Online Harms Consultation
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, we welcome moves to protect children and the vulnerable online. We have been calling on the Government to introduce legislation in this area for several years. Their recent record, particularly on age verification, has been—let us call it—patchy. The Statement says that the UK will lead the way with online harms legislation, and we agree that this is a once-in-a-generation chance to legislate for the kind of internet that we all want to see—one that allows access to information, entertainment and knowledge on an unparalleled scale but at the same time keeps children and vulnerable adult citizens safe, and allows people to control the kind of content that they and those for whom they are responsible see online. Social media platforms have failed for years to self-regulate and we must not miss the opportunity afforded by the forthcoming legislation.
We welcome the announcement that Ofcom will be the regulator in this area. The duties to be allocated to it play to its founding principles, which require it to have regard to users of the services that it regulates as both consumers and citizens. We endorse the duty of care approach to regulation, which, if properly legislated for, has the potential to transform the way in which companies relate to their users. The excellent work done on that approach by the Carnegie UK Trust—in particular, Professor Lorna Woods and William Perrin—should be recognised. We support the measures announced in the Statement that seek to protect and enhance freedom of expression. In general, in so far as we can judge the Government’s current legislative intentions, there appears to be a workable and effective scheme of regulations here—but they should get on with it.
As to our concerns, does the Minister agree that the essential principle in play is that what is illegal in the real world must be illegal in the virtual world? However, the corollary is that we need to be clear that our existing laws are fit for purpose and up to date. What plans do the Government have in this complex area? The test for regulatory or criminal actions is to be “reasonably foreseeable harm” to individuals, and criminal acts. What happens to concerns about systems? If we lose focus on social networks, harms to society arising from disinformation or other threats to the integrity of the electoral process, for example, may not be in scope. That simply does not make sense. Does she agree that limiting the regulator to cases where individual harm has to be proven seems unduly restrictive?
Only the largest and riskier companies will fall into category 1. If they do, they will need to reduce the chance of harm to adults which, though not illegal, will presumably involve working with the regulator to reduce such harms as hate speech and self-harm. However, many of the most egregious examples of such activity have come from small companies. Why is size selected as a basis for this categorisation?
The financial and other penalties are welcome but there must be concerns about reach and scope, as many of the companies likely to be affected are based outwith the UK. Also, can the noble Baroness explain why the Government are not insisting on primary legislation to ensure that criminal liability will attach to senior executives for serious and repeated breaches of the law? Can she explain precisely what is meant by the move to the novel concept of “age assurance”? Age verification was the preferred option until recently. Has that now been dropped? Can we be assured that some means will be found to include fraud and financial scamming, possibly through joint action between regulators such as the FSA?
Finally, it is proposed that Ofcom will be empowered to accept “super-complaints”. That is welcome but it references the recent failure of the department to review in time the need for a similar power in the Data Protection Act. Can the noble Baroness update me on progress on that situation and confirm that this legislation could be used to redress it?
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, over three years have elapsed and three Secretaries of State have come and gone since the Green Paper, in the face of a rising tide of online harms, not least during the Covid period, as Ofcom has charted. On these Benches, therefore, we welcome the set of concrete proposals we finally have to tackle online harms through a duty of care. We welcome the proposal for pre-legislative scrutiny, but I hope that there is a clear and early timetable for this to take place.
As regards the ambit of the duty of care, children are of course the first priority in prevention of harm, but it is clear that social media companies have failed to tackle the spread of fake news and misinformation on their platforms. I hope that the eventual definition in the secondary legislation includes a wide range of harmful content such as deep fakes, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, and misinformation such as anti-vax and QAnon conspiracy theories.
I am heartened too by the Government’s plans to consider criminalising the encouragement of self-harm. I welcome the commitment to keeping a balance with freedom of expression, but surely the below-the-line exemption proposed should depend on the news publisher being Leveson-compliant in how it is regulated. I think I welcome the way that the major impact of the duty of care will fall on big-tech platforms with the greatest reach, but we on these Benches will want to kick the tyres hard on the definition, threshold and duties of category 2 to make sure that this does not become a licence to propagate serious misinformation by some smaller platforms and networks.
I welcome the confirmation that Ofcom will be the regulator, but the key to success in preventing online harms will be whether Ofcom has teeth. Platforms will need to demonstrate how they have reduced the “reasonably foreseeable” risk of harm occurring from the design of their services. In mitigating the risk of “legal but harmful content”, this comes down to the way in which platforms facilitate and even encourage the sharing of extreme or sensationalist content designed to cause harm. As many excellent bodies such as Reset, Avaaz and Carnegie UK have pointed out—as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, the latter is the begetter of the duty of care proposal—this means having the power of compulsory audit. Inspection of the algorithms that drive traffic on social media is crucial.
