Online Safety Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

33B: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Adult risk assessment duties
(1) This section sets out the duties about adult risk assessments which apply in relation to all Category 1 services.(2) A duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk of an adult user encountering by means of the service content which is harmful to adults taking into account any relevant risk profile and to keep that assessment up to date, including when OFCOM make any significant change to a risk profile that relates to services of the kind in question, or before making any significant change to any aspect of a service’s design or operation including changes to any user empowerment tools.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires Category 1 services to assess the risk of harm to adults arising from the operation of their services.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, as a former Deputy Leader of this House, if I were sitting on the Front Bench, I would have more gumption than to try to start a debate only 10 minutes before closing time. But I realise that the wheels grind on—perhaps things are no longer as flexible as they were in my day—so noble Lords will get my speech. The noble Lord, Lord Grade, who is at his post—it is very encouraging to see the chair of Ofcom listening to this debate—and I share a love of music hall. He will remember Eric Morecambe saying that one slot was like the last slot at the Glasgow Empire on a Friday night. That is how I feel now.

A number of references have been made to those who served on the Joint Committee and what an important factor it has been in their thinking. I have said on many occasions that one of the most fulfilling times of my parliamentary life was serving on the Joint Committee for the Communications Act 2003. The interesting thing was that we had no real idea of what was coming down the track as far as the internet was concerned, but we did set up Ofcom. At that time, a lot of the pundits and observers were saying, “Murdoch’s lawyers will have these government regulators for breakfast”. Well, they did not. Ofcom has turned into a regulator for which—at some stages this has slightly worried me—for almost any problem facing the Government, they say, “We’ll give it to Ofcom”. It has certainly proved that it can regulate across a vast area and with great skill. I have every confidence that the noble Lord, Lord Grade, will take that forward.

Perhaps it is to do with the generation I come from, but I do not have this fear of regulation or government intervention. In some ways, the story of my life is that of government intervention. If I am anybody’s child, I am Attlee’s child—not just because of the reforms of the Labour Party, but the reforms of the coalition Government, the Butler Education Act and the bringing in of the welfare state. So I am not afraid of government and Parliament taking responsibility in addressing real dangers.

In bringing forward this amendment, along with my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who cannot be here today, I am referring to legislation that is 20 years old. That is a warning to newcomers; it could be another 20 years before parliamentary time is found for a Bill of this complexity, so we want to be sure that we get its scope right.

The Minister said recently that the Bill is primarily a child safety Bill, but it did not start off that way. Five years ago, the online harms White Paper was seen as a pathfinder and trailblazer for broader legislation. Before we accept the argument that the Bill is now narrowed down to more specific terms, we should think about whether there are other areas that still need to be covered.

These amendments are in the same spirit as those in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell, Lady Bull, and Lady Featherstone. We seek to reinstate an adult risk assessment duty because we fear that the change in title signals a reduction in scope and a retreat from the protections which earlier versions of the Bill intended to provide.

It was in this spirit, and to enable us to get ahead of the game, that in 2016 I proposed a Private Member’s Bill on this subject: the Online Harms Reduction Regulator (Report) Bill, which asked Ofcom to publish, in advance of the anticipated legislation, assessments of what action was needed to reduce harm to users and wider society from social networks. I think we can all agree that, if that work had been done in advance of the main legislation, such evidence would be very useful now.

I am well aware that there are those who, in the cause of some absolute concepts of freedom, believe that to seek to broaden the scope of the Bill takes us into the realms of the nanny state. But part of the social contract which enables us to survive in this increasingly complex world is that the ordinary citizen, who is busy struggling with the day-to-day challenges of normal life, does trust his Government and Parliament to keep an anticipatory weather eye on what is coming down the track and what dangers lie therein for the ordinary citizen.

When there have been game-changing advances in technology in the past, it has often taken a long time for societies to adapt and adjust. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to the invention of the printing press. That caused the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and around 300 years of war, so we have to be careful how we handle these technological changes. Instagram was founded in 2010, and the iPhone 4 was released then too. One eminent social psychologist wrote:

“The arrival of smartphones rewired social life.”


It is not surprising that liberal democracies, with their essentially 18th-century construct of democracy, struggle to keep up.

