more than one opposition. We also have the Liberal Democrat opposition, who take a wholly different view on Leveson and Clause 50 from the Opposition or the Tory party. When going through a procedure designed to achieve consensus, is it fair to exclude from that process an extremely important group of people whose knowledge and experience in this field is as great as that of any other party in the House? I do not find that procedure acceptable.

Some of the consequences of this are becoming known to us as we go through the Bill this afternoon. The Minister, with an apparently serious face, said: “We might have been able to sort these things out, Lady Bull, if only we had had more time”. I do not know what conversations he has had with the noble Baroness over the last few days, but I hope they have been extensive. It is because this thing has been rushed through and wash-up is being used as a cover. I do not know why the Whip is making noises. He tried to shut somebody else up before, but he will not shut me up.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

Whips should be seen and not heard.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

That is right. He has succeeded; I have lost my thread.

If we had had more time or if the phrase “extended consensus” had been interpreted more widely, these matters could have been dealt with. In the end, we will end up with an unnecessarily flawed Bill and a subject to which an incoming Government—as long as they are not a Conservative one—will have to devote their time. We could have wrapped all this up today and adopted the compromise put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. If necessary, we could even now improve that compromise by amending it at Third Reading. But we will not do so. The will is not there.

We are now seeing an elected dictatorship of two parties—my own, alas, and the Conservative Party—pushing through things that have not achieved consensus support simply, as I explained at Second Reading, for political advantage. This is a sad day not only for press regulation but for Britain’s democracy.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to associate the Green Party with the remarks of both the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. The noble Baroness spoke up very clearly for the people with very little power who are being crushed by those with great power—the oligarchic press and media system, to which I have referred in previous speeches.

To pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, I often hear the phrase, “We are a self-governing House” said with great pride. “We are not ruled by the usual channels”—or at least we are not supposed to be. They do not represent large parts of your Lordships’ House.

Media Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 84 to 86 in my name, and my comments will be relevant to other amendments in the group to which I have added my name.

At the heart of these amendments are the recommendations of the Leveson report, which followed a 12-month public inquiry ordered by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in 2011. I received clarifications from Sir Brian Leveson that are highly relevant to the debate, and I will share them with the Committee before I speak to the details of my amendment. First, I declare an interest in that I gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry about the personal and family impact of unacceptable behaviour by the media, and I am co-party to a civil claim against a newspaper group about alleged hacking of personal data. The claim is at the pretrial disclosure stage.

The Leveson report recommendations aimed to balance press freedom with the rights of the public. The chair of the inquiry, then Lord Justice Leveson, proposed a new regulatory framework that was independent of political influence and would protect people affected by press wrongdoing. Although some legislative progress was made, those recommendations have been returned to repeatedly in this place over the past 10 years, with some noble Lords asserting seriously flawed arguments against reform—for example, that Lord Justice Leveson proposed state regulation or that his recommendations would imperil the survival of news publishers.

Sir Brian Leveson himself has never publicly responded to those arguments. I wrote to Sir Brian to put these oft-repeated arguments against reform directly to him. I was grateful to receive a detailed reply from him and, furthermore, I am grateful that he has agreed that I and other noble Lords might quote him in Committee today. I have put this correspondence into the hands of the independent body established by the royal charter, the Press Recognition Panel. It is now available on the Press Recognition Panel website for those interested to read it in full. It is an extremely helpful letter that forensically takes apart falsity after falsity. First, Sir Brian makes it clear that the principle behind Section 40 did not originate from campaigners or politicians but was inspired by the testimony of a national newspaper editor. He describes testimony from a national newspaper editor who could see merit in a framework that encouraged parties to seek out low-cost arbitration, rather than the vast expense of court proceedings, and how this could protect publishers from rich and powerful litigants and, at the same time, protect ordinary people from rich and powerful publishers.

That is the symmetry of protection that lies behind Section 40. Some noble Lords, even speaking on behalf of the Government, have claimed that Section 40 would force publishers to pay costs, win or lose. But Sir Brian explains in his letter that this is not true. Other noble Lords will cover this point in greater detail, but I am going to quote briefly from his letter. He says:

“Neither my recommendation (nor, as I read it, s. 40) ‘forces’ news publications to pay costs when they win”,


and

“the Act does not require an adverse award of costs against a successful organ of the press which is not a member of an approved regulator”.

I put to him the argument made by some that the recognition system constitutes state regulation. He replied:

“I simply do not understand how this assertion can be made”.


He continues:

“As I understand it, the Royal Charter was specifically designed to ensure independence—independence of the press and independence of politicians”.


He then concludes that

“the suggestion that it is some kind of ‘state regulator’ of the press flies in the face of all that it was set up to do”.

Another argument commonly made is that the problems the inquiry addressed are now out of date. Sir Brian is scathing on this point. He says:

“My Inquiry was set up … to make recommendations inter alia for a new more effective policy and regulatory regime which supports the integrity and freedom of the press … while encouraging the highest ethical and professional standards. Allegations of libel, invasions of privacy, misuse of personal data remain equally as relevant today and are as pressing as ever”.


I conclude from that that the reason that national newspapers are opposed to the Leveson recommendations is because they are opposed to the principle of accountability. It was never about political interference nor the financial risk to publishers, objections which Sir Brian Leveson confirms in writing have no basis in fact.

My Amendments 83, 84, 85 and 86 would allow the partial repeal of Section 40. They would ensure that publishers inside an independent regulator would be protected from vexatious litigation while allowing the part of Section 40 which would disadvantage unregulated newspapers to be repealed. In other words, these amendments would retain the carrot of Section 40—that is, the protection it affords regulated publishers—while dispensing with that element which would provide access to justice for victims of press wrongdoing to which national news publishers so vehemently object. It is a heavy compromise, designed to meet concerns of the national press that many of us find somewhat disingenuous. However, given the Conservative Party manifesto commitment to repeal Section 40, it is a way, perhaps, of ensuring that we can still make some progress. If my amendments are accepted, there will be no detriment whatsoever to the interests of the national press, even if it declines to join an independent regulator.

In addition, my amendments support regulated, independent and local newspapers in addressing the threat of vexatious litigation known as SLAPPs. If His Majesty’s Government oppose them, can the Minister explain what specific objection could justify blocking the prospect of such a potent defence against SLAPPs for the local press? Indeed, my amendments go further than Section 40 in protecting press freedom from SLAPPs. They would also protect individual journalists from the threat of litigation where they have written for regulated publishers.