Will Ofcom be able to make a direction to amend a recommender algorithm, how a “like” function operates and how content is promoted? Will it be able to inspect the data by which the algorithm trains and operates? Will Ofcom be able to insist that platforms can establish the identity of a user and address the issue of fake accounts, or that paid content is labelled? Will it be able to require platforms to issue fact-checked corrections to scientifically inaccurate posts? Will Ofcom work hand in hand with the Internet Watch Foundation? International co-ordination will be vital.
Ofcom will also need to work closely with the CMA if the Government are to protect vulnerable victims of online scams, fraud, and fake and misleading online reviews, if they are explicitly excluded from this legislation. Ofcom will need to work with the ASA to regulate harmful online advertising, as well. It will also need to work with the Gambling Commission on the harms of online black-market gambling, as was highlighted yesterday by my noble friend Lord Foster.
How will this new duty of care mesh with compliance with the age-appropriate design code, regulated by the ICO? As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has mentioned, the one major fudge in the response is on age verification. The proposals do not meet the objectives of the original Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act. We were promised action when the response arrived, but we have a much watered-down proposal. Pornography is increasingly available and accessible to young people on more sites than just those with user-generated content. How do the Government propose to tackle this ever more pressing problem? There are many other areas that we will want to examine in the pre-legislative process and when the Bill comes to this House.
As my honourable friend Jamie Stone pointed out in the Commons yesterday, a crucial component of minimising risk online is education. Schools need to educate children about how to use social media responsibly. What commitment do the Government have to online media education? When will the strategy appear and what resources will be devoted to it?
These are some of the yet unanswered questions before the draft legislation arrives, but I hope that the Government commit to a full debate early in the new year so that some of these issues can be unpacked at the same time as the pre-legislative scrutiny process starts.
Covid-19: Arts Sector
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The announcement on the London decision happened only yesterday, so I hope that my noble friend will give us a moment to work that through. However, Arts Council England has made over £26 million in awards to over 8,200 individuals through non-CRF funds this year, including £17.1 million through the emergency response fund for individuals.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, as my noble friend Lady McIntosh says, the current schemes have clearly not worked to support freelancers. Will the Minister please accept that and has she read the Museum Freelance report, which says that fewer than half its respondents have even been able to access government income, let alone survive over this period? What is she going to do about it?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We would accept that some freelancers have either believed that they are not eligible for these schemes or are not eligible. But we have announced considerable funding, and £378 million was claimed by freelancers in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector under phases 1 and 2 of the scheme.
Gambling Legislation
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
I reassure the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Smith of Hindhead that unlicensed sites are within the scope of the review. Again, we very much encourage your Lordships and those in your networks to submit evidence.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, following up on the question of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I welcome the review, although we point out that it is much delayed. I particularly like the Secretary of State’s description of it as a review of
“analogue law in a digital age”.
As has been said, most of the egregious behaviour is caused by companies that, in this digital age, operate outwith our boundaries and so evade UK statute. We will surely need digital solutions in a digital world. Will the review really consider this issue?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am slightly puzzled by the noble Lord’s question, because the location of the gambler is where our laws prevail, irrespective of the location of the operator.
Public Service Broadcasting Online
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
I think that the new director-general, and the most recent comments from Ofcom, support my noble friend’s final comments about breadth of views and voices—but, as he will know, the BBC is editorially independent, so decisions in relation to Radio 3 rest with it.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, British broadcasting relies to a significant extent on keeping the funding of public service broadcasters separate. What response do the Government have to the decline of mass advertising revenue referred to in the Small Screen: Big Debate consultation recently issued?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think that the Government are concerned, and my colleagues in the department are working closely with the industry to understand what a sustainable funding model looks like.
Streaming Platforms: Age Ratings
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord raises some wide-ranging points. In addition to what I have already mentioned regarding our approach, we are taking forward a media literacy strategy and developing a one-stop shop which will give companies guidance on how to keep children safe online.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, is it true that the content guidelines carried by Netflix are primarily derived by applying algorithms? Does that not differ significantly from how the BBFC arrives at its clear and consistent advice on content? If that is true, is it accurate for Netflix to say that it is carrying BBFC age ratings on all its programmes?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My understanding is that the system that has been agreed between Netflix and the BBFC is that Netflix takes a self-rating approach in line with the BBFC’s classification, which is then verified and audited by the BBFC. Both parties appear to be content.
