Australia: News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes an important point. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been clear in his concerns about Australian news being removed by Facebook. The importance of authoritative news services has also been clear, particularly during the pandemic, with the huge part that they play. As I mentioned in my Answer, we are planning to create a digital markets unit, which will ensure fair competition both for publishers and more widely for other sectors. We remain committed to ensuring that everyone can access authoritative information easily and freely.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab) [V]]

Given the lack of transparency that typifies the working practices of social media companies, would the Minister confirm that the Government are working closely with their European neighbours and the new Biden Administration in developing a robust international legislative approach sufficient to bring these vast and seemingly unaccountable empires within the legal supervision of sovereign nations? If so, could she share with us the progress made to date?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am unable to share the detail of the progress made to date, but I can reassure the noble Lord that the Government are using every opportunity for international dialogue with both our European neighbours and others. This morning, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State met with his counterpart in Australia and he also recently met his counterpart in Canada. We are working in the most collaborative way possible.

BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for making possible this incredibly timely debate—albeit the Roger Bannister version, as I view it. In the short time available, I hope to remind your Lordships that the current project to undermine public service broadcasting is not new. It is simply the most recent iteration of a decades-long campaign of salami-slicing and intimidation by, I am sad to say, successive Conservative Governments, many of whom have sought to take the wind out of the BBC’s sails and erode the trust it enjoys among the public. It is the now-familiar Putin playbook: promote fear and distrust, and allow the consequences to multiply.

As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has already suggested, there is something rather ironic in the determination shown by Conservative leaders to dismantle an institution of which the party itself should be rightly proud. Perhaps the Prime Minister has forgotten that it was under the leadership of his hero, Winston Churchill, that a Conservative Government passed the Television Act 1954—legislation that protected the position of the BBC while, at the same time, introducing a brilliantly conceived system of regulated competition through a new Independent Television Authority. This system established a nationwide ecology—there is that word again—of public service broadcasting that allowed all aspects of the media to thrive. Crucially, while there was competition for audiences, the BBC/ITV duopoly did not compete for revenue.

The one-nation vision that lay at the heart of policy-making 60 years ago would appear to have evaporated and turned into something rather more sinister. There is no lack of vision in this Government’s policy towards the BBC. The vision is there; it was laid out with paint- by-numbers clarity by the Prime Minister’s principal adviser, Dominic Cummings, in 2004. Writing that year, he called for a campaign to undermine the corporation’s credibility, suggesting that:

“The BBC is a determined propagandist with a coherent ideology.”


To combat this, he argued for the creation of a British version of Fox News. He believed this could be achieved through a

“campaign to end the licence fee”.

Here was a vision that represented a massive departure from Conservatism, certainly as most Members of this House would understand it. Its genesis was that of Trumpian populism, an ideology that treats contempt for institutions as a form of political weaponry and is a long way from the wisdom of Edmund Burke, who once said:

“Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”


For the past few months I have spent a great deal of my life in the Committee Corridor, chairing a Select Committee looking at the impact of digital technology on democracy. One thing has already emerged with quite frightening clarity: confusion over where to seek verifiable fact. However, thanks largely to the vision of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who I am delighted is in his place, and as recently confirmed by Ofcom, the BBC has emerged as the digital gold standard in the provision of trusted information in an era of fake news. Surely, as we stand on the brink of a global pandemic, that gold standard of trust is more crucial than it has ever been.

This can no longer be about the wilful vengeance of politicians; it is about the very real possibility of saving lives. To paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, speaking in this House just two months ago, trust is the scarcest and most precious political metal we have. Sad to say, I am far from reassured by the Secretary of State’s well-trailed retreat from earlier briefings. I can only repeat my belief that we are watching a well-rehearsed process of intimidation and destabilisation. Hopefully, when she comes to respond to the debate the Minister will unequivocally assure me that I am wrong, because we cannot allow an unremitting vendetta to rob us of the most valuable asset that democracy has at its disposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran]

If he will forgive me, in the interests of time I will write to the noble Lord with some of the detail. He raised a point about data sharing and the over-75s concession. The BBC’s decision document sets out that the BBC will operate a self-verification model. Therefore, the issues that he has raised should not arise but I am happy to write to him in detail about this.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Judd, Lord Hennessy and Lord West, raised soft power—a matter that I have already touched on. The Government strongly support the BBC’s mission to bring high-quality and impartial news to audiences across the world. The noble Lord, Lord West, had done some clever maths on expenditure.

