Plastics: Health Research

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I have had the opportunity to speak to the chief scientific officer in this space, so I am guided by the science here, and I have also heard the impact from the Food Standards Authority, which considers it unlikely that the presence of plastic particles in food would cause harm. Further research in this space will be reporting in March 2023, but currently there is limited evidence to suggest that there is any harm.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, the Environment Act includes the power to be able to charge for single-use items, including plastics, to reduce consumer consumption. Can the Minister tell the House whether or not the Government intend to use this power and, if so, when?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I am mindful that my brief as Health Minister is fairly large but maybe not quite that large. But I note that in this space we have already replaced plastic bags, very successfully introduced a usage charge, and reduced consumption by 95% in the main supermarkets, so that is a tool that we know works. But currently there is limited evidence suggesting that it is a health hazard.

Coronavirus Bill

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a freelance television producer.

I very much appreciate the extraordinary work that the Government and especially the Chancellor have already carried out to mitigate the effects of the present crisis on the economy and the nation’s workers. However, as other noble Lords have said, we are in an unprecedented situation, with bankruptcy and unemployment sweeping through our nation. I want to concentrate my comments on Clauses 39 to 44, which extend statutory sick pay.

Quite rightly, the Government’s efforts so far have concentrated on the job retention scheme, supporting businesses and employees to ensure that there is an economy to build on when these terrible times are over. However, my concern is for the 5 million self-employed and freelance workers, many of whom have had their contracts cancelled with only a week’s notice—if that. They have been sent home to worry about paying ongoing bills without any prospect of returning to work in the foreseeable future.

This group of freelancers and self-employed people is far-ranging. It includes 37% of people in the creative industries, who are highly skilled and highly paid and work in what is one of the fastest-growing areas of the economy. It also includes sole traders, such as plumbers, electricians and agricultural workers, as well as an increasing number of supply teachers and agency social care workers. I am also concerned about zero-hours workers who are independent contractors and are often semi-detached from companies. Many claim that they should be defined as employees and entitled to the same rights as employees, including having access to the job retention compensation scheme.

I have been told about a number of cases involving these workers. One is a cycle instructor teaching Bikeability classes in London schools. He is defined as a self-employed worker on a zero-hours contract; in reality, he does public sector work without any of the protections of a public sector employee. Normally, March to July is his busiest time, earning him up to £2,000 a month. With the schools closing, all his work has dried up. A 24-hour cancellation policy has left him with no work and no prospect of work. At the moment, he is not part of the job retention scheme and faces a very uncertain future.

I understand that supporting these people is very complicated. When I asked a question on this subject on Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, explained that the Government were looking for a comprehensive package which was co-ordinated and coherent and would take time to roll out. Of course, I very much welcome the Chancellor going some way to help the self-employed by rolling out universal credit, allowing self-assessed tax payments to be postponed until January 2021, and encouraging interruption loans.

However, universal credit pays only £94 a week and even less if people have been prudent enough to save a nest egg. As has often been said in this House, UC takes five weeks to roll out. The tax holiday and interruption loans are also helpful but, in the end, they simply kick the problem down the road and the debt still has to be paid. We have no idea how long this crisis period will continue and, in the meantime, these hard-working people from across the country and across society face mounting debts and a very frightening future.

I know that the Government are looking at what is happening abroad and talking to stakeholders about how to support the self-employed through the crisis. Norway is paying self-employed workers grants equivalent to 80% of their average income over the past three years. Belgium’s self-employed workers will have access to an income replacement scheme.

I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to an idea supported by many across the self-employed sector, which, at the very least, would go some way to compensating for lost wages. I would like to see the Government extend their job retention scheme and pay 80% of expected earnings up to the cap of the median wage. Rolling this out will be difficult but the Government could use the person’s last three years’ tax returns to decide how much support they should be paid within this limit. It is estimated that four-fifths of the self-employed and freelancers earn less than the median wage and so would benefit hugely. Maybe the resulting grants could be made through the payment on account scheme, as is used at present for tax rebates. I quite understand that new software would need to be rolled out at HMRC to administer this system. That is often expensive and not entirely successful. Perhaps the DWP and other departments could help out.

