Online Abuse: Protection for Children

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this profound issue. Ofcom’s codes go beyond current industry standards and practices. Under the Online Safety Act, companies cannot decline to take steps to protect children, including young girls, because it is too expensive or inconvenient. Protecting children is a priority. The Secretary of State has said that safety by design is one of the priorities in the statement of strategic priorities of this Government. Ofcom is required to consider those priorities in its approach to online safety regulation and will need to provide regular updates on how they are being delivered.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, why have civic groups and campaigners been told that their responses to the consultation on the children’s code will not be considered for incorporation into the code until the next round of regulations in 18 months’ time? When dealing with the rapidly evolving tech sector, does the Minister not agree that this regulatory cycle is too slow?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, as part of its statutory duties, Ofcom consulted widely on the proposals in the codes and considered responses from a wide range of stakeholders, including children and civil society organisations. Ofcom has been clear that it has reflected these views in its decision. It has made a number of changes reflecting feedback from civil society stakeholders. For example, it has substantially strengthened the expectation on services that set a minimum age—often 13.

Ofcom: Protection of Children Codes

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. I should make it clear that Ofcom’s codes will improve child safety online and go beyond similar regimes elsewhere to achieve this. By regularly conducting thorough risk assessments, services can proactively identify emerging threats and adapt safety measures accordingly. The Government’s measures in the code allow Ofcom to hold companies accountable for their overall management of risks to children. Ofcom will monitor implementation of risk assessment processes and code measures, building on its approach where needed. The Government will separately monitor whether legislation needs to be strengthened.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, Ofcom has identified live-streaming as a functionality which causes harm. There is nothing in the codes requiring the tech companies to mitigate this risk. Does the Minister agree that such an urgent issue, which cannot wait until Ofcom’s additional safety measures consultation, should be included in the present children’s codes?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Viscount has raised an important issue. Ofcom has recognised that live-streaming can pose specific risks to children and will consult on proposals to reduce these risks, alongside a number of other measures. It will publish this consultation before the Summer Recess. The Act and Ofcom’s codes are clear: services are required to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children encountering primary priority content, including pornography. That will extend to live-streaming services that allow pornography.

Online Harms: Young People

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that important point. Media literacy in all its forms is important for parents, teachers and young people, to make sure that we create a respectful online environment. Ofcom has specific media literacy duties that it will carry out. Its media literacy strategy prioritises research and initiatives to address online misogyny, including research to understand how such harmful behaviour occurs. As set out in the strategy, Ofcom expects its work on online misogyny to directly target teenage boys and young men. However, the noble Baroness is right that it goes further than that: we have to educate parents as well, to look at what their children are accessing. There is a huge job of work to be done on education in the wider sphere. Obviously, schools are playing their part in that now, as the noble Baroness acknowledged, but we have far more to do on this, and all aspects of government are addressing these issues.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, the Online Safety Act allows Ofcom to look at how much children are using social media, yet the new children’s code from Ofcom does not mention addiction. What are the Government doing to deal with the problem of screen addiction among our children?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Viscount will know that schools already have a policy, or are expected by the Department for Education to have one, to ensure that children do not have access to phones in schools. That is a clear policy that the Government are keen to reiterate. What we are talking about here is what children do outside the school environment. From July, the children’s code of practice will provide much greater reassurance and protection for children. Services will be expected to provide age-appropriate experiences online by protecting children from bullying, violent content, abuse and misogynistic content. In other words, there will be much more forceful regulation to specifically protect children. Obviously, we will continue to monitor the codes of practice, but there are specific new powers under the code that come into effect in July and we want to see their impact.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, of course the Government recognise the concerns that many in the creative industries have about the potential impact of AI on that sector. This is why we want to act now to give UK creators greater control over their works and more transparency about how their work is being used, as well as creating the ability for them to be paid for it. That is exactly what the proposals in our consultation aim to achieve. But I should say that this is a complicated area, because AI adoption also has the potential to drive growth across the economy, including in the creative industries. For example, 38% of creative industry businesses are already using AI technologies. So this is a complicated area, but we know we have to find a solution and protect the interests of creatives in the future in the way that the noble Baroness has alerted us to.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, the Government intend to take out the transparency amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Kidron in the Data (Use and Access) Bill. What provision are they going to make to ensure that creatives know that their copyrighted work has been pirated by AI models, so that they can then take action?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government agree with many of the points made during the debate on the data Bill, and in other discussions in this House, that further transparency is needed from AI developers about their use of web crawlers and the materials that they use to train their models. However, we have a consultation out and it would be premature to commit to specific legislation until we have analysed the responses to that consultation and heard all the voices in this sector. Nevertheless, I assure the noble Viscount that we intend to resolve this issue. It is one that the previous Government failed to resolve and we need to resolve it now, so we will take action as soon as the consultation has been analysed and resolved.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Discussions with the ICO are taking place at the moment about the scope and intention of a number of issues around AI, and this issue would be included in that. However, I cannot say at the moment that that intention is specifically spelled out in the way that the noble Baroness is asking.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