[Lord Puttnam]

I apologise to the noble Baroness and I do not want to delay the House but there is an elephant in the room and it needs to be shot. This morning the Secretary of State said that the BBC was

“an institution to be cherished.”

Words matter. I know what cherished means, as does the noble Baroness, but it is not in any way possible to square that with the supposedly informed comments that come out of No. 10. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, referred to the Shipman piece. Would she like to use this opportunity at the Dispatch Box to totally repudiate the continual comments about wishing to destroy the BBC that are claimed to emerge from No. 10?

[Baroness Barran]

I can reiterate with confidence what the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have said, but I am sure that the noble Lord will understand that I cannot respond confidently about leaks to the newspapers; I can deal only with the facts before me. My noble friend has whispered in my ear that I have a minute or two more, and I would be grateful if I could go through the important points that other noble Lords have raised.

On soft power, the royal charter is clear that the BBC must spend at least £254 million a year on the World Service until 2022, and in 2017-18 that figure was £268 million.

Brexit: Creative Industries’ Access to European Markets

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I think my noble friend would agree that they are two very different things.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government made an economic analysis of any kind regarding the potential damage to the UK’s creative industries that would be likely to result from a soft or a hard Brexit? This is no small thing, as it leaves many thousands of jobs at risk and a commensurate degree of enormous anxiety.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that it is no small thing. As many noble Lords will know, the Government produced two analyses of the economy as a whole in November last year and February this year. There has not been a separate economic analysis comparing the two scenarios he mentioned, but I think it is clear to everyone that a Brexit which involves an agreement with the EU is better, because it allows us more time to negotiate a future economic partnership which, crucially, involves reciprocity in many of the areas that concern the creative industries, such as movement of talent.

Online Harms White Paper

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am extremely grateful to the Chief Whip for allowing time for what is already proving to be a worthwhile and timely debate, and to the Minister for introducing it in such a positive manner. I entirely sympathise with the Government’s instinct to focus on the most obvious forms of online harm, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, the promotion of terrorism and threats of actual violence. The Government’s proposals in these areas are, on balance, carefully thought through and proportionate. They represent a bold attempt to tackle some of the more damaging features of the digital age and are based on a duty of care—a principle I have long advocated in relation, for example, to what I believe to be the responsibilities of the media to ensure informed democratic debate. I hope it will not be self-promoting to mention that in 2012, I did a TED talk under the auspices of this House on this subject. It has to date been seen by almost 1 million people, so there is no doubt that there is interest in this area.

In the time available this evening, I would like to touch on other forms of harm which in my view are insufficiently addressed in the White Paper. The harms I refer to were identified by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill—sadly, she is not in her place—in response to the Statement on 8 April as being,

“harms to public goods, democracy, culture and the standards of the media”.

She made the point that the White Paper,

“deals with only part of the problem”.—[Official Report, 8/4/19; col. 433.]

As your Lordships have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, during her recent appearance before the DCMS Select Committee on this White Paper, Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, said—I will quote her a little more fully—that she was,

“surprised and disappointed that there was not more focus on a huge societal harm, which is electoral interference, and on the need for more transparency in political advertising”.

Like others, I entirely share the commissioner’s disappointment.

We are only too familiar with the pernicious and corrosive effects of online propaganda in the form of disinformation, which has already had a distorting effect on almost every area of our domestic and democratic lives. Much of that distorting effect has been caused by a worrying lack of understanding of how easily we can all be manipulated. Anyone doubting the impact of that manipulation has only to turn to the recent DCMS Select Committee report on Disinformation and Fake News. As that report accurately states:

“In a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices”.


Many people have rightly commended the Government’s White Paper for being a global trailblazer in its strategy for tackling online harms. However, I doubt whether I will be the only Member of your Lordships’ House to seek a far greater level of clarity, energy and, crucially, investment in what the White Paper describes as digital literacy. In their White Paper, the Government rightly argue that the promotion of digital literacy has a wide range of benefits,

“including for the functioning of democracy by giving users a better understanding of online content and enabling them to distinguish between facts and opinions online”.