This package of amendments which I am supporting today would introduce unprecedented protection for our free press and the journalists working every day to expose the truth. These amendments would all retain compelling incentives for newspapers to abandon the industry-controlled IPSO and join a genuinely independent and effective regulator instead, and in doing so, they would protect members of the public who have been affected by intrusion, harassment or lies at the hands of the press. They would do so without threatening detriment or disadvantage to any publisher which refused to do so other than the reputational consequences of declining to make themselves accountable for what they publish.

Over 200 local and independent newspapers have sought the protection afforded to them under Section 40 by joining Impress, the independent regulator approved by the Press Recognition Panel. Your Lordships should not be in any doubt: repealing Section 40 in full would undermine the freedoms and interests of local and independent newspapers.

I commend Sir Brian on his intervention. He does not engage with the politics of the matter but has chosen to engage on the accuracy of the debate. He was sufficiently concerned to respond to my letter and to remind us of the facts. I hope that His Majesty’s Government are listening and will take the opportunities offered by these amendments to think again. I hope that the next Government will have higher aspirations for a safer and more ethical culture and an accountable press. I beg to move.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, whose name was to the amendment just so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. He had a back procedure this morning, is in great pain and has gone home. As he and I have been comrades in arms on this, I am glad to make myself a poor substitute for the great man.

Since we started this debate on the Bill this afternoon, the whole picture has been dramatically transformed by the Prime Minister’s announcement. There is to be a general election on 4 July. Why so? The Bill cannot complete its parliamentary passage by next Thursday, when the House is dissolved. That has a straightforward consequence: it goes into a procedure—I think it is called wrap-up, or it might be wind-up or whatever.

[Noble Lords]

Wash-up.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

I thank your Lordships very much. It goes into a procedure, called whatever everybody shouted a minute ago, and the fate of this clause, along with the rest of the Bill, will depend on what arises from that procedure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think my interests have already been well and truly declared in this debate but, for the avoidance of doubt, I have been the chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation since 2020. I am not sure how appropriate it is for a regulator to extol its own virtues in a debate, and I do not propose to do so, but in view of the very trenchant attack on IPSO from a number of quarters, I think it may be helpful to the Committee if a few facts were presented before it.

IPSO regulates 90% by way of circulation of the newspapers published in this country. There was an attack on the organisation and, effectively, on those who work there. The young men and women who conscientiously look at complaints without any political bias or anything other than the conscientious approach you would expect from young people like that would be surprised and disappointed by many of the allegations that have been made against them.

The decisions that are made by IPSO are all published on its website. Details of the reasoning behind those decisions are available. IPSO provides advisory notices which help people, not only well-known people, but ordinary people who fear intrusion by the press, which I think is a successful aspect of what IPSO does. There is a board and a case committee, a minority of which has press experience. These are people whose identity is capable of ascertainment by looking at the website. Anyone can see what a wide variety of people they are. To suggest that they are somehow in the pockets of the press is unworthy.

Recently, there was an independent review of IPSO by a distinguished civil servant, Sir Bill Jeffrey. I invite critics of IPSO to read his report and his view of its independence. Independence is, of course, extremely important in a regulator.

As to the suggestion that effectively we reject the vast majority of complaints, of course many of the complaints that are made—

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

Who appointed Mr Jeffrey?

[Lord Faulks]

The appointment of Sir Bill Jeffrey was the result of a decision by the board. The identity of the board is available to anybody who seeks to find out who is on the board. If by that question it is suggested that Sir Bill Jeffrey was some sort of tame civil servant, I think he would be surprised to hear that, and his history of accomplishment and independence is something which I would be surprised could be satisfactorily impugned.

I was dealing with the suggestion about a vast number of complaints being rejected. Of course, a case has to come within the remit. A number of people are discontented with things they read in the press, but they do not come within the remit of a complaint which can possibly provide a breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The editors’ code comes from a body where the minority is of press interest. Very few people criticise the editors’ code, whether they criticise the press or the regulator.

Media Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I will confine myself to one clause in this Bill, Clause 50, which will repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. That is the dross that makes an otherwise jewel of a Bill a complete disaster.

I do not know why the Tories changed their mind—well, I do, but I will not guess here. They were strong supporters of the Leveson solution, which was agreed with all parties when it was introduced. Then, of course, they changed their mind. I should say that I speak with a certain inside knowledge on this because I was deputy editor of two national newspapers and I understand the strength of feeling on all sides.

We are now 11 years on from the Crime and Courts Bill. The Government dithered and dodged whether to repeal it. What did they do from 2013 to 2017? Absolutely nothing. Seven years ago, they promised repeal in their manifesto. What happened? Absolutely nothing. Then they promised it again in their 2019 manifesto. What did they do? Absolutely nothing. Then suddenly in this, the last year of the Parliament, they have introduced repeal into this Bill, in which it does not belong in any context.

Why the decade-long delay? In the early years, it was because the Government could not decide what to do. Then they quite fancied having a legislative threat to hold over the newspapers, to blackmail them into doing their will. That was not very successful with some of them, but it was with others. Then the Government made their manifesto pledge in 2017 but did not do it, and then it was included again in the 2019 manifesto.

So nothing happened for 13 years until it was introduced in this year, 2024. Why is this a special year? Because we will have an election; that is why. We are getting this clause after a decade of doddering and dithering because the Tories hope to bribe the press with this pourboire.

I am sure that Ministers hope that the Government will use every possible manipulation to prevent the likely disaster for the Tories at the next election—I suggest noble Lords keep their eye on the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. This clause is not a piece of considered legislation: it is a straightforward bribe to the newspapers. Ministers know this perfectly well, so they say that things have changed for the better since Leveson, so we do not now need it. To me, change for the better is not terribly obvious, with Mirrorgate, Harrygate and countless cases of slurs against individuals.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Danielle Hindley, who was charged with being a “rogue beautician” by the Mail on Sunday in 2017. It ruined her business and her life. Only by going to court and winning—which was a terrifically risky thing to do—was the newspaper’s story revealed as completely misleading and lying. Under the Leveson clause, the Mail on Sunday would either have had to become a registered newspaper under the PRP and so protected against damages, or remain unregistered under IPSO, the latest of the public regulators designed by the press.

I am delighted to see the IPSO chair, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, here—I have much regard for him—but was it really sensible of IPSO to appoint a man who had been a Minister in this Conservative Government as an impartial regulator? No, of course not.

IPSO’s failings have been widely and decisively exposed. Most recently, on 22 January, the Press Recognition Panel published its latest review of the regulator. Item: IPSO does not meet the Leveson report criteria for a regulator’s independence from the press that funds it. Item: as a result, IPSO is kept on short commons by the press funders, so it cannot do the job that it is supposed to do, even if it wanted to. Item: the laws are written by the newspapers, which are supposed to be bound by them. By the way, has there ever been regulatory capture like that? The noble Lord, Lord Grade, is here; I do not think he would allow that to happen to Ofcom.

