Online Safety Bill

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

I am also bewildered by the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised. I seek to support her by asking my noble friend the Minister: why is content depicting child sexual abuse allowed to be freely accessed online when it would be prohibited or illegal in the offline world? I watched with horror the documentary “Barely Legal”, screened here last week. It outlined this violent and horrific material, with young women dressed up to look like children, told to look as young as possible and having sex—and worse—with older men. The instructions from the interviewed porn directors and producers who produce this material were that the younger these women could be made to look, the better. This material contributes to the number of porn consumers—mostly men—who, as a result of watching this material, seek out real child sexual abuse material. So I fully support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which would make this content illegal and prohibited online, as it is offline. I ask my noble friend the Minister to explain why this is not already the case.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I wish to direct my comments to Amendments 123A, 142, 161, 183, 297 and 306, and I want to focus mainly on age verification.

The starting point for effective age verification is being able to define what it is that is being regulated. That is why I support Amendment 183ZA in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. Without that clarity on what it is that needs to be age verified, the expectation of parents will not be met, and children who deserve the strongest and fullest protection will still be subject to harm. The noble Baroness made a convincing case for parity of regulation across different media, and that indeed was the principle behind the definition in the Digital Economy Act 2017. I hope that the Minister will set out either today in the Committee or via a letter afterwards how content which would fall under the different British Board of Film Classification ratings of 18, R18 and unclassified would be treated under the definition in this Bill. I cannot stress this enough: a proper definition of pornography is the foundation of good age-verification legislation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, that the definition in the Bill is just not robust.

I stood here on 28 January 2022 at the Second Reading of my Private Member’s Bill encouraging the Government to bring into effect Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, which would have brought in age verification for commercial pornographic websites. Looking back to 2017, that legislation seems pioneering. Other countries have implemented similar measures since, but our children are still waiting despite the Government’s assurances, when they postponed implementation of Part 3 in October 2019 in favour of the Bill we are debating today, that preventing children’s access to pornography is a critically urgent issue. It still is. On 9 May, the Children’s Commissioner again reiterated the importance of age verification. She said,

“I am categorically clear: no child should be able to access or watch pornography. Protecting children from seeing inappropriate material is critical”.


I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on yet again trying to persuade the Government to protect children in a robust manner. I am also pleased to support the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, as a co-signatory to her Amendment 306. She has learned the lessons of 2017 and is seeking to ensure that this policy cannot be abandoned again. A six-month implementation clause is the very least that we should accept.

It is now well documented that early exposure to pornography carries with it a host of harms—we have just heard something about that from the previous speaker—for the children and young people exposed and for society more widely. The Children’s Commissioner has plainly spelled out those harms in the reports she has published this year. These dangers are ones which parents alone are unable to prevent. With pornography now merely one click away for children across the UK, it is no wonder that the majority of children have already been exposed to pornography before they become teenagers. It is heartbreaking that most children report that they have been exposed to it accidentally. The reality is that robust age verification is an effective antidote to this pervasive problem. Shockingly, only 4.5% of the top 200 pornographic websites have any mechanism to prevent or detect children accessing their sites, and it is unlikely that they would meet the bar of robust age verification.

It is clear that there is almost unanimous support for age verification across your Lordships’ House. However the question before us is whether the Bill as it stands enables a robust enough level of protection. I welcome the duties in Clauses 11 and 22 on age verification. At present, the Bill enables pornographic sites to apply a light touch and, potentially, entirely inadequate age verification. Without a coherent, consistent approach, we are leaving the door open to those wishing to circumvent the prevention of harm we are putting in place.

Considering what we know and have heard about this industry, while the inclusion of age verification checks is welcome, is it really appropriate to leave the critical task of designing and implementing them to the pornography industry? I feel not. Should they be the ones charged with safeguarding our children and young people? Really? Would many in the pornographic industry prioritise their own web traffic over the welfare of children and young people? I think the answers to those questions are very clear.

Amendments 142 and 161 set higher standards so that the test is that there should be a “beyond reasonable doubt” age verification approach which should apply to Part 5 services or material that meet the definition of pornography in Clause 70(2). This will ensure children and young people are proactively protected from the deeply detrimental impact of online pornography.