This is an entirely laudable objective, but we have been here before. In fact, it was 15 years ago, in relation to the media literacy responsibilities of Ofcom, as set out in what became the Communications Act 2003, which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has already referred to today. I am sorry to report that successive Governments, including those of my own party, never seriously grasped—let alone ensured—the delivery of Ofcom’s obligations regarding what the White Paper has now accurately rechristened digital literacy. It is true that for a decade, Ofcom made efforts to address this issue but the specific grant used for that purpose was phased out by DCMS several years ago.

It will be argued that some technical research has been published, but surely that is a woefully inadequate response to the real task at hand: to equip present and future generations with the ability to assess the vast swathes of misinformation, even outright lies, which now proliferate across the internet—whether on social media, blogs or what can at first glance appear to be credible news websites. Had we seriously risen to that task, we might have avoided at least some of the deeply troubling outcomes we now face. We could have made a better job of preparing ourselves for the worst impacts of the environmental crisis that millions of young people now rightly warn us against. Even the result of the referendum might have been different if those aged between 18 and 23 had fully understood the importance of an informed vote for their own futures, and the degree to which they were capable of being marginalised and manipulated in the new digital world.

Any 10 year-old at the time of the Communications Act 2003 will now be aged 26. We are talking about literally millions of voters who, with a better understanding of the power of misinformation, could have demanded a more honest debate on the ramifications and potential outcomes of what for many of them may well have been a life-defining moment. It is estimated that 64% of young people aged 18-24, or 3.6 million out of a total of 5.7 million, turned out to vote in the referendum. Of that 64%, it is further estimated that almost three quarters—2.6 million—voted to remain. Surely it is now imperative that as legislators, we develop a laser-like focus on ensuring that people, especially the young, are equipped with the best means to ensure that never again can our democratic processes be subject to the kinds of distortions we all suffered in the months and weeks leading up to 23 June 2016. Consider this hypothesis, if your Lordships will: had all that age group voted in the same proportion as those who did engage, the result would have been a remain victory by over half a million votes. That is how important a truly informed and fully participatory democracy is to our and their futures.

The sad truth is that in a digital age, we cannot regulate misinformation out of existence. Those days, if they ever existed, have long since passed. Instead, we need to take unambiguous responsibility for putting tools in the hands of users to enable them to distinguish between fact and fiction. This is far from being a new problem but its scale has increased exponentially and its new forms are extremely challenging for any Government to combat. When he replies, will the Minister give the House some assurance that DCMS, the Home Office and the Department for Education are actively working together and prepared to invest time, effort and energy into correcting a lamentable decade of inaction?

I close by quoting from a speech made to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925 by the then President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge:

“Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control … It has always been realized, sometimes instinctively, oftentimes expressly, that truth and freedom are inseparable …The public press”—


he was speaking at a time when newspapers were pretty well the only form of information—

“under an autocracy is necessarily a true agency of propaganda. Under a free government it must be the very reverse. Propaganda seeks to present a part of the facts, to distort their relations, and to force conclusions which could not be drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts … propaganda seeks to close the mind while education seeks to open it. This has become one of the dangers of the present day”.

As this Bill moves through the House, I will be arguing that digital misinformation has become the greatest single danger to our democracy and that to pretend otherwise is to risk fatally undermining it.

Broadcasting (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a very short question for the Minister. What would his advice be to UK broadcasters when it comes to working with those countries that are not party to the ECTT? I know that many broadcasters are concerned that these new regulations will not cover the areas that at the moment they just take for granted as far as European-wide broadcasting is concerned. What about those countries, other than Ireland, that are not party to the ECTT?

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, is there anything in the Ofcom response to indicate that any of these changes will benefit the UK production economy, or indeed the UK economy in general? Is there anything in the Ofcom response that suggests this is not negative?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am very grateful for all those interesting points and particularly for the speed at which they were delivered. We might set a record on this SI, with any luck.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I should declare a few interests. The first is that I was the victim of a kiss and tell story in a Sunday tabloid newspaper: front page and eight inside pages. I was also, separately, the victim of phone hacking. Thirdly, I joined the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, in his civil action under the Human Rights Act. Fourthly, I am a former senior police officer.