IPSO has never fined the press or introduced a standards investigation into the press. In the five years from 2018 to 2023, it investigated 3.82% of the complaints it received. It upheld 0.56% of those, around 1 in 200— yes, noble Lords heard that right.

I even took the experimental step myself of complaining to IPSO—in my ultimate memoirs I will no doubt produce the correspondence. Not only was it quite extraordinary that it turned down my complaint but, having read the letter 23 times, I still cannot understand a single word of its grounds for doing so. It is a phony regulator, designed to provide the fig leaf that the press wants to cover its worst excesses.

There is an effective regulator, Impress, but it covers mostly minor publications. If there were a will, there would be a way to expand Impress to do the job. Instead, we have IPSO, the repeal of Clause 40, and a press whose daily distortion leaves the public to be smeared at will.

I am pleased to say that my party voted against this on Report in the Commons—and I am very pleased to say that the Tory, George Eustice, voted with us, as he has been a very coherent critic. I hope that a Starmer Government will start at the beginning, implementing press reform as outlined by Leveson and reinstating Clause 40. This year is the 100th anniversary of the election in which Labour first took power. I do not think that we will be waiting another 100 years for the next Labour Government, and I hope that they deal with this hypocrisy and the disgraceful bending of the truth by the press and restore it to the very great thing that it once was.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 159 and 160 are in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins and Lady Newlove. First, I apologise for the fact that this is the first time I have spoken on the Bill. That was not the plan: illness intervened. Anyway, I am all better now, thanks.

The purport of the amendments is simple. Content posted on social media by newspapers benefits, under the Bill as it stands, from exemption from any regulatory action by the platforms. Nowhere does the Bill set up a system for the public to complain about such pieces. Newspapers can have any complaints system they want and still benefit from the exemption. Under our amendments, the exemption would apply only to newspapers that have a system for public complaints that meets proper standards—at the very least, the complaints code must be independently set up and not under the control of newspapers, their editors or any puppet regulators they may set up.

Noble Lords will have noticed that the amendments do not say that the system must measure up to the standards required by the Press Recognition Panel and monitored by a body approved by that panel; at the moment, only Impress would qualify. We have omitted that particular way of making sure that the complaints system works not because it would not be perfectly good—it would—but because the very mention of PRP/Impress is a red rag to a bull to those who control the press, so we kept the red rag in our pockets. This, of course, says more about those who control the press than about the admirable PRP/Impress set-up, which has, within its limited practical scope, been doing a very fine job.

What the amendments do mean, however, is that newspapers cannot any more hide behind their fig leaf IPSO, the so-called Independent Press Standards Organisation. I know that some Members of your Lordships’ House are IPSO fans who fought for it tooth and nail; indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is its chair. I pay tribute to that organisation: the political skills it has deployed in its attempts to give itself credibility have amazed even me, somebody who has been around politics for nearly 50 years. Two former Northern Ireland officials have been hired to produce whitewash reports on it: appointed by IPSO, terms of reference from IPSO and paid for by IPSO. They did their duty. Only last week—perhaps it knew the Bill was coming up in your Lordships’ House—it actually upheld a complaint: that against Jeremy Clarkson for abusing Meghan. That was an event as rare as bumping into a dodo on the streets one night: only three in 1,000 complaints are upheld by IPSO.

A more objective academic view of IPSO than mine was provided by the Media Standards Trust, a study by the academics Martin Moore and Gordon Ramsay published in 2019. It found that IPSO fell short on 25 of 38 Leveson recommendations. I am sorry—we have not heard the word “Leveson” for a while, and I am not sure we are still allowed to utter it, but I will. IPSO has never in its history established a single standards investigation. It has never fined a publisher. It and its editors set the code to suit themselves.

Ever intrepid, I once tried complaining about a case—a slam dunk case, if I may ask the House to take my word for it—against the Express about its use of something it wrongly described as a poll. It was an intriguing experience. IPSO followed the procedural rules minutely and scrupulously, if slowly. The Express obfuscated. Eventually, IPSO produced a ruling that was so bizarre and incomprehensible that I hesitate to describe it to the House and, of course, turned down my complaint. That experience is very typical. Some 1,500 people give up on their complaints every year, despairing of fighting their way through IPSO and the newspapers’ attritional system. The average complaint takes about six months to resolve.

These amendments, partly for the reasons I have already mentioned, do not attempt to specify what body can rule. It could be a body approved by the PRP or one adhering to another kosher code. What should be clear, however, is that the regulator should not be a pussycat regulator controlled by the press, as IPSO is. It should be a genuinely independent regulator with a genuinely independent code to enforce.

“You’re against free speech, Lipsey; you want state regulation”. But there is no inhibition on free speech in our amendments. They merely provide a way of hearing complaints after pieces have been printed, and the state need have nothing to do with it. Incidentally, I find great curiosity in the way in which this state regulation bogey is played about with in this debate. In fact, Ofcom is already a state regulator of many of the things that would be covered by our amendments. Nevertheless, the cry of “state regulation” is obviously red blood that the proponents of total freedom want.

I too want freedom. I spent a third of my working life as a journalist. I was deputy editor of two national newspapers and Bagehot of the Economist. I believe in press freedom to my very core. If I thought for a moment that these amendments in any way threatened press freedom, I would not be proposing them tonight, but I am perfectly certain that they would not. Instead, they would put some inhibition on newspapers planning to abuse often innocent people on their websites; not stopping them saying it but subjecting them to complaints if they do so, which would be independently adjudicated.

I, my co-signatories and my noble friends on the Front Bench are aware that a media Bill is coming up this Session, next Session or sometime sooner or later— I hope sooner, obviously. That will explicitly end the incentives for newspapers to join an independent regulatory system, such as PRP/Impress, by repealing Section 40 of the Act that gives them the incentives to do so. When we last debated these matters, my noble friend Lord Knight on the Front Bench argued that this Bill was not the right way to tackle the complaints problem, and that it could be done under the media Bill. I am pleased to say that my party, the Labour Party, has specifically pledged that it will not repeal Section 40 in any media Bill introduced if and when it takes power. I respect my noble friend Lord Knight’s argument so, for the avoidance of doubt, we shall not seek the opinion of the House on this amendment. But let the press be in no doubt: Parliament remains on the case—sometimes more intently, sometimes less intently; once agreed on the royal charter, but that has gone down the river; but always ready to act if the newspapers defeat the rights of the public to complain.