The record of big tech in the last 20 years has, yes, been an amazing leap in access to information. However, that quantum leap has come with a social cost in almost every aspect of our lives. Nevertheless, I refuse to accept the premise that these technologies are too global and too powerful in their operation for them not to come within the reach of any single jurisdiction or the rule of law. I am more impressed by efforts by big tech companies to identify and deal with real harms than I am by threats to quit this or that jurisdiction if they do not get the light-touch regulation they want so as to be able to profit maximise.

We know by their actions that some companies and individuals simply do not care about their social responsibilities or the impact of what they sell and how they sell it on individuals and society as a whole. That is why the social contract in our liberal democracies means a central role for Parliament and government in bringing order and accountability into what would otherwise become a jungle. That is why, over the last 200 years, Parliament has protected its citizens from the bad behaviour of employers, banks, loan sharks, dodgy salesmen, insanitary food, danger at work and so on. In this new age, we know that companies large and small, British and foreign, can, through negligence, indifference or malice, drive innocent people into harmful situations. The risks that people face are complex and interlocking; they cannot be reduced to a simple list, as the Government seek to do in Clause 12.

When I sat on the pre-legislative committee in 2003, we could be forgiven for not fully anticipating the tsunami of change that the internet, the world wide web and the iPhone were about to bring to our societies. That legislation did, as I said, establish Ofcom with a responsibility to promote media literacy, which it has only belatedly begun to take seriously. We now have no excuse for inaction or for drawing up legislation so narrowly that it fails to deal with the wide risks that might befall adults in the synthetic world of social media.

We have tabled our amendments not because they will solve every problem or avert every danger but because they would be a step in the right direction and so make this a better Bill.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for namechecking me and the amendments I have tabled with the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Featherstone and Lady Bull, although I regret to inform him that they are not in this group. I understand where the confusion has come from. They were originally in this group, but as it developed I felt that my amendments were no longer in the right place. They are now in the freedom of expression group, which we will get to next week. What he has just said has helped, because the amendments I am bringing forward are not similar to the ones he has tabled. They have a very different purpose. I will not pre-empt the debate we will have when we get to freedom of expression, but I think it is only proper that I make that clear. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the trail.

Online Safety Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I have long been on record as being for radical reform of the House of Lords, but I do not think there are many Chambers in the world that could have had such an interesting debate on such a key subject—certainly not the House of Commons, sadly. Without falling into the old trap of saying what a wonderful lot we all are, it is important that, in such an important Bill, covering so many important areas of civil liberties and national security, there should be an opportunity, before we get to voting, to have this kind of debate and get some of the issues into the public domain.

I am on the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on knowledge of the technology—looking back to 20 years ago, when I was on the committee that worked on the communications Bill which set up Ofcom, I see that we were genuinely innocents abroad. We deliberately decided not to try regulating the internet, because we did not know what it was going to do. I do not think that we can have that excuse today.

Perhaps an even more frightening background is that, for three and a half years, during the coalition Government, I was Minister for Digital Protection—a less equipped Minister to protect your digital I cannot imagine. However, I remember being taken to some place over the river to have a look at our capacities in this area. Having seen some of the things that were being done, I rather timidly asked the expert who was showing me round, “Aren’t there civil liberty issues in what you’re doing?” He said, “Oh no, sir. Tesco know far more about you than we do”.

There is this element about what is secret. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in her last contribution, said that children look with contempt at some of the safeguards and blockages that keep them away from things. I do not think anybody is deluding themselves that there is some silver bullet. As always, Parliament must do its best to address real national concerns and real problems in the best way that we see at this time. There is a degree of cross-party and Cross-Bench unity, in that there are real and present dangers in how these technologies are being used, and real and present abuses of a quite horrific kind. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is right. This technology has given a quantum leap to the damage that the abuser and the pornographer can do to our society, in the same way that it has given a quantum leap to those who want to undermine the truth and fairness of our election system. There are real problems that must be addressed.

Although it has not been present in this debate, it is no help to polarise the argument as being between the state wanting to accrue more and more powers and brave defenders of civil liberties. As somebody who has practised some of these dark arts myself, I advise those who are organising letters to ensure that those sending them do not leave in the paragraph that says, “Here you may want to include some personal comments”. It waters down the credibility of this as some independent exercising of a democratic right.