Briefly, on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the rather rosy picture he has of civil actions being taken by victims of phone hacking, and referencing what the noble Lord, Lord Black, said about the reality of what goes on outside, my reality was that yes, I had lawyers working on a conditional fee agreement—no win, no fee. I was told at the beginning of the process that I could get insurance against losing. Three months into the action, when tens of thousands of pounds had been spent by both sets of lawyers, it was established that I could not get insurance against losing. If I had stopped the action at that point, I would have had to pay the costs not only of the newspapers’ lawyers but my lawyers, because a conditional fee agreement works only if you go through with the action and then lose. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for ordinary people to take on newspapers through the courts in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, presented it to the House earlier.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that, yes, the other place considered a previous amendment that we put to them. This is a different amendment. It addresses many of the concerns expressed in the other place, and the other place should have the opportunity to consider this amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish of Little Venice, and the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, both talked about the enormous burdens on major newspaper groups. We need to consider the enormous burdens placed on innocent victims of the media.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, made the point that there were few journalists here. As far as I know, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I are the only remaining film-makers—and I think that we do know how to edit. I would very much like to support the amendment perfectly set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. It should not be necessary to say this in your Lordships’ House but, once again, I reiterate that I am the proud son of a journalist and would die in a ditch to protect a responsible and fearless free press. But freedom of any sort brings its own responsibilities, and the greatest of these is the sustaining of trust. This short debate is all about trust.

The Minister in another place said he was being “forward-looking”. I am sure that I speak for many in this House when I suggest that the most forward-looking ambition that we share is the possibility that we might, over time, regain the trust of the people of this country in the quality and integrity of Parliament. As I see it, this ambition trumps all others—and to judge by recent coverage in our national press we are not coming from a particularly good place in that respect.

On the evidence of the past 20 years or so, much of the national press takes the position that its role in society is so important that Parliament needs to get over itself, and understand that in the real world you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. The view that it appears to advance is that, to remain sustainable, injustice, distortion, deception, abuse and even at times criminality are the price that society is required to pay for a robust, unfettered press. What if the Church took a similar position with regard to misconduct in its own ranks, or our judges argued that an acceptance of illegal practice in the collection of evidence was a necessary price to pay in the pursuit of justice? At the height of the financial crisis we came close to being persuaded by the banks that their reckless behaviour was justified by the pressures placed on them by their shareholders. I would argue, as has been very well put many times during the passage of this Bill, that society cannot afford the luxury of entirely unconstrained freedoms—not in the law, the Church, the financial sector, social media and even the press.

The reasons why Leveson 2 is necessary were well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, in setting out her amendment. Personally, I have not the slightest doubt that such a review would reveal an extensive and entirely improper set of relationships between the press, politicians and the police, with the very real possibility that significant cases of actual obstruction of justice would come to light. It seems just possible that, in making that suggestion, I have stumbled across the real reason for the Government’s desire to scrap this second and, to my mind, more important inquiry.

I have just two specific questions to put to the Minister. First, having checked, I can find no record of the former Prime Minister having expressed a view on the unprecedented repudiation of his commitment to Parliament, let alone the breach of his well-publicised personal promises to the victims of press abuse. Has he been asked about, and has he indeed endorsed, the recent decision by the Secretary of State? Is Mr Cameron prepared to meet the victims to explain what factors or new revelations encouraged him to change his mind on this matter—if he has? Possibly the Minister, or even the media, might choose to inquire. Further, does the Minister feel that the precedent set by the decision to scrap Leveson 2 is likely to enhance or diminish the likelihood of overcoming the challenge I referred to at the outset—the ambition of all responsible politicians to develop greater public belief in the honesty and integrity of Parliament in general and of the Government that he serves in particular?

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a television producer who has been involved in investigative programmes for the BBC and other channels. I listened with horror to the stories of victims that my noble friend Lord Kerslake told, and I am sure that I was as appalled as the rest of the House. In previous debates, my noble friend Lady Hollins has also talked about victims’ stories, which must also have appalled us all. However, I ask the House to consider how the amendment could rebalance the relationship between the right to privacy of the individual and the right to freedom of expression, in favour of the former.