While I welcome the new schedule introduced by Amendment 161, one of my key concerns is that there should be a consistent approach to enforcement of age verification when it comes to online pornography. Regardless of which websites it is found on, all forms of pornography should be held to the highest possible regulatory standards. I recognise that the noble Baroness has sought to go some way to addressing this with Amendment 123A, but this covers only Ofcom guidance on what constitutes pornographic material, rather than the requirements of age verification per se and the duty under Clause 11. Indeed, the amendment refers to age assurance, not age verification.

I know that we have already debated these points under earlier amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, but the importance of the point cannot be overstated. Indeed, the Children’s Commissioner said the same in her report of 9 May, saying that the requirement for robust age verification must be

“consistent across all types of regulated services – both user to user sites and pornography providers”.

I must ask the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—who I have admired on what she has been doing here—why paragraphs 3 and 4 of the proposed new schedule in Amendment 161 create different barriers under separate regulatory regimes for Part 3 services and Part 5 services. Why does the new clause proposed in Amendment 142 on the Ofcom guidance on age assurance refer only to Part 5 in subsection (3)(c)? Why is it that regulatory regimes for content produced by providers will differ from those where content is uploaded by users?

As it stands, those two regulatory regimes will be treated differently and, as I have said, I am not reassured by Amendment 123A. My concern is that, without change, we will not see all digital pornography treated with parity, serving only to create ambiguity and potential loopholes. I hope your Lordships will take note of the advice of the Children’s Commissioner and prevent that happening.

I would also like to ask the noble Baroness about her plans for bringing this schedule into effect. Paragraph 8 says the schedule should be in effect within 12 months, but there is no obligation elsewhere to bring in Parts 3 and 5 on that same timetable, so age verification may be required but could not be implemented until other parts of the Bill are commenced.

I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, to take note of Amendment 306 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, which puts the commencement elements of age verification into the commencement clause with a timetable of three months for the Ofcom guidance and the rest of Part 5 and relevant enforcement powers within six months. Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in her earlier amendments, intended for Part 3 to have the same duties as Part 5 and I certainly hope we will come back to that on Report. I was concerned that, at the end of that debate, the Minister said about commencement:

“This may mean there will be a limited period of time during which Part 5 protections are in place ahead of those in Part 3”. —[Official Report, 25/4/23; col. 1201.]


This again reiterates a dual approach to Part 3 and Part 5 services which host pornography.

I hope the Minister will assure us that it is no longer the Government’s plan that pornography will be on the face of the Bill as primary priority content, and that they are making it clear to service providers now that they need to plan to prevent children accessing this material, so it will be possible to commence the duties at the same time. Indeed, this would be in line with the comments made by the Minister in Committee in the other place, although I regret that he was not as ambitious about the timetable as Amendment 306.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Morrow Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill but it is very long overdue. The Second Reading of my Private Member’s Bill was on 28 January 2022. It sought to commence Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017. This would have ensured that age verification of pornography was applied to pornographic websites. It is disappointing that the Bill has not progressed and Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act—a vital tool that could have prevented children accessing online pornography —is still not being implemented.

I remind your Lordships that in February 2016—now seven years ago—the Government said:

“Pornography has never been more easily accessible online, and material that would previously have been considered extreme has become part of mainstream online pornography. When young people access this material it risks normalising behaviour that might be harmful to their future emotional and psychological development.”


Nothing has changed in seven years; the threat is still as real today as it was then. All that has changed is that, during that seven-year delay, more children’s lives have been harmed. This cannot be allowed to continue.

I welcome that the Government have listened to the concerns about access to commercial pornographic websites and have, as a result, introduced Part 5 of the Bill. However, I believe more changes are needed to make it effective. Today, I raise only three of them. First, the Bill needs a more robust definition of pornography, based on the 2017 Act. Secondly, the Bill needs to cover all pornography services. Clause 71 says that only if “a service has links” with the UK will it be required to comply with the duties in Part 5, where “links with” means only pornographic websites which have a significant number of UK users or have the UK as a target market.

