Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Cormack

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I suggest, very briefly, that we look at this amendment in a slightly different way. Understandably, we have a tendency in Parliament to look at things through our own lens, and perhaps some of us are viewing this amendment as a reminder of what the Bill is about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made a very good point about clarity. I suggest we imagine that we are one of the companies that the Bill is designed to try to better manage. Imagine you are in the boardroom, or on the executive management team, and you are either already doing business in the United Kingdom or are considering entering the UK market. You know there is an enormous piece of legislation that is designed to try to bring some order to the area your business is in. At the moment, without this amendment, the Bill is a lawyer’s paradise, because it can be looked at in a multitude of ways. I put it to the Minister and the Bill team that it would be extremely helpful to have something in the Bill that makes it completely clear, to any business thinking of engaging in any online activities in the United Kingdom, what this legislation is about.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am one of those who found the Bill extremely complicated, but I do not find this amendment extremely complicated. It is precise, simple, articulate and to the point, and I think it gives us a good beginning for debating what is an extremely complex Bill.

I support this amendment because I believe, and have done so for a very long time, that social media has done a great deal more harm than good, even though it is capable of doing great good. Whether advertently or inadvertently, the worst of all things it has done is to destroy childhood innocence. We are often reminded in this House that the prime duty of any Government is to protect the realm, and of course it is. But that is a very broad statement. We can protect the realm only if we protect those within it. Our greatest obligation is to protect children—to allow them to grow up, so far as possible, uncorrupted by the wicked ways of a wicked world and with standards and beliefs that they can measure actions against. Complex as it is, the Bill is a good beginning, and its prime purpose must be the protection and safeguarding of childhood innocence.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, spoke a few moments ago about the instructions he was given as a young preacher. I remember when I was training to be a lay reader in the Church of England, 60 or more years ago, being told that if you had been speaking for eight minutes and had not struck oil, stop boring. I think that too is a good maxim.

We have got to try to make the Bill comprehensible to those around the country whom it will affect. The worst thing we do, and I have mentioned this in connection with other Bills, is to produce laws that are unintelligible to the people in the country; that is why I was very sympathetic to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Inglewood. This amendment is a very good beginning. It is clear and precise. I think nearly all of us who have spoken so far would like to see it in the Bill. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, rising—does she wish to intervene?

Age Assurance (Minimum Standards) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Cormack

2nd reading
Friday 19th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for initiating this debate and putting the Bill before the House. I pay tribute to 5Rights and the fantastic work it is doing. I should put on record that I am a governor of Coram, which was founded in 1739 and is the oldest children’s charity in the UK—we have been fighting for children’s rights for rather a long time, and, thankfully, for rather a long time before the internet was dreamed up.

Yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and I had the pleasure of going to Wandsworth and spending three hours at a very large girls’ school there, called Burntwood School. It has about 1,800 pupils. It is incredibly diverse. Believe it or not, no fewer than 70 languages are spoken by the 1,800 pupils. Part of the visit was a question and answer session with around 100 of the girls. One of the questions they asked us was about internet safety and what we felt about it, so we were able to talk a bit about the online safety Bill and I was able to say that I would have the privilege of speaking in today’s debate.

Later on, we were talking with the teachers, who said that, during the pandemic, when everybody was in bubbles and the children were perhaps relying on social media more than usual, they decided that they needed to do a bit of homework. Somewhat to their surprise, they found that the legal age below which you are not meant to use WhatsApp is 13. It turns out that that is an unexpected negative Brexit dividend; if we were still in the EU or the European Economic Area, the minimum age would be 16, but one of the freedoms we have won in leaving the European Union is that the age has dropped to 13.

I thought I would use WhatsApp as an example because, although I know it is against the rules to ask noble Lords to put their hand up if they are on WhatsApp, I anticipate that it is probably the social media or communication app that most of us use—I am sure that most of us are in one or two groups.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Not me.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I understand that, in Lincolnshire, the reception is particularly bad. I am sure if the noble Lord asks the Government to do something about it they would improve it.

As we are all using WhatsApp, I thought it might be instructive to talk about what it does and, more to the point, the onus it puts on, in this case, the parents of children—first, to find out whether their children are using it, and, secondly, to find out whether they should be using it. If they decide that they should not be using it, the onus is entirely on the parents to contact WhatsApp with a variety of information, such as passports, to demonstrate that their child is underage. It may possibly respond, but it may not.