At this time of unprecedented worry for every single person in this nation, we must think about the millions of workers who are the backbone of this country, who have lost their livelihoods—workers who are now sitting at home worrying about how they are going to get through the coming months without incurring huge debts, which could take years to pay back. Action is needed now to ensure that they do not sink into destitution and despair.

Queen’s Speech

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a series producer at Raw TV making content for CNN. I echo the call of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for a rapid introduction of the online harms Bill. We need it as soon as possible.

In a digital age when internet access is now a utility, without which it is almost impossible to be part of life, internet safety has never been more important. We have heard much recently about how platforms and websites have been designed to capture users. This was reinforced for me by comments from the co-founder of Facebook, Sean Parker, who now declares himself a conscientious objector to social media. He said:

“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains … The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them ... was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’”


The engineers of Facebook and other tech companies, he explained, ensured that the users of platforms receive a small dopamine hit when they give likes or make comments, creating a potentially dangerous “social-validation feedback loop”. Much of the concern about the internet, reflected in the White Paper, concentrates on taking down the abusive and harmful content received by users and introducing a new complaints system. That is welcome, but the sheer volume of abuse online and the ability of the perpetrators easily to move their comments across the internet makes such a regime hard to enforce.

The design issue raised by Sean Parker must be at the heart of any new legislation. I emphasise the overriding significance of a duty of care on all tech companies to build safety designs into their digital systems, making them responsible for the safety of their users, and that would need to be enforced by a regulator. The White Paper calls for steps to ensure that products and systems are safe by design, but the Bill must ensure that this is a comprehensive approach. All sites must examine whether they encourage bad behaviour and harmful content. They must examine their navigation and discovery mechanisms to ensure that their algorithms do not prioritise fake news and outrage to generate clickbait. A regulator must ask companies to exercise a risk assessment of their systems and then to enforce implementation very thoroughly.

Part of safety by design must incorporate Sean Parker’s concern about engineering potential addiction into the internet. One of my particular concerns is what is happening in the unregulated areas of online gaming. The gracious Speech has a review of the Gambling Act to include loot boxes and the use of credit cards for gambling. Loot boxes are a relatively new introduction into the gaming world. They allow users to spend money buying random and unknown selections of extra content, which, depending on what is in the box, will either enhance or diminish the player’s abilities. There is evidence that huge amounts of money are being spent by young players on loot boxes and myriad other means of paying to enhance their position in the game. At the moment, the video game manufacturers refuse to put a ceiling on this spend or self-regulate their industry responsibly.

It is good that the Government are reviewing whether the loot-box aspect of video gaming should be covered by a gambling regulator, but the problem is much wider and deeper than just loot boxes. Internet and gaming addiction is baked into the design of their systems. It should be part of a new digital regulator’s role to gather reliable evidence of the extent of this problem and, if necessary, to have the powers to enforce a safe design on gambling and video game companies limiting time and money spent on online, often by young people to the detriment of the rest of their lives.

On another matter, before Christmas the Chief Secretary to the Treasury confirmed that the Prime Minister had ordered a review into the sanction for non-payment of the BBC licence fee. This issue was looked only four years ago by David Perry QC, who concluded that there should be no change in the sanction regime. The recent report into public service broadcasting in the digital age by the Communications and Digital Committee, of which I have the honour of being a member, learned that the BBC’s licence fee revenue is already falling dramatically on an annual basis. Surely to alter the sanction regime now would only create a further reduction in revenue.

The committee pointed out that by 2022 the revenue available to public service broadcasting in the UK would be massively dwarfed by the mainly American streaming giants coming into the market. They have a global income to outspend British channels in all genres except news. The Government stated in their evidence to the committee that

“in this changing media landscape, the purposes of PSB—to inform our understanding of the world; to stimulate knowledge and learning; to reflect UK cultural identity … remain vitally important.”

I suggest that a review of the sanction regime would damage this anchor of our country’s cultural identity. Instead, the Government should follow one of the report’s recommendations: to set up an independent and transparent licensing body which would decide how one of our greatest national institutions is funded. In the post-Brexit world we must do everything we can to make sure that our great public institutions prosper and act as a calling card for this country across the globe.