I ask the Minister: what will be considered significant? Is it significant in terms of the total UK adult users who could use the service, or significant in terms of potential global users? Either way, it seems to me that there could be pornographic websites accessed in the UK that are not required to have age verification to protect those aged under 18 from accessing this content. I doubt that this is what parents expect from this flagship Bill.

Finally, the Bill needs a commencement clause for age verification. Far too many young people have grown up without the protection that age verification could have brought in, if the 2017 Act had been implemented. We have heard others refer to this. There should be no further delay and the Government should demonstrate the urgency that they spoke of when they announced in October 2019 that they would not be implementing the 2017 Act. Age verification needs to be implemented as soon and as quickly as possible, and that is why a commencement date clause is needed in the Bill.

We cannot countenance these measures not being brought into force, or even a long delay of three or more years. The children’s charity Barnardo’s, which has already been referred to, has estimated that children have accessed pornographic content almost 55 million times since the Government announced in 2019 that they would be bringing forward the Online Safety Bill as an alternative to Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act. This cannot be allowed to continue. That is why we need to get the Bill right and ensure that robust age verification, that applies to all websites and social media accessed in the UK, is brought in as quickly as possible. I look forward to exploring these issues further in Committee.

Online Pornography: Digital Economy Act 2017

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Indeed. One of the issues my department has been discussing with Ofcom is age verification and age assurance. We have to remember that age verification is one form of age assurance. The other thing we have to be aware of is how technology changes very quickly, so we must make sure that we can be as flexible as possible so that Ofcom can update its guidelines or advice on tackling this. We are clear that we do not want to be technology-specific. We want to make sure that it is future-proofed when it comes to age verification and age assurance.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister will agree that keeping children safe online requires more than just age verification. What is illegal or prohibited content offline should also be illegal and prohibited online. Will the Government ensure that the new legislation currently in the other place will indeed ensure that protections offline will be the same for online content?

Online Harms Consultation

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The issue of political and democratic trust is obviously incredibly important. As I mentioned, trust has been severely eroded by social media companies and other platforms. By restoring that trust and managing the content that could be physically or psychologically harmful, we will help to narrow that gap.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

Do the Government really believe that this House, which passed Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 to give effect to the Conservative manifesto commitment of 2015, would accept the much weaker proposal set out by the Government yesterday for protecting children from accessing pornographic websites? The Government seem to think that, because they now propose to do things to address other online harms, including access to pornography on Twitter, we would somehow be prepared to overlook the fact that they propose putting children in a more vulnerable position with respect to their protection from pornographic websites. I urge the Government to adjust their course and ensure that the protections in their online harms Bill are just as robust as those in Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, and to implement Part 3 in the interim so that children can be protected while we wait for the online harms Act.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I shall avoid repeating what I have said already on this issue. The focus in the Bill will put the responsibility on the platforms to have strong safety measures to protect children from accessing pornographic and other inappropriate content. If they do not do that, parents and children can report them and Ofcom will take enforcement action.

Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2018

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

This has been like running a marathon but we are nearing the finish line and taking huge strides in the right direction, as this sets a fundamentally important precedent in online regulation. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us give children happy memories as they go forward.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I first apologise to the House that I missed the first two minutes of the Minister’s contribution. I would like to make some comments. Some have already been said and I hope that by repeating them, it will not lessen their impact. I am pleased to join other noble Lords in supporting the Government on bringing these regulations and the guidance before the House to implement age verification. However, I have some questions about implementation.

First, I note that the regulations apply to all pornographic websites that charge a fee or, if access is free, where there is benefit in some other way from pornographic content, perhaps through advertising. In cases of the latter, at least one-third of the site’s content must be pornographic for it to be required to provide AV, unless the website specifically markets itself as providing pornographic content, in which case AV requirements apply regardless of how much pornographic material is made available. This arrangement has caused Sub-Committee B of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee to ask two key questions, which I put to the Minister today. First, how will the BBFC measure pornographic content on a free website so that it can come to a determination that one-third of the content is pornographic? Secondly, how will we protect children from pornography on free websites where less than a third of the content on the site is pornographic?