Legislative Reform (Renewal of Radio Licences) Order 2020
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for a very clear introduction to this order and echo the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on the very good explanatory document, as he rightly called it, which accompanied it. It was easy to read and gave us a lot of information that we would otherwise have had to root around for.
Like some other noble Lords who spoke in this debate, I recall the 2015 statutory instrument, which gave existing licence holders a five-year renewal of their licences. A key point that emerges from today’s debate is how the arguments have changed over those five years. The key debate then, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has said, was whether and when digital switchover would take place.
The case was made pretty convincingly—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, is not speaking today, because he would recall saying this—for a two-tier test: the Government wanted to make sure that audiences would lead the way, with more than 50% of listening being digital, and that, perhaps ironically given later policy changes, new cars would be sold with digital radios. I have never managed to buy a new car, but I gather from friends who have that that has now happened, and all new cars have digital radios. We know that audience figures have moved ahead, so there should be no question, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has said, that we should be discussing when, and in what way, the Government are going to announce a digital switchover. But as he said, we now have fudge. There is a natural end-point to analogue at the end of the decade, but no commitment—I repeat, no commitment—being made here today by the Minister that that will happen or how.
The problems raised by other speakers, including the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about reach, and the need to ensure that the quality that comes with digital is available to all who wish to use it, are being solved by the small-scale digital multiplexes. I very much welcome that section of the statutory instrument. It is the answer to a lot of the problems we have.
Seen in this light, it is probably inevitable that existing licences need to be extended, but it is a bit ironic that the consultation was on a five-to-eight-year period and we are getting 10. Whatever happened to competition in the radio world? I appreciate the severe difficulties that companies are going through at the moment, but I thought that this Government believe that competition is the way to raise standards and make sure that public services are properly organised. When she comes to respond, perhaps the Minister could talk more about the role of Ofcom in promoting competition among existing services.
Inevitably, we want to support this. Radio provides a source of comfort and companionship through difficult times. It plays a valuable role in supporting mental well-being, which is often underplayed, enabling listeners to feel connected during a period of enforced isolation, particularly in this pandemic. It is also one of the most trusted sources of news and information, which is again important during the pandemic. It is not surprising to discover that listening numbers have been raised and now nearly 40% of people are listening to more radio than before the lockdown.
So this is a good story, but unfortunately there are sustainability consequences, because the difficulty facing companies is that the advertising that supports many radio services is collapsing. There needs to be thought about that. When she responds, could the Minister talk about other ways in which radio might be supported? Are there any other plans that might be brought forward to support the arts more generally? Radio is, in some senses, part of that community and needs support. Would she comment on the ongoing consideration of an advertising tax credit for UK media, which might stimulate demand and boost economic recovery?
The key question is whether the companies that currently hold licences will continue to do as they have in the past, which is to invest in DAB and make sure that we are ready for the switchover, as and when it naturally occurs. Saving costs by reducing the need to apply for new licences is a sensible way forward, but we need to think harder about competition and how services can be improved, if there is not going to be a change of licence and churn in that way. That will be the way that listeners stick with the radio that they love and know, carrying forward the need for investment in it.
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her very clear introduction of this SI. The main thrust of it is obvious: it is an amending sequence to make sure that we are ready for the end of the transition period when it comes. Like the other speakers so far, I have no particular concerns about the issues.
I will make two points, which have been touched on already. There is a rather coy comment in the statutory instrument Explanatory Memorandum about the impact of the Privacy Shield and, in turn, its impact on the Schrems II decision. Put simply, it says that revoking would have no real effect—but I wonder whether the Minister could take us a little further down that route when she comes to respond. It seems to me that the issues here are important. If I am right in saying that the decision we are all waiting for, on the transfer of personal data under the data adequacy agreement, will take into account both the GDPR as it was translated in the Data Protection Act and the LED—including the legal consequences of the directive that deal with that aspect of the work—do we not need to have in our mind the considerations that Schrems brought on the Privacy Shield and related issues? If it is true—and I think it is—that both of these issues will be examined by the EU when it comes to make a decision about data adequacy, we need to have a better response than simply ignoring how the Privacy Shield would have operated, and now cannot operate, and whether or not it impacts on the way in which we do things. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that.
It was good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, display both his concern about the dullness of data and his enthusiasm for some of these issues—in particular policy around data, on which his fingerprints are very evident. I welcome him to the unfortunately very small number of Members of your Lordships’ House who take an interest in this; I hope that his interest will also span across into intellectual property, which we have not heard enough about recently. Those who are interested tend to be gathered around this table and need a transfusion of new blood every now and then. I hope that he will be able to provide that—not literally, of course.
