Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Julian Knight

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), to his place. To say that he has been given a hospital pass in terms of this legislation is a slight understatement. It is very difficult to understand, and the ability he has shown at the Dispatch Box in grasping many of the major issues is to his credit. He really is a safe pair of hands and I thank him for that.

Looking at the list of amendments, I think it is a bit of a hotchpotch, yet we are going to deal only with certain amendments today and others are not in scope. That shows exactly where we are with this legislation. We have been in this stasis now for five years. I remember that we were dealing with the issue when I joined the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and it is almost three years since the general election when we said we would bring forward this world-leading legislation. We have to admit that is a failure of the political class in all respects, but we have to understand the problem and the realities facing my hon. Friend, other Ministers and the people from different Departments involved in drafting this legislation.

We are dealing with companies that are more powerful than the oil barons and railway barons of the 19th century. These companies are more important than many states. The total value of Alphabet, for instance, is more than the total GDP of the Netherlands, and that is probably a low estimate of Alphabet’s global reach and power. These companies are, in many respects, almost new nation states in their power and reach, and they have been brought about by individuals having an idea in their garage. They still have that culture of having power without the consequences that flow from it.

Channel 4 Privatisation

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Julian Knight

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Julian Knight.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I am concerned to hear that the media Bill White Paper will be published tomorrow, a day when we may not have an opportunity to see the full details. I hope that we will not have to rely on the media round in the morning to get those details.

On Channel 4 privatisation. I start from the position that everything should be in the private sector unless there is the strongest of cases that public ownership is absolutely essential. I therefore broadly welcome the concept of privatisation, but what assurances can the Minister give me that the privatisation is a game worth the candle? Will it be part of a redesign of public service content ensuring prominence, collaborative working of a whole new order and a continued driver of BBC reform to gradually and safely wean it off the licence fee?

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Julian Knight

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could you clarify how we better ensure that Ministers who sit in the other place face proper scrutiny from parliamentary Select Committees of this House? The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has had considerable difficulty securing any time with the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office. We were told on 16 February that it was his responsibility to oversee the negotiation of crucial bilateral agreements to ensure that people working in the creative and service sectors in the UK can travel to and work in countries within the EU. Following our subsequent request to see the Minister, we had two refusals point blank. It was only after the Prime Minister himself stated, under my questioning at a Liaison Committee hearing, that he expected the Minister to appear before the Committee, that finally, on 23 April, we secured a date for the Minister’s appearance, that being today.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you can imagine my dismay at the said Minister’s subsequent cancellation of his appearance this week. We all appreciate that there are many important issues for the Minister to address, particularly in the light of the trade dispute with the EU. However, with the Minister citing the G7 as a reason for cancellation, that can hardly be deemed an unexpected event. Could you express the House’s concern over Ministers from the other place not appearing in front of parliamentary Select Committees to receive due scrutiny, and would you reflect on the democratic deficit that this brings about?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving notice of his point of order. Select Committee scrutiny is an essential aspect of our work in this place, and for Committees to be able properly to undertake scrutiny they need access to key witnesses, including Ministers. The Government must therefore make every effort to ensure that the appropriate Ministers are able to give evidence to Committees in a timely way. When the Minister concerned is in the House of Lords, it is particularly important that Committees in this House are able to hold them to account.

I am very sorry that the hon. Gentleman’s Committee has been experiencing these difficulties. He has now put his concerns on the record. They will have been heard by Ministers, and I hope that every effort is now made to ensure that the Committee is able to take evidence from the Minister, without delay.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Julian Knight

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my chairmanship of the all-party group on fair fuel for UK motorists and UK hauliers.

I was going to regale the House with talk about Jaguar Land Rover in Solihull and all the efforts it is making in this regard, but that can wait for another day. The Bill takes us part way, doing good groundwork and providing rolling regulatory reform, to ensuring that the necessary provisions are in place by the time the cars of the mid-21st century hit the market in the 2020s. For electric cars, we need not only a proper regulatory framework, but to ensure that the necessary physical infrastructure such as charge points is in place. I, along with my all-party group, outlined to the Chancellor recently in a letter that we have a long way to go to reach this goal.

We have 8,400 filling stations, each of which can fill five or six cars every five minutes, whereas there are fewer than 4,000 public charging points, only a quarter of which can fully charge a car in half an hour or less. We need to bring confidence to the market over time by reassuring motorists that there is no danger of their running out of juice on their way to the next appointment or to their urgent engagement. This is to say nothing of the major upgrades that will be needed to the national grid and our national power generation, or the technological progress necessary to feed back into the network from these new types of car.

I am pleased that the Government are taking steps to ensure that the challenges involved in insuring automated vehicles are resolved as soon as possible. The Bill will rightly ensure that insurers have a statutory right to recover costs from a manufacturer in the event of a crash caused by malfunctioning self-driving technology. That is absolutely vital to ensure that car users are not unfairly punished in the event of a collision they could not have prevented. Moreover, the provision to ensure that insurers retain the primary responsibility for settling claims means that victims will not need to wait for the outcomes of arcane and technical disputes.

Finally, I must emphasise how important it is that the public mood is prepared for self-driving cars. As chairman of the all-party group on fair fuel for motorists and hauliers, I have seen how millions of motorists bought diesel cars with the very best of intentions, urged on by politicians, only to face the potential for punitive taxes as official winds now blow in a new direction. I well understand why the public would be sceptical of politicians lauding a new game-changing technology, but we need to emphasise the huge potential to save thousands of lives by cutting the number of human error car accidents on our roads each year. We will fulfil that potential, though, only if automated vehicles are taken up widely. We all know how easy it can be to stick with what is comfortable and familiar. If public opinion does not keep pace with technology, the visions contained in the Bill will not go as far as they should. I welcome the Bill; it is definitely a step in the right direction.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

After my strictures, a lot of Members have obviously withdrawn from making their speeches, so we can move to Andy McDonald.