I make a plea, as someone on the edges of the debate who at times had some direct responsibilities, to use what the Bill has thrown up to address whether it is now in the right shape—I hope the Minister hears it. The Government should not be ashamed to take it away and think a bit. It may be that we can add some of the protections that we quite often do, such as allowing certain interventions after a judge or senior police officer or others have been involved. That may already be in other parts of the Bill. However, it would be wrong to allow the Bill to polarise this, given that there was no one who spoke this morning who is not trying to deal with very real difficulties, problems and challenges, within the framework of a democratic society, in a way that protects our freedoms but also protects us from real and present dangers.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill in Committee. I know noble Lords are keen to move on and get through the groups as quickly as possible, but I hope they will forgive me if I say that I will speak only about twice on the Bill, and this is one of the groups that I want to speak to. I will try not to make your Lordships impatient.

I should tell the Committee a little about where I am coming from. I was very geeky as a kid. I learned to program and code. I did engineering at university and coded there. My master’s degree in the late 1980s was about technology and policy, so I have been interested in technology policy since then, having followed it through in my professional life. In 1996, I wrote a book on EU telecoms—it sold so well that no one has ever heard of it. One thing I said in that book, which though not an original thought is pertinent today, is that the regulation will always be behind the technology. We will always play catch-up, and we must be concerned about that.

Interestingly, when you look at studies of technology adoption—pioneers, early adopters and then the rest of the population—quite often you see that the adult industry is at the leading edge, such as with cable TV, satellite TV, video cassettes, online conferencing, et cetera. I assure your Lordships that I have not done too much primary research into this, but it is an issue that we ought to be aware of.

I will not speak often in this debate, because there are many issues that I do not want to disagree on. For example, I have already had a conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and we all agree that we need to protect children. We also know that we need to protect vulnerable adults; there is no disagreement on that. However, in these discussions there will be inevitable trade-offs between security and safety and freedom. It is right to have these conversations to ensure that we get the balance right, with the wisdom of noble Lords. Sacrifices will be made on either side of the debate, and we should be very careful as we navigate this.

I am worried about some of the consequences for freedom of expression. When I was head of a research think tank, one of the phenomena that I became interested in was that of unintended consequences. Well-meaning laws and measures have often led to unintended consequences. Some people call it a law of unintended consequences, and some call it a principle, and we should be careful about this. The other issue is subjectivity of harms. Given that we have taken “legal but harmful” out and there are amendments to the Bill to tackle harms, there will be a debate on the subjectivity of harms.

One reason I wanted to speak on this group is that some of the amendments tabled by noble Lords—too many to mention—deal with technology notices and ensuring that we are consistent between the offline and online worlds, particularly regarding the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. I welcome and support those amendments.

We also have to be aware that people will find a way around it, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. When I was looking at terrorism and technology, one of the issues that people raised with me was not to forget that one way around it was to create an email account and store stuff in a draft folder. You could then share the username and password with others who could then access that data, those pictures or those instructions in a draft folder. The noble Lord, Lord Allan, has gone some way to addressing that issue.

The other issue that we have to be clear about is how the tech sector can do more. It was interesting when my noble friend Lady Stowell organised a meeting with Meta, which was challenged particularly on having access to information and pictures from coroners. It was very interesting when Meta told us what it could access: it does not know what is in the messages, but there are things that it can access, or advise people to access, on the user’s phone or at the other end. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has had the conversation with Meta, but it would be helpful and important to find some common ground there, and to probe and push Meta and others to make sure that they share that information more quickly, so we do not have to wait five years to get it via the coroner or whatever. We ought to push that as much as possible.

I want to talk in particular about unintended consequences, particularly around end-to-end encryption. Even if you do not believe the big businesses and think that they are crying wolf when they say that they will quit the UK—although I believe that there is a threat of that, particularly when we continually want the UK to be a global hub for technology and innovation and so cannot afford for companies such as Meta, Signal and others to leave—you should listen to the journalists who are working with people, quite often dissidents, in many countries, and rely on encrypted communications to communicate with them.

The other risk we should be aware of is that it is very difficult to keep technology to a few people. In my academic career, I also looked at technology transfer, both intentional and unintentional. We should look at the intelligence services and some of the innovations that happened: for example, when Concorde was designed, it was not very long after that the Soviets got their hands on that equipment. Just as there used to be a chap called Bob in the exchange who could share information, there is always a weak spot in chains: the humans. Lots of humans have a price and can be bought, or they can be threatened, and things can be shared. The unintended consequence I am worried about is that this technology will get into the hands of totalitarian regimes. At the same time, it means people over here who are really trying desperately to help dissidents and others speak up for freedom in other countries will be unable to support them. We should be very careful and think about unintended consequences. For that reason, I support this group of amendments.