We will not finish the job tonight, nor with this Bill, but examples of egregious press behaviour continue to mount up. I know that some of them are in the past, and we were all following the recent High Court case, but they still appear to be around. The question will not go away. The Government continue to attempt to curry favour with the press—the Prime Minister even went to a Rupert Murdoch party rather than attend a climate conference—but, at the end of the day, the power of the press is declining. The force of those who argue for a better complaints system multiplies. Sooner or later, something will have to be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my interest—although I think it has already been declared for me by the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Lipsey—as the chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

We had this debate in Committee, although not with the same actors; I am glad to see both of them now back in their places and restored to health. However, I cannot welcome all the comments they made, particularly not those of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, critical as he was of IPSO. I should tell the House that IPSO is not on the side of the press. It is not on anybody’s side: it is an independent organisation for the regulation of the press that regulates, by circulation, some 95% of both national and regional newspapers.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, spoke of how ineffective we were as an organisation and was rather disparaging about the reviews of IPSO’s governance and operations. I ought, at the very least, to maintain a defence of Sir Bill Jeffrey, a very distinguished civil servant in the Ministry of Defence who recently carried out a report on IPSO. I hope that Members of your Lordships’ House, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord McNally, will read the report to see in what ways they consider IPSO is still not showing its independence, but I would very much defend Sir Bill Jeffrey’s independence and the way in which he approached the task. I think it unfortunate that he was attacked in the way he was by the noble Lord. I give way.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord agree that a report which gives as part of its evidence conversations with a sample of precisely 12 complainants cannot be taken seriously?

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

The report must be read as a whole. I do not accept at all what the noble Lord has said. It is worth visiting the IPSO website, because he was very disparaging about the number of complaints that were upheld. IPSO is very transparent; its website shows all the decisions that were reached and the way in which they were reached. I invite those who doubt its independence to look at the constituent elements of those who are on the complaints committee and the board, and all the published decisions, in order to decide whether IPSO is indeed in the pockets of the press, which seemed to be the suggestion made by both noble Lords.

Of course, the approved regulator, Impress, has very little work to do. I am sure it does its work highly conscientiously. The code by which it regulates is remarkably similar to the editors’ code, which is produced by the industry, it is true, with contributions from all sorts of people. It varies from year to year. There is very little criticism of the editors’ code. It provides a very sensible and balanced view to make the press accountable, allowing the complaints committee to decide whether there has been a violation of the code.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said that at last it has found the press to be in breach of that code in the recent complaint. It was interesting that the complaints body which I chair was alleged to not be independent of the press. It was roundly criticised by the press for coming to that decision—by the Times, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. At the same time, it is said that the organisation which I chair is not independent. It is of course independent and will continue to be so.

As for Section 40, before I had anything to do with press regulation, I did not like it. As a lawyer, the idea of somebody having a free hit against anybody is unattractive. Whatever you think of press regulation, I do not think that Section 40 should commend itself to anybody. As they have promised for some time, the Government are quite right to include it in the media Bill, which is to come before your Lordships’ House in due course. It has been a sword of Damocles hanging over the industry. It is not helpful, and I hope that it is repealed. I understand that the Labour Party and perhaps the Liberal Democrats will bring back something of that sort. I understand they may be opposing it when it comes into the media Bill, but that is a matter for them in due course.

Of course, the press should be accountable. Of course, it should be properly regulated. The idea of an independent regulator is to provide reassurance that it is being regulated, as opposed to, until this Bill becomes law, social media—which is not regulated—which provides a source for news which is considerably less reliable than all those newspapers which are subject to regulation.

This is not the occasion to go into further debates about Leveson, but it is perhaps worth rereading the Leveson report and the conclusions that Sir Brian reached—which I have done recently. It must be seen, as all reports, as very much of its time. It is particularly interesting to see the extent to which he promoted and advanced the cause of arbitration. Alternative dispute resolution is very much at the centre of what the legal profession as a whole, and Sir Brian Leveson and his committee in particular, advance as a much better way to resolve disputes. There is an arbitration scheme provided by IPSO, as noble Lords and the House may know. Of course, that is an option which we would encourage people to use—consistent with what Sir Brian and his committee recommended. It is not a substitute for going to court, and if people want to, they should be allowed to do so. However, I think there is a case for courts considering having directions whereby, at first, somebody seeking relief in the court should show that they have exhausted alternative remedies, including alternative dispute resolution. I am in favour of that.

On the idea of being Leveson-compliant—I do not think Sir Brian Leveson particularly likes that expression. He made various recommendations, many of which are reflected in what IPSO does now. I understand there is a great deal of history in this debate. I remember the debates myself. No doubt, we will return to them in due course, but I think we should fight today’s battles, and not the battles of 10 years ago or longer. I think the press is much more accountable and responsible than it was. Of course, as parliamentarians, we will carefully watch what the press do and consider carefully whether this exemption is merited. However, I do not think that this amendment is justified and I hope that the Government do not support it.

Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to start my speech by agreeing with two things just said by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey. First, the current Minister should stay in his post for ever. However, this will require a small sacrifice on his part, in changing from his side of the House to ours, before he is eligible.

Secondly, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, about the ghastliness of the phrase “creative industries”. It is hopeless for describing what we are talking about. “Creative” immediately makes you think of a painter scratching away on her canvas, but this goes far wider than art and the arts. They are a terribly important part of the creative world, but this sector is a financial as well as an artistic powerhouse. It deserves a better name. “Industries” just makes me think of LS Lowry and those smoky chimneys, but you have fewer smoky chimneys with this than with anything else.

With that aside, this is a valuable report. I was a member of the committee, so I am showing off a bit, but the real credit belongs with the staff, who get through more work in a day than I do in a month, and with my fellow committee members and our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell.

We say in our report that the Government have been complacent. I cannot help but think there is a bit of a paradox here: you can hardly pick up a newspaper now without a picture of a grinning Rishi Sunak in white overalls and black protective goggles proclaiming that Britain’s future lies in the creative industries. Meanwhile, the reality is, in our report’s words, a “lack of focus” by government. The creative industries, or whatever we will call them in a better world, do not even feature in the Government’s five priorities for growth, and they did not mention them in the last Autumn Statement. The reality seems a lot less present than the glorifying pictures of the Prime Minister.

When we see the flaws in policy, they are major. As we point out,

“UK tax relief … remains restrictive … The UK business environment lacks sufficient incentives for small businesses to scale at home; too many sell up”—

perhaps to other international firms—

“Data collection in both Government and the sector is muddled and under exploited. Academic research funding does too little to encourage commercially orientated creative projects … Successive governments’ efforts to address skills shortages have fallen far short of what is needed”.

Those are direct quotes from our report and have been reflected, for example, by the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, on skills. It is a pretty damning indictment.