I am particularly concerned about proposed new subsection (3)(f) of the amendment, which looks innocent enough—and I think that it would help the victims of phone hacking, which of course is something I welcome. However, it might come at a terrible cost to freedom of expression. This morning I spoke to a number of representatives of the most responsible newspapers and broadcasters about their fears over this proposed new subsection. They are concerned that switching the balance between free speech and the privacy rights of the individual will raise the bar for the way in which publication in the public interest is viewed by the courts. As someone who has worked in the media for many years, I fear that even the prospect of the bar being raised will have a chilling effect on investigative journalism. Editors will be afraid to commission investigative stories for fear of not being able to publish them. Likewise, it will empower lawyers who want to defend the privacy of wealthy individuals.

I have looked at the case brought against the BBC and the Guardian newspaper for the publication of the Paradise papers, which exposed no illegality but revealed, on an industrial scale, the avoidance of paying British tax by huge corporations and wealthy individuals. The purpose of the publication was not only to expose the actions of individuals and corporations but to focus British public and political opinion on the nature of offshore investments and tax avoidance—which I would argue is definitely in the public interest. Yet the lawyers at Appleby, the offshore legal firm at the centre of the Paradise papers affair, used a breach of confidence case against the media’s use of privileged documents to target the organisations involved.

The case has been settled, but if it had gone to full trial the judge would have had to weigh up the right to privacy of the individual against the public interest in publishing the documents. In all these cases, editors must take into account the possibility of losing, even when publication is demonstrably in the public interest. An inquiry into rebalancing rights of privacy against freedom of expression will further increase that anxiety. I am concerned not just about the rebalancing of rights to the detriment of free speech; I am concerned also that this amendment will be a distraction from the implementation of a complicated series of new legal powers introduced by the Bill. Many of these will be challenged by the courts and will consume a huge amount of time on the part of media organisations, as all sides struggle to ensure that the very worthwhile measures set out in the Bill are put into full effect. The amendment is retrospective and potentially damaging to the Bill and to free speech in this country. I urge noble Lords to vote against it.

--- Later in debate ---

Let us come more closely to where we are at the present time. What is being proposed is an extensive inquiry into the past when we are addressing a Bill that is determined to look to the future and the regulation of the media in the context of data processing. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, observed, very significant steps have been taken by the Government in this Bill to secure the position going forward. That is how we see the matter. In those circumstances, I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, to withdraw her amendment. The time has come for this House to acknowledge that the other place has spoken on this issue. It is one that reflects people’s diverse and passionate interests, but I would suggest that the time has come constitutionally for the amendment to be withdrawn.

[Lord Puttnam]

Does the Minister believe that the reputation of Parliament is enhanced or diminished by the refutation of the commitment made by the former Prime Minister?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It is neither. It is a situation in which we have moved on and, as I say, the Government have, following a public consultation, implemented a manifesto commitment. It is in those circumstances that we are proceeding.

Social Media: News

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for making this debate possible. She, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin and Lady Harding, and others have performed off-stage heroics recently on behalf of young people in this country. They do it by continually looking to the future, rather than harking back to “Muffin The Mule” and the golden age of “Blue Peter”.

I teach media studies weekly in a number of universities in this country and overseas and I recently made a slide for my students that simply states, “Fake news is a wrecking ball”. I go on to explain that democracy is a fragile concept, and that, just like a wrecking ball, fake news once released is blind to the destruction it causes: destruction to facts, to complexity, to reputations and therefore to that most valuable commodity of all, trust—or, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has taught me, to trustworthiness.

The Times columnist Hugo Rifkind set off something of a firestorm just before Christmas when he rightly called out the complicity—albeit possibly careless—of Twitter, Facebook and others in the enabling role they played in the distortion of news through social media prior to both the EU referendum and last year’s general election. I very much liked his closing line:

“Our political class needs to stop rolling their eyes and start paying attention. If the facts don’t move them to care, maybe the humiliation will”.


I believe that humiliation is about to break over us in the form of ever more conclusive evidence of the degree of pernicious activity that went into achieving Vladimir Putin’s wet dream: Britain’s detachment from the European Union, and I stress “Union”.