I really am looking forward to the responses from the Minister. I know that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that he was a Minister for three years on data protection; I was a Minister in this department for one month. I was so pleased that I had my dream job, as Minister for Civil Society and Heritage, and so proud of my party and this country because we had elected the first Asian Prime Minister; then, six days later, I got sacked. So, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

In this particular case, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken up in this debate. I do not want to repeat any other points but just wanted to add that. I will not speak often, but I want to say that it is really critical that, when we look at this trade-off between security, safety and freedom, we get it right. One way of doing that is to make sure that, on technology notices and RIPA, we are consistent between the online and offline worlds.

Online Safety Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the spirit of co-operation they have both shown in introducing the Bill. On our side we will be led by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who is keeping his powder dry for the summing up.

I was pleased that there was praise for the pre-legislative scrutiny, which is a very useful tool in our locker. I was a member of the Puttnam committee, which in 2002 looked at what became the last Communications Act, and I took two lessons from that. The first was the creation of Ofcom as a regulator with teeth; it is important that we go forward with that. The other was the Puttnam amendment adding the protection of citizens’ interests to that of consumer interests as part of its responsibilities. Those twin responsibilities—to the consumer and the citizen—are valuable when addressing this Bill.

It is worth remembering that, although it may be a future Labour Government who deal with this, my experience is that this is not a dress rehearsal; this is the main event and we should seize the day. It has been 20 years since the last Bill, six years since the Green Paper, and five years since the White Paper, with a cavalcade of Secretaries of State. This House is entitled to stress-test and kick tyres in today’s debate and in Committee to see if the powers and scope meet the threats, challenges and opportunities posed by this technology.

We will play our part in delivering a Bill which is fit for purpose, but the Government must play theirs by being flexible in their approach in response to legitimate concerns and sensible amendments addressing them. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has already voiced concerns about powers left in the hands of future Secretaries of State. We will study what has been said this afternoon on those matters.

We welcome the Bill’s focus on protecting children. I do not think anybody who went to the presentation on the evidence in the Molly Russell inquest could have left with anything other than a determination that something must be done about this. Equally, the concerns of End Violence Against Women and other groups pose questions on whether this legislation goes far enough in the protections needed, which will have to be tested. There are real worries about the lack of minimum requirements for terms of service and the removal of risk assessment for adults. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has been raising very pertinent questions about age verification and access to pornography. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and I intend to raise questions in Committee about the free pass given to newspapers by this legislation, although much of their activity is now online. There is no specific commitment, as has been said, to expand media literacy, despite it being a major recommendation of the Puttnam committee 20 years ago.

The internet has been an amazing catalyst for change, innovation and creativity. But those benefits have come at a price of targeted actions designed to cause harms to individuals and institutions. On all Benches we believe that freedom of expression is important, but liberal democracies have a right to provide a framework of protection against those who seek to harm it. Much will depend on the response to legislation and regulation by the internet companies. The public are not stupid; they can differentiate between tick-box exercises and compliance, between profit maximisation and social responsibility. The noble Lord, Lord Grade, is also not stupid and I wish him well as chair of Ofcom.

My work on the Puttnam committee 20 years ago was among the most satisfying of my parliamentary life. I hope we will all have similar feelings when we complete our work on this Bill.

National Women’s Sports

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Addington on obtaining this debate and opening it in such a thoughtful and constructive manner. In the short time allocated, I will concentrate my remarks on one specific area: the benefits of involving women in custody and those on the cusp of the criminal justice system in sport.

When I became Minister of State for Justice in the coalition Government in 2010, and later chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales between 2014 and 2017, I instinctively assumed, from my own experience, that sport would play an important part in diverting young people from the criminal justice system or helping in rehabilitation once they were within it. The advice I was initially given was that there was no evidence that participation in sport could play such a constructive role. I spent my seven years at the MoJ actively searching for such proof.