The noble Lord mentioned the curious case of the Japan free trade agreement, which is referred to in paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum. I have a slightly different take on that. It is interesting that Japan has accepted the accolade of being found to be data adequate, particularly as its relationship with the GDPR is not the same as ours. It certainly approaches data in a slightly different way. As I understand it, the Japan free trade agreement—we have yet to debate it in your Lordships’ House but hopefully will do so shortly, and I gather that a date has now been found for such a debate in the Commons—has in it a section to do with digital trade. That may not be in the Minister’s main portfolio, but it is important.
The memorandum says that digital trade between the UK and Japan after the transition period has ended will be based on the “free flow” of data. I find that slightly odd and I wonder whether the Minister can comment on it. Surely it is not free flow; it is flow based on the considerations in the GDPR and the LED, transposed into our legislation. A judgment will be made on whether it is a constrained flow, precisely because we have concerns about the free flow of data not being in the best interests of our citizens—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.
We need to be a little more certain when we come to this decision because it seems that if we are to make deals with data as part of those functions, we must be secure about what we are actually doing when we sign off these documents. This is an important part of our economy and a crucial part of our relationships with the EU. It would surely not be in the best interests of UK plc to have an agreement with Japan, however important that is, which threw further doubt on our ability to meet the data adequacy concerns.
Communications Act (e-Commerce) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her very full introduction to this SI, which is much appreciated, and I thank her and her staff for offering the chance to talk over some of the issues the SI raises in a meeting earlier this week.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, picked up on a number of points, which I will not repeat, but I want to draw out a little further the question of the asymmetry of this SI. As she says, the main beneficiary appears to be Ofcom, and it is a pretty marginal benefit in the sense that it will no longer have to clear, in-country, issues raised by UK companies which have concerns about the way services brought into the UK are being regulated under the country of origin principle. As she pointed out, this seems a rather mixed blessing in some ways. It may well have been freed from the obligation, but the companies themselves will have to do the tracking around and chasing if they have an issue they want to raise in, as has been pointed out, any of the 27 countries with which they used to be able to deal on a relatively simple basis. The Explanatory Memorandum is a bit coy about this but the position is fairly clear, given the very wide range of organisations and companies—online retailers, video sharing sites, search tools, social media platforms and internet service providers—that will be caught by the provision.
Secondly, the main users of the process provided for under this SI are charities. The figures suggest that a number of charities, such as Red Nose Day, rely heavily on people phoning in their donations. Regarding the impact assessment, I cannot believe that some adjustment will not need to be made by bodies that are reliant on such forms of generating income. If the Phone-paid Services Authority does not have the necessary authority to deal with this issue, how on earth will such bodies cope if things go wrong? We have also heard about scams. I am anxious that the Minister deals with this issue when she responds.
Thirdly, although scams account for much of the downside of what happens in this world, as we have heard, there are also concerns about vulnerable people being drawn into conversations or receiving information they would not wish to receive. Effectively, this is another example of the online harms issue. Can the Minister confirm where we are with the forthcoming online harms legislation, and that the consumer and customer issues that this SI raises will be dealt with in it?
Both the previous speakers made a point about the wider context of this SI. I mean no disrespect, but it makes a very minor change. There are a number of discrepancies between how the UK and the EU, our nearest neighbour and largest market for our services, will regulate in this area post Brexit. When the Minister responds, can she give us a better sense of what is happening with roaming, an issue of great concern for many consumers? Will they be able to use their equipment in other countries and if so, under the current arrangements, or will costs be involved?
Spectrum management is an issue on which we need, and indeed have always had, the co-operation of many other players, mainly in the EU but obviously worldwide. As a sole player, we are in a much weaker position to negotiate the sort of spectrum we want. Using additional spectrum, spectrum that is not efficient or spectrum that is not as appropriate to the task will be more costly for British business. Do the Government have any plans to resolve this issue, and how will it be deployed in future?
On the wider question of net neutrality, which we were concerned about a few years ago, and on which we had many friends in the EU, how is that being managed as we go forward?
Electronic Communications and Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment) (European Electronic Communications Code and EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very good introduction to this SI. It is a long and complicated one, but she came across the issues quickly and with great clarity. I also thank her for arranging a meeting where I was able to ask direct questions of the officials responsible for this work.
It is, on first glance, a rather strange document—almost hybrid, if that is not a pun too far. It introduces most elements of a European directive positively and helpfully, but it also uses the EU exit regulations to discount a few things that might have got in its way. I say that to position myself on my first point: rather like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, it seems to me that this is almost primary legislation being achieved through secondary legislation because of the changes that are being made that will have an impact not only for consumers and companies but, more responsibly, for the regulator. This document is so large that one would almost want to go through it line by line and ask questions by having a due process that allowed more than this important but rather short exchange as a result of it being a statutory instrument.