It seems to me that, in introducing this legislation, the Government have very properly recognised that it is not appropriate for children to stumble upon online pornography; they should be protected from this material through age verification. Having conceded this point, however, what justification can there be not to protect children from accidentally stumbling across pornography on a free site where 30% of the content is pornographic? Is there not a sense in which children are more likely to stumble accidentally on pornographic content located on websites with other content than on a site that is completely focused on providing pornography?

Turning to the guidance document, I note that page 9 suggests that age verification may not need to be conducted every time someone visits a website. Does this mean that if a child uses a computer that has previously been age verified by a parent, they will automatically be able to access adult sites without any further checks to establish that the computer is being used by an adult? What protections will be applied to prevent this happening? Moving on to page 7 of the guidance, I note that a website found to be in breach of the age-verification requirements will be given a “prompt timeframe for compliance”. However, what does “prompt” mean in practice? Will a website be required to rectify the deficiency within a day, a week or a month, or maybe longer? I hope the Minister will be able to make that clearer.

One of the enforcement mechanisms that has caused some questions is the ability to issue fines. At Second Reading of the Digital Economy Bill, almost two years ago to the day, I raised some practical questions about how fines would work in practice, as many of the sites are based overseas. I remind your Lordships that, when that Bill was in Committee in the other place, the Government said that it was possible in some circumstances to fine sites in other jurisdictions. They said:

“We want to be able to fine non-UK residents—difficult as that is—and there are international mechanisms for doing so. They do not necessarily reach every country in the world, but they reach a large number of countries. For instance, Visa and other payment providers are already engaged in making sure that we will be able to follow this illegal activity across borders”.—[Official Report, Commons, Digital Economy Bill Committee, 20/10/16; col. 217.]


I tabled some probing amendments in Committee here on 2 February 2017 about the use of fines, which I was then concerned would have “limited utility”. I can conclude only that the Government have come to the same view, as they are not proposing to bring those parts of the Act into effect. However, given that at the time of the Bill the Government were adamant that the ability to fine was needed, I hope there will be an analysis of the effectiveness of the other enforcement mechanisms going forward and that, if there is a gap that could be met by fines, the Government will bring the fining provisions into effect and designate a regulator to collect the fines—something the BBFC is not designated to do.

Finally, I echo what other noble Lords have said about non-photographic child sex abuse images, which it is illegal to possess under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, and all but the most violent pornography, which it is illegal to supply under the Video Recordings Act. As I said at the time, I believe that a terrible mistake was made in moving amendments to prevent the regulator blocking this illegal content. I am pleased that Section 29 of the Act requires a review of the Part 3 definitions 12 to 18 months after the implementation of that part, which could make good this shortfall. This delay, however, is too long. I call on the Government to address this shortfall in the new year by making time for the Digital Economy Act amendment Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. It is a very short Bill, the substance of which is all in a single clause. Crucially, however, that clause addresses all the presenting issues. I very much hope that the Government will seize this opportunity.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have some concerns about the regulations before us, although I have to say that the Government are trying to do something that is very difficult, if not impossible, which is to regulate the internet. I am perhaps not as enthusiastic as my noble friend Lady Benjamin on this.

These regulations do not adequately protect children from pornography or, to use the Minister’s words in his introduction, they are not the complete answer. No system of age verification can do that as, as other noble Lords have said, pornography is available on sites other than commercial pornography sites and the potential controlling measures could not in reality be used for those other sites. Asking UK internet service providers to block Tumblr and Twitter is not a runner in the real world, and these are free-to-use services, so asking financial institutions not to take payments for non-compliant sites would not work either.

In fact, using a virtual private network to appear to be in a country that does not have age verification is a free and easy way to get around any age-verification process. As the noble Lord and my noble friend said, we are the first country to try this and therefore there are plenty of countries that one can pretend to be in in order to get round the system.

Age verification without statutory guidelines to protect the privacy of adults seeking to access legal pornographic material on the internet is a significant threat to people’s privacy but, having said that, the arrangements that the British Board of Film Classification has made around a voluntary code, where certification is given to companies providing age verification to give people some confidence that their privacy will be protected, is a second-best but welcome measure.