Fortunately, over those years, individuals and organisations helped change attitudes to the importance of sport in our criminal justice system, not just for boys but for girls and women too. There was the ground-breaking research by Professor Rosie Meek, of Royal Holloway, University of London, in her 2018 report for the Ministry of Justice, which reviewed sport in youth and adult prisons. In her foreword to that report, Professor Meek said:

“Evidence confirms that sport can play a huge role within our Criminal Justice System. As well as being a way to bring together disparate groups, develop communication skills and learn life lessons, it also has the advantage of being something many people are passionate about.”


I was also encouraged by James Mapstone, co-founder and chief executive of the Alliance of Sport in Criminal Justice, and was given great encouragement by a member of my Youth Justice Board, now the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I look forward to her remarks later in this debate. Protocol prevents me referring to her as my noble friend, but perhaps I may refer to her as my partner in crime. She is now a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport and Physical Activity in the Criminal Justice System, along with Clive Efford MP, with James Mapstone providing the secretariat and Rosie Meek as an adviser. I am confident that we can keep up the pressure for greater recognition of sport within the CJS.

Beyond the need for change in the criminal justice system, it is also clear that much still needs to be done to provide access to facilities and the right equipment, and in the recruitment of coaches. I was interested in the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, just made about equipment. Forty years ago, as an MP, I remember being approached by a young female constituent who told me that access to sports bras was a deterrent to girls playing sport. As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, a report earlier this week called for more comfortable and practical sports bras, shorts and hijabs, as well as boots and other equipment specifically designed for the needs of women and girls and their bodies. As she said, there is still work to be done at that level.

Although time has prevented me paying full tribute to the way that the skills of, and opportunities for, women in sport have exploded into the public consciousness, I do so now and hope that we will enjoy success in more sports and at all levels in the years ahead; that we will celebrate, as the Motion asks us, the success of our women’s team; and that we will put forward practical measures to underpin that success in future.

Online Safety Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I absolutely can. Ministers have had meetings with such groups and officials have continued to have those meetings, even with the change of Ministers in recent weeks. These have informed the scrutiny and improvement of the Bill to date.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, when I sat on the Puttnam commission 20 years ago, there was some excuse for not taking action for the real harms being caused on the internet. There is no such excuse now, as has been indicated. This House and the other place have been working on this for five years. The regulators are very well tooled up and ready to move. It is inexcusable, and there will be no excuse for leaving things undone due to backroom deals at the last minute. I do not doubt the Minister’s integrity on this but there must be no deals by No. 10 to weaken the Bill at this point; there is too much at stake. I do not think the Government will be forgiven if they renege on past promises to deliver a Bill worthy of the challenges that we are facing.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right. Members of your Lordships’ House and another place will be vigilant. The Bill is being laid before Parliament so that noble Lords and Members in another place can see what is being proposed and inform the debate on it.

Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Foster on his masterful opening and my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter on her success in gaining this slot for our debate. I will not say anything about the return of the Minister, because the last time we shared a debate I congratulated him on his independence of mind and clear thinking, and then he was gone—I will keep quiet this time. What I will say is what a pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. She is a proud daughter of Stockport, of which I was an MP, and Stockport is proud of her. I have to be careful about exactly how I describe what she means to my generation, so I will play it safe by saying simply that today’s feisty, self-confident female presenters stand on her shoulders and benefit from the path that she helped to pioneer for women in broadcasting.

This afternoon, as has been said, we celebrate the establishment of the British Broadcasting Company in 1922 and the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927. Having listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, I remind us all again that it was a Conservative Government who established the BBC as a public corporation, protected by royal charter, with John Reith’s brilliant mantra—“inform, educate and entertain”—as its mission statement. It is important to remember that it was the conscious will of Parliament to distort the market in this way, as it has done ever since. Indeed, it was under Conservative Governments that the remit of public service broadcasting was extended, by the introduction first of ITV and then of Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C. It is a reminder to Conservative Members of Parliament, in both Houses, that they do not have be hostile to the BBC.

Because public service broadcasting—and the BBC in particular—has been so successful in its mission it has, as has been said, been under sustained attack on two fronts. Those on the right wing of the Conservative Party hate it because it is publicly owned and well regulated. They are aided and abetted by a clutch of right-wing newspapers, all owned by tax exiles, who lust after the public service audiences—the eyeballs and ears they can turn into hard cash if public service broadcasting can be marginalised, as it has been in some other countries.