That said, the Government seem to be waking up. Perhaps it is partly the result of our report. Who knows? In June they published their creative industries—those words again—sector vision. This directly addressed two of our recommendations: the Government have ditched their plan to turn copyright into a Wild West where AI producers could simply steal the data produced by others, and they have revived the creative industries clusters programme, a highly successful policy that had been due to meet its maker in March 2023. Those are promising steps forward.

There is much more that our report recommends, and that our committee and others will continue to push, until the lights go on in Whitehall. The plain fact, and a frightening one, is that if Britain does not succeed in this field, it is difficult to see where its future economic dynamism will come from. It has been high in the Government’s rhetoric but, for too long, not high enough in their practical policy agenda. That must change.

BBC: Future Funding (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, may I have the unused time of my noble friend?

Like this House, the BBC licence fee is always going to be abolished in five years’ time. The current Culture Secretary—I congratulate her on her coming baby—was at it again recently, saying that the Government remain committed to changing the completely “outdated” BBC funding model by 2027; five years, yet again. Noble Lords will forgive me if I do not hold my breath waiting. What are the chances of the current Culture Secretary still being Culture Secretary in five years? Look at the history book: there have been four Culture Secretaries since the last general election, with an average term of nine months. This time, of course, there is another likely change coming along: Keir Starmer, according to a bookmaker I consulted this morning, is 5:2 to be Prime Minister in five years—and I do not expect him to reappoint Ms Donelan, even if she survives that long.

Why is the licence fee always up for abolition? As our report points out, it has two defects. First, the same amount is paid by everyone, rich or poor. If we ignore tax, a 23 year-old on the minimum wage would have to work for two full days to pay the licence fee; it would take someone on £1 million a year two minutes. For a legally compulsory levy, that seems unfair. I personally give even greater weight to the second defect, which is that it gives far too much power over the BBC’s income to the Government of the day. In the case of this Conservative Government, they have used this power ruthlessly—because they do not like the BBC much—in the interests of their private sector chums to keep the BBC in check. As Gavyn Davies, a past chair of the BBC and who chaired the Davies committee on which I sat, always says, the Government have kept the BBC on a diet.

The unfortunate thing, as I think our report explores in considerable detail, is that all of the tempting-sounding alternatives to a flat-rate licence fee have their defects. In most cases, these are arguably even more serious than the defects of the licence fee. Advertising is a non-starter: realistic estimates suggest that it would provide only a small proportion of what the BBC needs but, at the same time, would take away a large proportion of what other public service broadcasters need. What about pay-per-view? Many people would then be excluded from programmes they would like. It must be remembered that the marginal cost of supplying a programme once it has been made is zero. The same argument applies to a sort of supercharged BBC extra channel, channels or programmes which you have to pay to see. That would straightforwardly exclude the poor and bring about an end to universality, which is commonly accepted as the key virtue of the BBC. What about linking payments to council tax? The trouble is that successive Governments have failed to update valuations for council tax, so they are in large measure as arbitrary as the licence fee itself. What about hypothecated tax? What chance would the BBC have in the annual spending round against the NHS, education or pensions?

We could, I think, more easily tackle the dictatorship of the Government over BBC funding. Only this week, we learned from the National Audit Office that the BBC’s attempts to go digital are being strangled by a lack of cash. Our report suggests that the Government set up an independent body to advise them on the licence fee. That would at least make the present system of setting the licence fee more rational and less opaque. In an ideal world, I would go further: in my broadcasting utopia the licence fee would be set by an independent, non-partisan body—perhaps one established by royal charter—which would balance the virtues of the BBC with the cost to the licence fee-payer of providing it. Unfortunately, I can have my views and advisers can have their views but, in the end, Ministers are going to decide this. In truth, I do not suppose that Ministers of any colour would give away their power to decide on the BBC’s income. In that case, I think the advisory body proposed by our committee is probably the best we can do, inadequate though it is.

At the end of all our evidence-taking, thinking and drafting, I am afraid it was hard to duck the unpalatable conclusion that the licence fee is both the worst and the best way of funding the BBC, and I am not sure how you square that circle. I finish with one conclusion, which the great majority of our witnesses, and certainly everybody who has spoken today and our committee, would agree with. Yes, the BBC has faults, and it should be open to radical change. For that reason, we recommended that it should publish

“a comprehensive long-term vision that sets out its role, and how it will deliver value and distinctiveness in a rapidly changing world.”

But the BBC, flaws and all, is a great national treasure—one with which our country leads the world. We dabble with the BBC and the licence fee which funds it at our peril.

Horseracing Industry

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, what great timing the noble Lord, Lord Risby, has achieved in securing this debate, because this is the week when, to a fanfare of trumpets, the British Horseracing Authority announced its final agreement to replace the present tripartite and dysfunctional system with a reform designed to stop individual racing interests blocking change. That is a step forward which we can all welcome.

The noble Lord is, of course, a true expert on racing, as a member of the Horserace Betting Levy Board. He will not mind me reminding the Committee that that body exists today only because this House blocked a half-baked scheme cooked up by the Government and racing to hand the whole business of collecting taxes from punters over to a non-accountable body. After this debate, again by a lucky chance, I am off to the 50th birthday party of Alan Delmonte, the chief executive of the levy board—I suspect others here are going too. What a great job he, the noble Lord and their team have done.

I have a few interests to declare. I am member of the Starting Price Regulatory Commission, which oversees the SP, and a past director of the Tote and of the shadow Racing Trust. Much more interestingly, I own or part-own three horses: Lost Connections, who came fourth at Lingfield on Tuesday; Financial Outcome, who won his last two point-to-points; and a baby novice trotter who has not yet run. More significantly, I am also chair of Premier Greyhound Racing, a JV company formed by Arena Racing Company and Entain to supply coverage of the dogs to betting shops and homes. Of course, this afternoon I speak for myself and no one else.

As I say, this is the week of BHA reform and it would be churlish to cavil too much at this welcome change. However, I am afraid I am going to add an ounce of cavil to a pound of welcome. It is quite astonishing how long it has taken for this basic change to happen. I was on the Tote board with Peter Savill when he first started lobbying for change—not exactly this, but change that would have similar effect—20 years ago. Wearing my greyhound hat, I cannot help but compare this pace of change in governance with that in greyhound racing.