Last year the Data Protection Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, started a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes. She said this recently:

“It’s a complex and far-reaching investigation, involving over 30 organisations including political parties and campaigns, data companies and social media platforms … A number of organisations have freely co-operated with us, answered our questions and engaged with the investigation. But, others are making it difficult. In some instances we have been unable to obtain the specific details of work that contributed to the Referendum campaign and I will be using every available legal tool and working with authorities overseas to seek answers on behalf of UK citizens”.


She said that she had been,

“forced … to invoke our statutory powers to make formal demands for information”.

That is pretty serious stuff.

This is made all the more serious when we consider the outcome of research recently conducted by the University of Stanford Graduate School of Education, which revealed that 80% of middle-school students could not distinguish between real news and content paid for by an advertiser. Sam Wineberg, the author of that report, said at the time of its release:

“Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite to be true”.


This is not helped by the fact that in 2015, 64% of nine year-olds in the US were found not to read at or above proficiency levels. Before any complacency is allowed to set in, it is worth noting that our figures are not much better. So, what do we do about it?

Time does not allow me to go into too many possible solutions, although some exist. I recommend that anyone interested checks out the website of a five year-old organisation named Newsela, which seeks to address this problem in the classroom by using news content as a teaching tool. It has licensing arrangements with, among others, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and Bloomberg. Encouraging the use of the best and most reliable news content as a classroom resource at primary level could, in my judgment, do very little harm and possibly a great deal of good.

Finally, there are a number of other ways in which trust could be developed and the worst impacts of social media reduced, but to do that will require the wholehearted attention of the Government in general and the Department for Education in particular. This is not simply a problem that needs to be addressed. It is a very real present-day crisis and one that deserves to be taken far more seriously.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting Hansard: House of Lords
Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Puttnam]

103A: Schedule 12, page 184, line 4, at end insert “and such remuneration and other conditions of service must be affordable, realistic and responsible”

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, the last time I cleared a room like this, it was a very bad film indeed.

Amendment 103A is connected to Amendments 103B, 103C, 124A, 124B and 125A, and I move it with the support of my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Holmes. In a well-run world, this group of amendments should not really need to be moved or pressed. They are designed purely to ensure that we have the data commissioner—and the office of that commissioner—that we need. Frankly, they are the natural consequence of all the debates that have occurred during the passage of the data protection legislation.

There can be no more important role over the next few years than that of the Data Commissioner. The organisation she is being asked to regulate is the largest in the world. A quite extraordinary statistic is that the four largest companies—Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple—have between them a larger market capitalisation than the FTSE 100. That is the scale of the businesses we are asking the Data Commissioner to regulate. At the same time, under the Bill at present the resources available to her are wholly inadequate to that task. We went through a similar operation 15 years ago with Ofcom, and out of that, and through the collective wisdom of this House, we were able to ensure that Ofcom had the resources to become what is genuinely the gold standard of any media and telecoms industry regulator in the world. That is an achievement of this House of which we should be very proud. The purpose of these amendments is to achieve exactly the same for our ICO—something we can be proud of and that can do the job given to it.

During the passage of the Bill, we have loaded the ICO with significant new and additional responsibilities. The idea that we might have an underfunded and underresourced regulator that is not adequate to the task we are giving it is unthinkable. The purpose of these amendments is to prevent that. I could go on at some length, but I think the mood of the House is that it wishes to move on, so I shall listen to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, it might be for the convenience of the House if I speak now as I have some information which may help the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and other noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments.

As I have repeatedly said during the debates on the Bill, the Government are committed to ensuring that the commissioner has adequate resources to fulfil her role as a world-class regulator and to take on the extra regulatory responsibilities set out in this Bill, so I agree with pretty well everything the noble Lord said. That is why we legislated for a new, GDPR-compliant charging regime in the Digital Economy Act, which we will turn to in the next group, but it is also why the commissioner needs to be able to recruit and retain expert staff.