Meanwhile, we have to face the fact that, for the last decade and more, the BBC, under successive Governments, including the one of which I was a member, has had to manage successive squeezes on its funding. As has been said, the BBC has had to manage a 30% cut in its funding over the last decade. At the same time, the BBC has had to take on, as my noble friend Lord Foster said, tasks such as funding licences for the elderly, and the BBC World Service, neither of which should be charged to the licence fee. Unfortunately, the BBC insists on presenting all aspects of its cost-cutting as part of some shiny new vision in this new digital age. The corporation should be more up front about its various reforms and contractions and the very real funding constraints that it faces.

This morning, I sat in on a briefing by the BBC on the changes being planned for local radio. The proposals received a rough ride from a cross-section of Labour and Conservative MPs, all jealous to protect their local services—and rightly so. But there was an elephant in the room: if not local radio, where should the axe fall? The truth is that there is only a limited number of services that cutting Gary Lineker’s salary can cover.

The problem with understanding what the BBC is doing across the board is that it means we are acquiescing in a steady marginalisation of the BBC—the very agenda that Rupert Murdoch and other financial interests, along with the right wing of the Conservative Party, want to see.

I am particularly concerned by the proposal for it to close the BBC News channel and BBC World News and replace them with a single, global-focused channel next year. To lose a 24/7 UK news channel when major commercial competitors are tooling up to provide opinionated news channels is a major retreat by the BBC. I hope that Ofcom will examine these proposals with all due rigour and use the public interest powers that the Puttnam committee, of which I was a member, put into its arsenal at its formation 20 years ago. Meanwhile, parliamentarians in both Houses and the parties they represent have to be clear about the future funding of the BBC and the protections offered to it and other public service broadcasters.

Most of all, we need a clear commitment that public service broadcasters, and the BBC in particular, will have the support they need to continue to provide the iron pole of quality around which the ecology of our creative industries can flourish.

Freedom of Expression (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I rise not because there is even more power in having “early” next to my name on the speakers’ list, but because the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has had to withdraw—I hope for non-serious reasons. We will miss his contribution.

I sincerely congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, and the committee, for an excellent report and, as he has indicated, a timely one, as we move to the Online Safety Bill in the very near future, hopefully. I also look forward to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, following me. My mother, who was born in 1900 and left school at 13, was something of a philosopher herself, and used to tell me, “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names can never hurt you.” That provided me with a certain resilience for my chosen profession of politics, but it is only partly true. Misinformation, fake news, and plain old-fashioned lies have been the prelude to tyranny, torture and murder throughout history.

Liberal democracies are particularly susceptible to such attacks. I am not talking about the Liberal Democrats but about that wave of parties in all free societies who believe in the freedom of speech that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert referred to, to free Parliament and the rule of law by an independent judiciary. They are particularly susceptible because they have built into their DNA a certain tendency towards tolerance and freedom of speech, and a reluctance to claim absolute certainties. I miss from these Benches today the late Lord Russell. Conrad would say, in response to a particularly dogmatic colleague, “I wish I could be as sure about one thing as the noble Lord is about everything.”

I have time to make only three short points. First, I commend the four regulators—Ofcom, the ICO, the CMA and the FSA—for the work they do to consult and co-ordinate, and I urge them to extend this to further protect the rights of citizens and consumers. I associate myself with the call from the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, for the early establishment of the digital markets unit.

Secondly, digital citizenship should be a central part of the government media literacy strategy and be properly funded. I served on the Puttnam committee, which gave pre-legislative scrutiny to the 2003 Communications Act. We recommended that Ofcom give priority to digital literacy as a way of equipping the citizen and democratic structures for the new digital age. I am afraid that this is still work in progress, and I support the report’s recommendation that Ofcom assist in co-ordinating digital citizenship education between civil society organisations and industry.

Thirdly, the Government’s response contains lots of good intentions and box-ticking, but big tech will be judged, rather like the big energy companies on climate change, not by its ability to tick boxes or do its equivalent of greenwashing, but by what it actually does to address these very real problems. That is why I strongly support the report’s recommendation that a Joint Committee of both Houses be established to consider the ongoing regulation of the digital environment.

My old mentor, Jim Callaghan, was fond of saying, “A lie can be halfway round the world before truth has got its boots on”. This is truer than ever today, and liberal democracies must equip themselves and their citizens to protect their institutions and values from a real and present danger. This report and debate are an important contribution to us getting right how we protect our freedom and values in the years ahead.