WhatsApp makes its money primarily through trying to get into the business world, and it makes money by selling emoticon stickers and online games. But it also plans to monetise the app by setting up a WhatsApp payment, rather like Apple Pay. You will see lots of people going on to the London Underground pointing their mobile phone as they enter, which is how they pay. So that is coming down the track.

WhatsApp has also announced a new privacy policy whereby, if users do not accept it, they will have to stop using the app. WhatsApp cannot do that in the EU, because it violates the GDPR, but in the rest of the world, it can. That is about to be rolled out this year, but I suspect very few of us know that.

Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, has just changed its name to Meta. In the law of unexpected consequences, in Hebrew, “meta” means “dead”; in Urdu, it means “delete”; and in certain dialects in my wife’s native Italy, it stands for a “pyramid of dung”. I am sure Mr Zuckerberg was aware of that when he changed the name.

What a lot of people do not realise with WhatsApp is that user groups can go up to 250 users; in Burntwood School, virtually all the children are in quite large groups. People say that WhatsApp is safe because it is end-to-end encrypted. However, any of the 250 in a group could share the details of the group with an outside person, who would immediately have access to every person. A lot of videos and photographs are put on WhatsApp groups, and although, in theory, they cannot be shared outside the group, as I am sure all noble Lords who are very au fait with how mobile phones work will know, you can easily take a screenshot to capture what is on a phone and send that on elsewhere. So WhatsApp is not terribly secure.

The school is particularly worried about its use for cyberbullying. It is worried about the fact that, quite regularly, spyware is used, there are requests for money and its students receive fraudulent job opportunities, even though they are still in school. This is not good, and the fact that the internet companies are, frankly, avoiding the responsibility they have to all of us—most particularly to our children and grandchildren—is simply unacceptable. The Government must do something. They really have no alternative.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Cormack

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I knew that would arouse a few barbs, but it is a very serious and important farming county where, this year, they are battling in the wake of the worst harvest in half a century. We have a duty to these people, and a duty to encourage them to produce food and not regard themselves as theme parks. If that is true of the United Kingdom as a whole, it is particularly true of Northern Ireland. My noble friend Lord Empey knows so much more about Northern Ireland than I will ever know, but I was chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the other place for five years and I travelled there a lot. I got to know and love that part of the United Kingdom very much, and all I can say is that everything that my noble friend said tonight about farming in Northern Ireland is, if anything, an understatement; we have to take that into account.

So I will support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry, so that the Commons has a chance to think again. However, in order not to make my noble friend the Minister, for whom I have a very real regard, be too cross with me, I close by saying that I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Empey said about my noble friend Lord Gardiner. Would it not be a very good thing to have a Secretary of State, another Cabinet Minister, in this House? Would it not be particularly appropriate if the portfolio that that Minister held was for agriculture? I would like him to be, in the old way, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Does any other Member in the Chamber wish to speak? If not, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

Business and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Cormack

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Several speakers have withdrawn from this part of the proceedings: the noble Lords, Lord Harris of Haringey, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, Lord Naseby and Lord Hayward.

[Lord Cormack [V]]

I am glad to take part in this, I am sure, brief debate. I am delighted with the statement made by my noble friend at the beginning but I want to hear more about it.

I was persuaded to table my Amendment 28— incidentally, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has signed it; I am grateful to him—for three reasons. One was a speech made by Meg Hillier, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee in another place, in which she talked about the terrible squalor created by binge drinkers in her constituency. The second was the speech made at Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which was equally graphic and very persuasive. Thirdly, when I was in London last week, I talked to two taxi drivers who had been first-hand witnesses to some appalling scenes.

Selling in open containers is really rather silly. The timing should be restricted. Personally, I would not sell before noon or after 10 pm—the times that I have put in my amendment—but I accept completely that any times are arbitrary, to a degree. It is important that we protect people living in areas where binge drinking at night is a real social evil and menace. I therefore look forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister says when she winds up. I thank her in anticipation but hope that she will fill in a few details.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Lord Whitty? The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is muted so I call the noble Lord, Lord Robathan.