We had a big problem in greyhound racing. I was chair of the then British Greyhound Racing Board and the governance was in at least as much of a mess as that of horseracing. The Donoughue committee was appointed. It is sad that Bernard, my noble friend Lord Donoughue, is not here this afternoon to give us the benefit of his advice. He came up with a wonderful report proposing root-and-branch change, which went through in a couple of years. I can say with complete confidence that if he had not produced that report and if we had not had that change, I do not think we would have greyhound racing today, or certainly not on the same scale, with 20 tracks this side of the Irish Sea, three meetings every day for afficionados and punters—the noble Lord, Lord Foster, will forgive me for mentioning punters, about whom his views are well known—and still a position as Britain’s sixth-biggest spectator sport. That shows what you can do with the aid of good governance.

We do not need and do not have a compulsory levy. We have a voluntary levy. A few years ago, I was responsible for brokering an increase in that levy by which bookmakers voluntarily put their money into greyhound racing and in return got a say on how it is spent through the British Greyhound Racing Fund.

One of the things that the new BHA model will want to do is negotiate an increase in the levy. I will say two things about that. First, it would be very unwise to progress this—here I pick up a point from the noble Lord, Lord Risby—until we know the Government’s plans for gambling reform. If they introduce some of the changes that have been advocated—I do not say by the noble Lord, Lord Foster—then bookmakers will take a heavy hit, as will the Exchequer, incidentally. In the light of today’s events, that is something that we would not want to see. The less money that is collected from bookmakers, the less money there will be to go into racing too.

Secondly, I am a sort of economist, and I have my doubts about whether large amounts of the levy going into prize money solves this industry’s undoubted problems. Incidentally, I accept the point about overseas competition for buying racehorses, but it is perfectly clear to me, as an economist, that if you raise prize money people will pay more for horses when they go through the sales ring—and what would you have achieved? You would have lined the pockets of breeders. These unexpected side-effects of half-understood economics have to be borne in mind when we consider the right level for the levy.

That leads me to a proposal. Racing indeed needs a plan, but I am not wholly confident that, even with the new model of governance, it has all the knowledge and understanding that it needs for a robust plan. Of course it will consult, but there is a case for a wider input than consultation alone will bring. Therefore, in my view, racing would benefit from formalised outside help and advice. My proposal is a royal commission—the first one for more than 20 years—on horseracing, including representatives of racing but also outsiders with relevant expertise: an independent economist, a leisure industry expert and someone who understands the betting industry properly, all under a proper heavyweight neutral chair.

I am not soft-minded about royal commissions. The one I was on, on care of the elderly, was a complete shambles, and I signed a minority report to it—so the 20-year gap was probably welcome. But they have something to offer in this kind of circumstance. Give such a body a couple of years and there is every chance that it will come up with a plan worthy of that name to act as a starting point for radical reform of racing that the BHA, the Government and the oft-forgotten punter can get behind.

The Politics of Polling (Liaison Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Liaison Committee The Politics of Polling: an update (8th Report, Session 2019–21, HL Paper 197).

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I start with the history of this matter. I proposed and was asked to chair the original Select Committee on opinion polls, and chaired it for most of its history, until I had an unexpected engagement with the grim reaper across the river. My noble friend Lady Jay kindly took over and, with her usual supreme competence, finished off the report. I am not saying this to get out of any of the things the committee then decided; I am sure they are all perfect.

That committee reported in April 2018 and there was a debate in the House in July 2018. Under the new procedure of the House, the Liaison Committee set up a follow-up committee to see how its recommendations fared. It reported in December 2020 and, after the usual inexcusable lag, this is the report we are debating today. In that context, I particularly thank that wonderful servant of the House, Michael Collon, whose work as clerk to the follow-up committee—I think his last for this House—showed why he was a legend in his lifetime and a remarkable man.

As the follow-up report points out, the Liaison Committee report differs from most of those that are considered by this House, as did the original report, in that its recommendations were mostly targeted not at the Government but at the polling industry. We therefore do not have to focus on the Government’s reply—the kind of stuff that greets Select Committee report after Select Committee report, and reflects some civil servant’s attempt to disguise the Government’s refusal to seriously consider the central recommendations in warm guff. The quality of our Select Committees is reduced in its impact by the Government’s refusal to take them seriously.

Even in this case, the Government turned down one recommendation—an enhanced role for the Electoral Commission. That comes as no surprise now, since the Government have shown through the Elections Act that the idea of an independent elections commission is foreign to their nature.

However—and I say this with great satisfaction—the industry’s response has been very different. In particular, I thank Sir John Curtice, the head of the British Polling Council, and Jane Frost, of the Market Research Society, for what they have achieved in bringing polling into the present century.

I think that we can claim that we had some influence on this as our recommendations helped the progressives in polling to push ahead against some resistance. I am particularly surprised that good progress has been made on the problems of polling and, at least as important, on the reporting of polling, which was so evident following the polling disaster of the 2017 general election—do we all remember Theresa May’s landslide that was not?

Polling is now more transparent, the technical issues surrounding it are more understood, its spokespeople are more measured in their claims and, most of all, reporting is now, with rare exceptions, less misleading. The days when you had stories saying, “Disastrous poll for Labour”, when all that had happened was that Labour had gone down 1% in its poll rating—well within the margin of error, as our committee pointed out—have mostly gone, thank the Lord.

I cannot say, however, that I am 100% confident that the polls will not get it wrong again. It has happened intermittently throughout the history of polling. Mark Pack, who produces an invaluable polls blog, reminds us of this in his new book, Polling UnPacked. As the first editions of the Chicago Tribune appeared in 1948 with the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman”, Pack reports that pioneer pollster George Gallup turned to his staff and said,

“Boys, I think we’re in trouble”.


This happened in this country too, in 1974, 1992, 2015 and 2017. I remember the report of Professor Patrick Sturgis, now of LSE, on the 2015 failings. He was, incidentally, a distinguished specialist adviser to our committee.

Talking of errors, I remember most vividly and very personally the American election of 2019. I am generally only a small gambler—£5 each way is a lot for me—but in that particular case the polls were so overwhelmingly certain that Biden was going to win that I had, I am afraid, a four-figure sum on his victory. I went to bed that night—before midnight—cheerful. I woke in the middle of the night to the BBC reporting, “Well, it’s looking as if Trump has won.” I did not easily get back to sleep. We now have the report of the American Association for Public Opinion Research on that poll, though I am afraid that it concludes that it was impossible to identify the source of the error, which does not give total confidence that it will get it right in future. Anyway, as a result of that very poor night’s sleep, I am finding it possible to resist the temptation to back Labour to be the largest party after the next election in Britain, though I find the current price of 6/5 against unbelievably tempting.

As poor reporting lies at the heart of so much of perceived poll failures, I start with that. Better practice was first encouraged by ESOMAR, the European polling association, which published an excellent guide written by the doyenne of British polling journalists and a great friend of this House, Peter Kellner. More recently, the National Council for the Training of Journalists produced a professional training course for journalists, which was developed with the BPC and MRS. I was really pleased to be present at the launch of its short version of that guidance, which is great.