National Heritage Act 1983

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, on my travels in the Middle East, I once stayed at a very palatial British ambassador’s residence. I said to him, “This really is splendid, when did we acquire this?” He said, “Oh, the local ruler so admired Queen Victoria that he gave it us in perpetuity, in token of his admiration of the Queen”. One has to remember that when we were a great empire, we acquired many gifts in the same way as the mafia captains of Chicago retained tribute. It was to show admiration for the empire.

It seems a little bit absurd—I am glad that in the noble Lord’s introduction he noted that this is not a debate about the Parthenon or the Elgin marbles—that we get it down, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, explained to me, by the restrictions of this Act or that Act, or whether we still have the bill of sale that Lord Elgin allegedly had, when we are talking about an agreement between two empires that no longer exist. This debate must be about how we manage our museums in the 21st century, in recognition of the changes that have taken place in the world—all kinds of things about national pride, the national view of who we are and where we are in the world.

I come to my last point. In my personal view, we would have far more national pride and esteem in witnessing King Charles in Athens returning the Parthenon marbles than if we spent several more years arguing the small print of a deal. Real national pride is doing the right thing. It is typical of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that he should initiate a debate and then have a press release on the BBC announcing yet another medal on his chest, like one of those Soviet generals for a new campaign. The press release makes one very interesting point. In an opinion poll asking whether the marbles should be returned, the overwhelming answer was yes. On the question of why, the answer was because they belong in Athens. You would be surprised how sensible the man on the Clapham omnibus is about this issue, compared with government lawyers.

The problem is that, while a Royal Commission might be a good way of doing this, as Harold Wilson famously said, they take minutes and last for years. A government draft Bill with pre-legislative scrutiny could do some of the same work. But let us not have this debate as part of the culture wars—let us have a real, rational and sensible debate on what we need to keep and protect and what we should return.

London Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012: Legacy

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. When we looked at the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games and subsequent sports events, we learned something from each sports event. One thing that was learned in time for Birmingham 2022 was that, rather than necessarily building completely new facilities, we could upgrade or use existing facilities. For example, there was no new velodrome built; we used the London velodrome for the Commonwealth Games. There was a new aqua sports centre built, and that will now be used by the community. In addition, the Secretary of State announced earlier this month that around £60 million of underspent money from the Birmingham 2022 budget will be invested in the local region for the cultural and social legacy.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I was one of those who slightly teased the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about Birmingham being the host for the Commonwealth Games, but it was a triumph and a success for the region and showed what can be done with using both old facilities and new, as the Minister referred to. Does any part of the Minister’s department keep an eye on upcoming sporting festivals for which we can make bids, and for which local regional authorities can be encouraged to make bids, because they do have an impact for the region and the country?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Yes, when I was being briefed for this Question, one of our discussions was about whether the Government would think about bidding for future events—not just athletics or major games but others. For example, one of the things we learned from previous events such as the Rugby League World Cup was that we could have concurrent rugby league world cups—the men’s Rugby League World Cup, the Women’s Rugby League World Cup and the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup, around which they announced that they also organised a learning disabilities day. We want to learn as much as possible about whether it is always feasible to integrate these different tournaments rather than keeping them separate, and make sure that any buildings we use can be used by the local community afterwards so that it does not remain purely in the interests of elite sportspeople.

Repatriation of Cultural Objects

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am mindful that I am as old as the National Heritage Act so I am always happy to discuss, as I do, with people in the sector their views on it. I do not think there is a case for further changes to the law. There are already exceptions to do with the spoliation of items acquired during the Third Reich and to deal with human remains that are less than 1,000 years old. I think the position that we have is the right one at the moment but I am always happy to hear representations.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has twice cited those Acts in defence. Surely there is a case for looking at them and how restrictive they are in modern times. Of course, not all artefacts can be returned to their place of origin, but can your Lordships imagine the queues at the British Museum to look at a 3D replica of the Parthenon marbles, along with a history of where they came from and how they were looked after by the British Museum and then returned to their rightful place in Athens?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The British Museum has worked with the Acropolis Museum to allow for replicas to be made there and for the Acropolis Museum to show the sculptures. Of the half that remain in existence, half are in the Acropolis Museum, but there are also items in the Louvre, the Vatican and other museums around the world. The British Museum and many other museums work in partnership with museums around the world to lend items in order to extend our knowledge about them, and that is the purpose of our great museums.