National Women’s Sports
Lord McNally Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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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(1 year, 6 months ago)
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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(1 year, 6 months ago)
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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(1 year, 6 months ago)
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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(1 year, 7 months ago)
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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(1 year, 7 months ago)
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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(1 year, 8 months ago)
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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.
Broadcasting Sector White Paper
Lord McNally Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
These details and more will be set out in the media Bill, which I look forward to debating with noble Lords. Giving Channel 4 the freedom to diversify its revenue streams as well as to address issues such as the intellectual property of the content it provides are important in making sure that it can continue to compete in the years to come.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, very few people agree with the Minister’s analysis or the solutions he has put forward for either Channel 4 or the BBC. I put it to him again that it would be far better to withdraw this rather ill thought-out White Paper and allow the new Secretary of State coming into office in September to look at these matters afresh. If he does not think that there will be a new Secretary of State, would he like to take a bet on it?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, it remains the policy of Her Majesty’s Government to take forward the work that went into the White Paper.
Suicide: Online Products
Lord McNally Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Yes, we have discussed this matter with our colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care and continue to do so. I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue. It is important in the context of the forthcoming Bill, which she knows so well, and through our work on the online advertising programme that is designed to look at the full range of harms that exist in online advertising. The Online Safety Bill will empower users to know what a company’s policies are and how to assert their rights to make sure they can be safe online.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, there is a general welcome for the structure that has been set up by Ofcom and the CMA’s Digital Markets Unit to cover the area raised by the Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. A lot will depend on the remit of the regulators. In a recent Ofcom consultation, there was a push-back by the industry, with regulators having a responsibility not for citizens’ interests but for consumers’ interests. In the words of the great political philosopher Mandy Rice-Davies, they would, wouldn’t they? Will the Government resist this push-back?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The CMA, the FCA, the ICO and Ofcom all play a critical role through the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum, which has an important role to play in delivering the regulatory landscape that protects users from harm. We will continue to work with that forum to explore the role that it and the regulators can have. Of course, these days almost all citizens are consumers online, but the noble Lord makes an important point. We want to make sure that everybody who uses the internet is safe.
Media Literacy
Lord McNally Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the strongest protections in the Online Safety Bill are for children. We are making sure that, through that Bill, we are protecting young people from harmful or inappropriate content such as grooming, bullying, pornography and the promotion of self-harm and eating disorders. There are many provisions in the Bill looking at these.
Noble Lords
Lord McNally (LD)
No, they have had about three goes.
I was a member of the Puttnam committee that gave pre-legislative scrutiny to the 2003 Act. The truth is that Ofcom put on the back burner its responsibilities in this area until it came under pressure by the fact that the new Online Safety Bill was going to increase its responsibilities in this area. I think the Minister’s answers so far have been very complacent given that, since 2003, we have become much more aware of the abuses and dangers inherent in this technology. We must give Ofcom more specific legislative powers in the coming Bill.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I have pointed to some of the provisions in the Online Safety Bill which will strengthen Ofcom’s powers in this area. The Government are taking action as well. Our media literacy programme is supported by £2.5 million of funding in this financial year alone, so the Government are also acting to make sure that we are strengthening civil society groups and others who have a role to play in making sure that people are kept safe and well informed online.