I asked that question of officials. In a slightly unguarded moment, perhaps, the impression I gained—I will not quote them—was that Ministers presumably could have chosen either to seek a legislative opportunity to put forward primary legislation that might not have been time-efficient, as it certainly would not get us past the deadline of 21 December 2020, which is not far away, or to take the slightly unusual step of doing it through secondary legislation. These are my words, not theirs. For good reason or bad, the decision was taken to do it this way. I am not going to carry on with this point, because it was not picked up by any of our standing committees that looked at the legislation or by the Commons. However, it is quite interesting, and there must be a break point.
I will make one other point about it. One of the things that is looked at in deciding whether something should be primary or secondary legislation is the impact it has on consumers: for example, in criminal penalties or taxes. I do not think there is any such provision in here, but I wonder about the approach to the special subsidy. There is a phrase in the notes which gives the sense that it is not just a question of whether those who are vulnerable or have low incomes can get treated under the special subsidy system; it is also possible for Ofcom to look at whether others should make a contribution.
That point about “others” comes on page 8 of the Explanatory Memorandum in point 7.24, which says:
“If the burden is unfair, Ofcom may determine that contributions should be made by other providers to help meet the burden”.
I wondered whether that was heading towards taxation. I will leave my point in that area.
I want to make only two other points, because the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has made a substantial contribution to this debate. One is that, as he said, one of the key guiding principles, which we went over at length in earlier legislation and presumably will meet again as we go forward on this journey, is the attempt to get the country to have a gigabit-capable infrastructure. I welcome a lot of the measures here which will point us in that way, but I want to ask about two of them.
First, there is the question of whether the ability to share equipment, which is one of the powers that Ofcom has taken or will be given under these regulations, will be sufficient to ensure that the number of not-spots is reduced across the country. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said in citing the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, it seems that we still have patches of the country, sometimes in major conurbations and many times in London, where the quality of reception is so bad that it is unbelievable that we are even thinking about getting to a USO of 10 megabits per second, rather than to this nirvana that we hope to have of one gigabit.
There are two measures that I thought might help with that. One is the need for a power to make providers share equipment where it is important. In the regulations, that appears to be limited to whether there is unfair competition. Is that right or is it more focused, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, was saying, on this question of getting the whole country to a higher level of capability?
The second is the way in which spectrum is allocated, because that has such a major burden on the 5G capability of the country, and who knows what 6G or other Gs would do when they came along? One complaint that we were aware of 18 months or so ago, when we were doing the primary legislation in this area, was that the regulations relating to spectrum sales did not give sufficient fine-tuning of the arrangements under which Ofcom offered it to ensure that the quality of the spectrum available to those bidding for it was being met satisfactorily, given the needs that they identified.
I am probably at the limit of my technical knowledge at this point and will therefore not continue this line. But I am sure that the Minister is fully briefed on it today, and if she is not, perhaps she could write to me. Do the measures in this statutory instrument unblock that problem? When allocating spectrum, it is important to recognise that the bandwidth within it is as important as the amount available under certain measures, particularly 5G, because of its capability in ensuring that local areas are properly linked up so that those who live in blocks of flats, for instance, are not blocked simply because the walls are too thick or the material used in the building is obstructive to travel.
These are the two things we were left with after we went through this the last time around when we were talking about telecommunications development, the partnership that is necessary with the internet service providers and the problems faced by those in rural areas and in the centres of towns. They need to be assured that these regulations will bring this forward.
Finally, like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I welcome the new consumer rights that have been brought in. They will be helpful, and I am glad to see them in place at last.
Covid-19: Support for Entertainment and Music Industry Freelancers
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government absolutely recognise the importance of touring for musicians and other creative talent from this country. We continue to seek a reciprocal agreement with the EU, which would allow UK citizens to undertake some business activities in the EU without a work permit on a short-term basis. Unfortunately, however, I cannot comment on the detail of these arrangements.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, the Minister mentioned that her department had done some research into the problems facing freelancers and the self-employed, most of whom have not been paid since March 2020. Does her research show how much funding the DDCMS estimates is needed to create a safety net for those workers in cultural industries? How much of the Culture Recovery Fund has actually been received to date by freelancers and the self-employed, and will she publish that information?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am happy to share the detail of that information in a letter to the House and put a copy in the Library. We are working very hard. We have already disbursed over £500 million to 2,000 organisations as part of the Culture Recovery Fund. As I mentioned, that includes specific pots for music venues and cinemas, and we were pleased to announce additional funding for heritage and arts organisations just this weekend.