Sympathising a little bit with my old profession, I have to say that good reporting is not quite as easy as you might think. I reported on polls for the Sunday Times. There was a good deal of cross-pressure on me as a journalist. On the one hand was the sacred duty to report accurately and without hyperbole, and on the other hand was the news desk wanting the biggest possible splash. You might have thought that the pollsters would be the allies of the careful journalists. Certainly, MORI, which did our polling, wanted sight of the copy as we submitted it, but it, too, wanted a big splash; indeed, I think there were more occasions on which Bob Worcester, the redoubtable boss of MORI, pushed me to puff up the findings than occasions when he asked me not to go too far. One still gets the odd distortion—I had to take the Express to IPSO recently for presenting a poll of its readers as if it were a proper poll, because the idea that Express readers are representative of the nation as a whole seems bizarre—but such errors are much less frequent, and we are better off for it.

As for transparency, the BPC has certainly tightened its practices, with details of the methodology appearing on its website. It has taken on board a huge increase in the number of polling companies—I think that 28-odd are in business now, and all those are now carefully scrutinised.

After correspondence with Full Fact—I declare an interest as a past vice-chair of that organisation—the BPC has introduced a new rule that lays an obligation on members to check whether the accuracy of the figures quoted in any initial publication of a poll is justified, so that things can be put right. So things have moved forward, and I would claim on behalf of my excellent committee some share of the credit.

However, there is always a danger that things will go wrong again. It is true that, on average, polls have not got worse over the years—research by Will Jennings of Southampton University shows that—but, in reality, it is not the average error that matters; it is the disasters that everyone remembers and that can have a consequential effect on politics, which is why, for example, the French do not allow publication of polls during election campaigns. I therefore remind the polling industry of what our committee said. We came down against a ban on polling during the elections—we were not copying the French—and we came down against heavy-handed regulation, but we also said that if the polls messed up by too much too often, such issues would need to be revisited. It is vital that they keep their eye on the ball and keep their standards up; otherwise, this Parliament will have to make up for their failings.

To be fair to the industry, polling is a lot more difficult than it used to be when I started in the trade. A voting intention poll was quite easy in those days. You just had to get the right number of working-class people in your sample. Working-class people all voted Labour, so if you got the right number of them in your sample, you would get the Labour vote about right. That was before the days of the blue wall seats. The industry is adapting. For example, it now turns out that an important factor in voting intention is education, particularly university education, with graduates being much more likely to vote Labour than people who have not been to university—I could perhaps carry that as an accolade for my party; at the same time, if we do not get the working class back, we are going to be in trouble.

Techniques are still evolving. On balance, it is best for government to keep its distance and allow experimentation to proceed. Nobody has yet supplanted the basic principles of opinion polling, but there are interesting methodological developments that need to be tried and tested. That said, polls are too important to be left entirely to pollsters and, more crucial still, too important to be left entirely to journalists. The price of democratic liberty is eternal vigilance, and that includes, as the Liaison Committee report shows, eternal vigilance over opinion polls and their reporting. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that thoughtful reply. I particularly thank noble Lords for the extraordinarily kind remarks they made about me personally, especially when, if I had popped it, they might not be kept in this House on a Thursday afternoon when the last summer sun is shining outside. I have always sworn never to use the phrase “the House of Lords at its best”, but I tiptoe near that by saying that this has been like an excellent webinar on the present state of polling, and I appreciate it.

To correct any misapprehension, I should say that I am not at all Pollyannaish about polls. I worry about their vulnerabilities, and in particular, to introduce one final new point, I am worried about their dirty little secret: essentially, the percentage of the public who agree to respond to pollsters’ questions keeps on falling, and as you get dodgy social media the whole time, people are more and more fearful of committing their views, and that will make it much more difficult to predict in the future. This is a concern that I know everybody in the industry shares, that everyone reading polls should share, and which we need to keep a careful eye on.

This is not the last word. We are not in a bad place today; we are in a better place than we would have been without these reports and the consequent action. However, we have not yet reached the sunny uplands for ever, and we need to keep our eye on what is going on and be ready to act if things start to go wrong in a way that genuinely endangers our democracy.

Motion agreed.

Digital Technology (Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 77).

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, to tell your Lordships the truth, I feel like an imposter. This report was shaped, inspired and given its passion by Lord Puttnam, the chairman of the committee, who I am delighted to see sitting on the steps of the Throne. I was merely one of the team of Peers who he charmed, argued and occasionally cajoled into unanimously endorsing his vision: trust in democracy resurrected by getting social media back on the leash. David’s high seriousness was of course combined with his impish sense of humour. He egged on his team—noble Lords and an incomparable secretariat led by Olivia Crabtree and Tim Stacey—to produce an irresistible report. We have lost him, and that fact highlights the extraordinary situation that it has taken nearly two years, or at least more than 18 months, from the time we produced our report to its being debated in this House—honestly.

However, Lord Puttnam and we should take comfort from the fact that the seeds we sowed have multiplied. To cite some: the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill flowed directly from our work, and its report—unlike so many parliamentary reports—is being taken seriously by the Government. That is a continuing debate, but I predict it will have a much more satisfactory outcome than it would have done if our report had never existed. We had an impact on this House’s Communications and Digital Committee report of July 2021. That committee also produced a persuasive report on digital regulation, which makes real some of the Puttnam committee’s recommendations. The House of Commons Petitions Committee produced its valuable report on Tackling Online Abuse, which again picked up some of our themes.

Things that Puttnam said at the time which then seemed controversial now seem commonplace. As David said in his foreword,

“our Report focuses on a different form of crisis, one with roots that extend far deeper, and are likely to last far longer than COVID-19. This is a virus that affects all of us in the UK—a pandemic of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. If allowed to flourish these counterfeit truths will result in the collapse of public trust, and without trust democracy as we know it will simply decline into irrelevance.”

Let me dip briefly into the nourishing pot of proposals that Puttnam put forward. Among them are: a CMA full investigation into online platforms’ control over digital advertising—there was a giant step that way in the CMA’s announcement yesterday. There is also holding platforms to account for content they recommend to large audiences, coupled with Ofcom sanctions against platforms that fail to adhere to their duty of care; better co-ordination of regulators; transparency, especially transparency over the genie in the box, algorithms; using technology to engage people for democratic purposes; a large-scale programme of evaluation of digital media literacy initiatives, perhaps focusing, as the committee did, on the extraordinary efforts made by Estonia as part of its efforts to keep Russian misinformation at bay—we know now that not a moment of that has been wasted; and a major review of the implications of platform design for users, producing a code of practice on design transparency. I will not go on, because all noble Lords will have read the report or, if they have not, they will have read the excellent Library briefing, but a cornucopia of goodies is hidden within the report.