I am therefore very pleased to announce that the Government have today granted the Information Commissioner’s Office pay flexibility up to 2020-21 so that it can review its pay and grading structure. The commissioner will have the independence to determine the levels of pay necessary for the ICO to maintain the expertise it needs to fulfil its new and revised functions as a supervisory authority, subject to the standard public spending principles. I am also pleased to say that the Information Commissioner has agreed these arrangements. She said:

“I welcome the positive response to my business case for pay flexibility at the ICO. I am confident that this will allow me to prepare the ICO for its critical role under the new data protection regime ensuring that the UK has a strong and expert regulator in an area recognised for its importance to the digital economy and society as a whole”.


This flexibility underscores the UK’s commitment to an independent and effective data protection regulator, and I think goes a long way in responding to the points raised by the noble Lord’s amendments. We all want an efficient, well-resourced ICO, so I am very pleased that this agreement has been reached. I should have said at the outset that I am very grateful to the noble Lord for coming to talk to me about it. I am glad to say he was pushing at an open door.

[Lord Puttnam]

I thank the noble Lord, who has been extraordinarily generous with his time. He and his officials could not have been more helpful in reaching what I regard as a perfectly satisfactory conclusion. My only wish is that we have a regulator that can do the job required of it and tackle the abuses along the way confidently and competently. I am extraordinarily grateful for this outcome. I am very happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 103A withdrawn.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It would not necessarily resolve any problem. As noble Lords may be aware, we have consulted on the question of Section 40 and the second part of the Leveson inquiry and there will in due course be a report upon that consultation. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has assisted my lip-reading by saying “soon”. He may be aware that a letter was recently sent by the Secretary of State to the Committee with regard to the timing of that report. If not, I can bring that news to him. Sir Brian Leveson himself has indicated that he would like the opportunity to consider the responses to the consultation and that will take a little time—of course, that has to be accommodated.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

Will the Minister do the House an enormous favour and make it clear that this not a debate between people who favour press freedom and people who are opposed to press freedom? There is nobody in your Lordships’ House who is opposed to press freedom. It is very important for all our sakes that this is made absolutely clear.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who obviously knows a great deal about the matter—more than I do. I still think that we should question the ability for this to happen in the future. Surely the whole point of the Leveson inquiry was to tighten things up so that this would not happen so much. When I listen to people talking about what happened to them and how they felt that they had very little recourse—although they took civil action and some of them won—I accept that newspapers shut down, but my goodness, perhaps they should have done. These things are right.

In listening to the debate, I was very impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McNally. It is not that I do not believe in the press—believe me, I think that the press does a wonderful job, by and large—but even those of us who are involved in doing wonderful jobs do so because we can look at ourselves and say, “We got this wrong”. That is what I have not heard enough of. My noble friend Lady Hollins is having a rather tricky time; she is up against some big guns.

What do the future victims have if they do not have recourse to law—if they believe that Leveson was the answer and we gradually remove most of his recommendations, which is what we seem to be doing? Perhaps noble Lords are right; perhaps in law we should be getting rid of them, but I am worried that the public will begin to think, “What are these inquiries? Why does the status quo always remain exactly the same?”. That is why I wanted to speak up for my noble friend Lady Hollins. We must think a bit more about people whose lives are sometimes ruined just by innuendo. As we have heard, they might get a tiny apology at the bottom of the page, but the damage is done—and it can be terrible.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on withdrawing her amendment, which I thought was extremely wise and thoughtful. She does us a great favour by constantly bringing us back to these issues.