These measures, in addition to creating the risks to privacy and failing to thwart curious and determined young people, are of use in preventing children accidentally stumbling across pornography, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin said, but only on commercial porn websites. Does the Minister feel that this could as easily be achieved by making it mandatory for websites that contain pornography, whether one-third or more of the website, to have “Adult only” warnings before the browser of the internet can access pornographic images as opposed to an age-verification system?

The other use of these regulations is an attempt to restrict access to extreme pornography, which is a bit like Brexit—it is not enough for some and goes too far for others, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, indicated. I am not sure that, as some have suggested, age verification limits access to educational LGBT+ resources; I am not sure that commercial porn sites contain such beneficial information. As I have said before and will say again, what is really needed is compulsory, age-appropriate, inclusive sex and relationship education for all children, including telling even very young children what they should do if they encounter online pornography—that is, to turn off the computer immediately and inform a parent or guardian—as that is unfortunately something that will inevitably happen despite these regulations.

My overall message is that we should not delude ourselves that these measures are going to be wholly effective in preventing children viewing online pornography or that they will adequately protect the privacy of adults seeking to access legal material on commercial porn websites and that as a result we should be careful that we do not lull ourselves into a false sense of security just by passing these measures.

Online Gambling

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Browne of Belmont on securing this important debate. Like him, I want to make it clear from the outset that I am also deeply concerned about FOBTs, and this debate should not detract from the need to deal with them. From a Northern Ireland perspective, there are reasons to believe that FOBTs are not legal at all. If the courts rule that they are legal, I would want to see a maximum £2 stake. It is interesting to note that the machines have been banned in the Republic of Ireland. Having made these points, however, I want to be clear that it is just as important that we deal with the equally serious challenges presented by online problem gambling.

In May this year the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland published a gambling prevalence survey for 2016. More than 1,000 people were surveyed about their gambling habits and were asked to consider public attitudes to gambling. The survey illustrates that problem gambling both online and offline is a significant issue in Northern Ireland. It found, as did the previous survey conducted in 2011, that Northern Ireland has a significantly higher incidence of problem gambling than any other region of the United Kingdom. The survey found that 2.3% of the respondents were deemed to be problem gamblers compared with 0.8% in Great Britain. Broadly speaking, this equates to between 32,000 and 43,000 individuals in Northern Ireland, depending on how the figures are calculated.

Many noble Lords will be aware that the Gambling Commission estimates that there are some 430,000 problem gamblers in Great Britain today. If Northern Ireland is added, the figure comes to around 460,000 or 470,000 problem gamblers in the United Kingdom, a figure which includes individuals betting both online and offline. As I am sure is the case in the rest of the United Kingdom, over recent years Northern Ireland has seen a significant increase in the number of individuals who are gambling online. In 2010, 5.4% of those surveyed had gambled online in the past year, but that figure approximately doubled over the next five years, rising to 10.6% in 2016. Among those who responded to the survey and indicated that they gamble, online gambling was engaged in more by younger people. Some 23.6% of those aged between 16 and 24 indicated that they gambled online, compared with only 3% of those aged over 65.

We all know that problem gambling can have a devastating impact on individual lives. I want to tell the tragic tale of one young man from County Fermanagh whose story was reported in the Belfast Telegraph in March this year. Peter and Sadie Keogh told the Belfast Telegraph about the death of their son Lewis, who took his own life having run up debts of more than £50,000 due to his gambling addiction. Peter and Sadie had no idea that Lewis had a gambling addiction and discovered it only after his death. As Peter put it, “Lewis was gambling on the internet, he was gambling on his own in bed and he was gambling at night”. Peter and Sadie told Lewis’s story to warn others of the dangers of gambling addiction and where it can lead. They have bravely told Lewis’s story and I highly commend them for doing so. One of the things I find striking about this tragic story and the others that have been related is the age of online problem gamblers who are committing suicide. They are all either very young or quite young. This fits with the online gambling demographic highlighted by the Northern Ireland survey. In light of that, I ask the Minister what focused support is being made available to young online problem gamblers.