Not all our proposals were addressed to the Government. One, for example, was addressed to Parliament, recommending it set up a Joint Committee on online safety. As I have said, that happened—to remarkable effect. The CMA and Ofcom also both reacted and have been pushing ahead.

What of those recommendations addressed to the Government? Perhaps one should not expect the Government’s response to the report, which they published in—gulp—September 2020, to match the positive tone of our report. We know you do not get many positive tones in government responses. There are a few areas where progress is being made: imprints on digital political advertising, for example, and, at long last, the beginning of a joined-up approach in government to digital literacy. However, overall, there is something rather depressing about the response. Our committee had high ambitions. The Government have low ambitions—tarnished, moreover, by putting the partisan before the health of the polity in the Elections Bill that we debated only yesterday.

By serendipity, we were discussing electoral law in the previous debate. We were not the only people advocating reform: the Law Commission has a set of proposals. Yet the Government chose to prioritise this partisan Elections Bill—a shocking aberration—over making the change the Law Commission wanted.

We wanted proper declarations of spending by everyone in elections, not just political parties. The Government says that we must take care not to “overburden campaigners”. We proposed more powers for the Electoral Commission. The Elections Bill which the House debated emasculates the commission. We asked for a Bill based on the Law Commission’s recommendations, and we wanted it in place before the next general election. There is no sign of it yet; it remains in the long grass. The Government need to get their priorities straight where electoral law is concerned if they are to retain the confidence of voters. We were an all-party committee recommending changes to sustain democracy. I fear that, too often, they seem a partisan Government, recommending changes to bend democracy their way.

These debates are not over: far from it. Much of what we raised is being taken forward, as I said —at least in debate if not always in legislative action. I must also say that the tone of debate has improved radically. Nobody now defends the exploitation of children by pornographers—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has frequently pointed out. The Government are actually doing something about it by announcing measures to ensure that age verification is taken seriously. Having said some harsh things about the Government, I cannot tell your Lordships how thrilled I—and, I am sure, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—was to find that they were taking some action there. I expect that, like me, she will not be totally satisfied. It is also important that the big tech companies themselves are finally starting to take their critics seriously—that is what a febrile share price does under capitalism—and they are now making not just public affairs but genuine efforts to start to get together their solidate.

I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s reply. I have been long enough—may be too long—in politics to have learned how often the short term trumps the long term, how a few votes snatched today can seem more attractive than a healthier democracy tomorrow. In this report, we tried to create a counterweight: an appeal, if you like, to idealism to defeat a widespread and corrosive cynicism. Even today, what we said is a cry worth listening to for those who still believe in progress and democracy, and all of us believe in those two things more strongly as a result of the horrifying events in Ukraine. The report is Lord Puttnam’s legacy and let us hope that it will be his words that shape our future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, which, besides its other virtues, was continent in the time it took given the richness of the debate. I thank everybody who took part; I honestly think that it is—and will read as—one of the best debates I have heard in this House. Its blend of expertise, eloquence and passion could act as a tutorial on the main issues facing us to anybody who reads it. Anyway, it is late, and time to go home. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Age Assurance (Minimum Standards) Bill [HL]

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, in my 20 years in the House I have heard every possible excuse from Ministers for not doing what they obviously should do: something will cost too much money, there is not the legislative time, or it breaches international obligations. Anybody in this House could recite such a list. However, I have come across very few Bills that seem to be proof against such excuses.

The Bill which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has worked so hard to lay before us, addresses a real and present harm, not to adults, who, arguably, can look after themselves, but to our children and grandchildren. As I stand here, I think of my beloved grandchild, Marli Rose, who is five-years old. When she is twice the age that she is now, she could be exposed to this kind of stuff, and my blood boils. It has not happened: there is still no single regulatory or statutory code that sets out rules or standards for age assurance in the UK. All we have is a bit of guidance from DCMS and the design code. Previous legislation on age verification is effectively defunct.

If we wanted proof of the Government’s sheer lack of umph on this subject, we got it this week. To a blast of trumpets, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, announced new money to help tech companies combat child exploitation and abuse online. Great, but how much was it? It was £500,000, which does not even buy you the services of Sir Geoffrey Cox for six months. Of course, the noble Baroness’s Bill and the age verification that it seeks has some enemies. There are extreme libertarians such as the Open Rights Group, for whom American-style free speech trumps all other values. More insidiously, there are companies that benefit from the freedom to distribute their material to kids, in particular pornographers.

There is a perfectly reasonable argument, which we will not have now, as to whether pornography for adults should be legal. There surely cannot be even a second’s argument over how it must be prevented, to the maximum possible extent, from reaching children, for the reasons that noble Lords have already explained to the House. Yet 62% of 11 to 13 year-olds who reported having seen pornography described their viewing as mostly unintentional. Never mind stopping them seeing it when they want to, we cannot even stop them seeing it when they do not want to. Given that age verification now often consists of no more than ticking a box, that is hardly surprising.

Those who profit from this fall back on an excuse: namely, the alleged technological difficulty of doing it. I was with the Communications and Digital Committee, so marvellously chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, this week. We went up to Cambridge to see the cutting edge of tech in action. We saw a moving Google project, which had in effect equipped a blind child, so that they had many of the perceptions of a sighted child, being able to catch and throw a ball. This was extraordinarily moving, but it also exposes the excuses put up by those delaying introducing proper age verification for the smokescreen that they are. If you can get a blind child to see a ball, surely you can stop a sighted child from seeing pornography every day. AI is galloping towards age verification from a person’s voice alone.

Let us be honest: it is not really being able to do it that is the problem; it is not really wanting to do it that is the problem. From some companies’ point of view, it would hit their bottom line, and from the Government's point of view—not of course, because they are against it—because they are trying to tuck away every advance in the globe into the online safety Bill box. I may be unfair, but I do not doubt for a moment that Ministers are in favour of age verification to protect our children. Maybe DCMS Ministers, of whom I am sure that the Minister is one, and their trusty civil servants, toss in their beds every night puzzling over how to introduce it, prioritising it in their minds over pet policies such as privatising Channel 4 or defunding the BBC. Maybe it is their top priority. All right, let the Minister today explain the dither and delay that has so far characterised the Government’s approach to this; let him demonstrate that the Government really have their teeth into this one. If he does so, we will be delighted and this Bill will be redundant. Otherwise, let us give this Bill a Second Reading, pass it rapidly into law and get age verification done.