I try to take the long view. I declare an interest: I am the extremely proud son of a journalist. My father was not any old journalist; he was one of only two people who were evacuated from Dunkirk twice, because he was sent back to report it twice. I am very proud of my father; he was a remarkable journalist and a very fine man. That is why I am passionate about this subject. I apologise to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, if I intervened inappropriately at the end of the last debate. I was trying to make it clear that this House does not contain people who oppose freedom of the press; if we could just agree on that, it would be something of a triumph.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for whom I have enormous regard, and the noble Lord, Lord Black, both used an interesting word: “bully”. The idea of using the word “bully” in the context of a debate such as this, as if it excludes the notion of press bullies, is obviously farcical. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Pannick: when a headline appears that accuses three High Court judges of being traitors, is that fair comment? Is that damaging? Does that provide for the type of democracy he would like to see this country moving towards, or does it irrevocably drive it backwards? As a remainer, I am sick to death of being accused of being somehow undemocratic and apparently opposing the will of the people. That is as much rubbish as is the notion that I might be opposed to freedom of the press.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is exactly right. We must be more sensible about this. There is fault on both sides. We are not where we would wish to be. The 1998 Act—I was here when it was passed—was a very good act, but it is not sufficient for our present circumstances. It has been ignored by some highly unscrupulous editors. The present regime of apology is ludicrous; the other day, I put that to the noble Lord, Lord Black. I am not sure if he agrees, but it is a joke. We must be more sensible about moving forward on this issue, so I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for taking a long view. We must do the same, but we must also adopt a very determined, clear and moral view to get this right.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, as I made clear in Committee, I wish to see the recommendations of the Leveson report, which strikes the right balance between the interests of the public and free expression rights of the press, be enacted in law. I say to my noble friend Lord Black that there is certainly no intention to punish anyone.

We already have the architecture in place: the royal charter and the Press Recognition Panel, which applies tests suggested by Leveson and made under the royal charter. There is already one approved regulator in place. The only role left for the state and the Government is for Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act to be commenced and to deal with some of the detailed data protection issues. We do not need to do much more and we certainly do not need to start again.

These Leveson changes are the only way to achieve a thriving, free and independent press that is immunised against a very rich target for investigation, as well as to provide appropriate protection for the public from abuse. I therefore have no hesitation in strongly supporting the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. I remind the House that I have never been mistreated by the media and I do not know any celebrities, except those who are or have been parliamentarians.

In Committee I also made it clear that one of the factors that stung me into action was the copious misinformation and wrongful propaganda published about press regulation and Leveson’s recommendations by elements of the press. This tactic of publicising falsities about the recommendation in the Leveson report also motivated the DCMS committee in another place to criticise press misreporting about Section 40 and other matters in its submission to the government consultation on press regulation earlier this year.

Probably one of the most palpably false media claims is that the implementation of Leveson is unnecessary. Many noble Lords have already touched on that. The media says that the regulator it has established and controls, IPSO—which fails the Leveson and royal charter tests for independence and effectiveness—is already sufficiently robust. Many noble Lords clearly do not believe that. IPSO helpfully mailed a fact sheet last week to some noble Lords. I was pleased to see that it has already been subject to a rebuttal by a further mailing from Professor Brian Cathcart.

I was alarmed to see some particularly erroneous details in IPSO’s mailing. They cannot be left unchallenged. For instance, IPSO claims that it had ordered 17 front- page references. The truth is that not once in three years of work has IPSO required a national newspaper to publish a recognisable correction on its front page, no matter how profound the original breach. I have to confess that I do not regularly read a certain broadsheet newspaper that many noble Lords would expect me to read. I do not find it to be a reliable source of information, very sadly. So I subscribe to the Economist, but even that august newspaper last week disappointed by publishing a correction about a forgivable error in the previous week’s report on transgender rights that was in small print and at the bottom of a completely unrelated article about Labour Party polling.

Moreover, IPSO argues that its complaints process puts great emphasis on complaints between publication and the complainant being resolved with, it says, more than 600 resolutions in its three years of operation. But what does “resolution” mean? The reality is that in many cases, as with the failed PCC, complainants become so worn down by the process that they give up or accept weak and inadequate remedy. Furthermore, when cases are supposedly “resolved” there is no recording of a code breach, which means that essentially nothing is kept on record by IPSO to show that the newspaper has failed to meet the appropriate standards.

As for IPSO’s claim to offer Leveson-style arbitration, Leveson said that it is critical that arbitration is compulsory for news publishers, yet IPSO’s scheme allows the publishers to choose whether to accept an arbitration claim. In other words, the whole system is optional. This means that those with the strongest cases but with limited means can be refused arbitration, forcing them to go to court—if they can afford it—whereas a multi-billionaire can threaten very expensive legal proceedings against the newspaper. That is exactly what Leveson feared and it renders IPSO’s whole scheme redundant. This is not access to justice for all; it just protects the ultra-rich and elites but leaves ordinary aggrieved citizens with no protection. It is no wonder that, after 18 months, IPSO’s trial arbitration scheme has had no takers.