Another striking thing I found when studying problem gambling is its impact on families. One online problem gambler who spoke to parliamentarians this week talked of how, at the height of his addiction, he had popped into the house to get a coat for his son, who was in the car. In the few moments he was in the house he had a strong urge to go to his laptop. He emerged two and a half hours later to find his young son asleep in his car seat, his face still wet with the tears he had cried himself to sleep with. Another problem gambler testified that when you are driven by the addiction, anything that stops you gambling is an annoyance. It thus has the devastating effect of making wives and children an annoyance. Some may regard this as the necessary price to pay for a deregulated gambling sector, but I personally do not.

When we seek to measure the social and environmental pollution caused by online and offline gambling by saying that 470,000 problem gamblers are affected, we kid ourselves. The truth is that for every problem gambler there is a family and countless lives impacted in untold ways. Even if we cannot be moved by the suffering, we should surely be moved by the figures. Speaking as I do the day after the Budget, it is worth remembering that the annual cost of family breakdown is £48 billion. In this regard, I was particularly struck by the following observation made in a recent article by Dominic Lawson:

“Divorce Online, a firm which logs all uncontested divorce petitions, last year revealed that gambling is now cited as a cause for marital break-up in no fewer than one in five of such petitions. Only a few years ago, it was cited in only one out of every 15 such claims”.


That is an extraordinary development with far-reaching implications. The well-being implications of marriage breakdown on adults and children are huge. Working on the basis that the polluter pays, I wonder whether the Minister could clarify how much money the industry is paying back to invest in marriage support services.

We as legislators have a responsibility to take concrete action to protect and help individuals suffering from gambling addiction. In the rest of my contribution, I would like to focus on the specific steps that I believe we need to take. First, I echo everything that has been said by other noble Lords about MOSES. We should be in no doubt about its importance. I regret that the coalition Government did not place it on a statutory footing and hope that, in the context of the present gambling consultation, the current Government will reconsider. I am particularly pleased to see in the briefing from GamCare that MOSES will be UK-wide. It is certainly very much needed in Northern Ireland, given our significantly higher problem gambling figures.

Advertising will be crucial and needs to be sustained, not a one-off. The gambling industry in the UK is certainly not shy about advertising its services, so I hope it will be willing to invest in a campaign to protect some of its own customers. There must be an initial review of the efficacy of GAMSTOP with a view to fine-tuning it after the first year. Given our higher problem gambling prevalence figure, this review should particularly consider the impact of GAMSTOP in Northern Ireland.

Secondly, I want to talk about the gambling levy. At the moment, my understanding is that it does not apply to Northern Ireland. This is odd, given that the Province embraces gambling providers and has a higher problem gambling prevalence figure. No doubt this is informed by the fact that standing behind the voluntary levy is Section 123 of the Gambling Act 2005, which applies only to Great Britain. For as long as the levy remains voluntary, however, and is not actually constrained by the Act, it certainly should extend to Northern Ireland. What is really required is a statutory levy, which may require two separate pieces of legislation, one for Great Britain and one for Northern Ireland. In a sense it does not matter how it is mandated, just as long as it is mandated. In my opinion it should be worth at least the problem gambling prevalence figure, which would be 2.3% for Northern Ireland. The industry should certainly pay for all the relevant treatment services and for MOSES.

Thirdly, I want briefly to agree with a legislative ban on gambling sites taking bets between midnight and 6 am. In this regard, I particularly highlight the observation of the father of Lewis Keogh that most of his gambling was done at night. I should like to say more, but the Clock has caught up with me.

Review of Gaming Machines

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, if you do it without the proper consideration and it is judicially reviewed, the result may be that you wait longer.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, will the Minister give an assurance today that the review and report will include the areas where betting outlets are located? Many of them are located in areas of deprivation and cause great social harm, particularly among families.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. These outlets tend to be in areas of social deprivation. That was included in the review. It is not my area of expertise but I believe that local authorities have been given powers to restrict these outlets, especially new ones.