This has been a wide-ranging debate, with important contributions from across the Committee. I take some comfort from the Minister’s declaration that the exemptions will not be used for web crawling, but I want to make sure that they are not used at the expense of the privacy and control of personal data belonging to the people of Britain.

That seems particularly so for Amendment 137 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I was particularly taken by her pointing out that children’s data privacy had not been taken into account when it came to AI, reinforced by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, telling us about the importance of the Bill. She said it was paramount to protect children in the digital age and reminded us that this is the biggest breakthrough of our lifetime and that children need protecting from it. I hope very much that there will be some successful meetings, and maybe a government amendment on Report, responding to these passionate and heartfelt demands. On that basis, I sincerely hope the Minister will meet us all and other noble Lords to discuss these matters of data privacy further. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much, but is she not concerned by the preliminary opinion from the EDPS, particularly that traditional academic research is blurrier than ever and that it is even harder to distinguish research which generally benefits society from that which primarily serves private interest? People in the street would be worried about that and the Bill ought to be responding to that concern.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I have not seen that observation, but we will look at it. It goes back to my point that the provisions in this Bill are designed to be future facing as well as for the current day. The strength of those provisions will apply regardless of the technology, which may well include AI. Noble Lords may know that we will bring forward a separate piece of legislation on AI, when we will be able to debate this in more detail.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a very important debate about one of the most controversial areas of this Bill. My amendments are supported across the House and by respected civic institutions such as the Ada Lovelace Institute. I understand that the Minister thinks they will stifle scientific research, particularly by nascent AI companies, but the rights of the data subject must be borne in mind. As it stands, under Clause 67, millions of data subjects could find their information mined by AI companies, to be reused without consent.

The concerns about this definition being too broad were illustrated very well across the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said that it was too broad and must recognise that AI development will be open to using data research for any AI purposes and talked about his amendment on protecting children’s data, which is very important and worthy of consideration. This was supported by my noble friend Lady Kidron, who pointed out that the definition of scientific research could cover everything and warned that Clause 67 is not just housekeeping. She quoted the EDPS and talked about its critical clarification not being included in the transfer of the scientific definition into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, asked what in the Bill has changed when you consider how much has changed in AI. I was very pleased to have the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who warned against the abuse and misuse of data and the broad definition in this Bill, which could muddy the waters. He supported the public interest test, which would be fertile ground for helping define scientific data.

Surely this Bill should walk the line in encouraging the AI rollout to boost research and development in our science sector. I ask the Minister to meet me and other concerned noble Lords to tighten up Clauses 67 and 68. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Generative AI: Intellectual Property Rights

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will know that there was an attempt to come to a voluntary agreement on this under the previous Government that would have been a way forward for both sectors. Unfortunately, that voluntary agreement did not work out, so the ball has bounced back into our court. The noble Baroness is absolutely right about journalism: if we do not have a vibrant journalistic bedrock for this society, we do not really have a democratic society; we need to know what is going on in the UK and the world. The noble Baroness is right that we need to protect journalists: we need to ensure that their work is rewarded and paid in the right way. We are working on this. I am sorry that I am beginning to sound a bit like a stuck record, but I assure noble Lords that we are working at pace to try to resolve these issues.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, many creators sold their IP rights to big publishers before the advent of large language models. Since then, those publishers have been exploiting creators’ work for the training of large language models and the creation of new AI performances, but they have failed to recompense the original creators. Does the Minister think that creators’ performance and moral rights should be updated in the face of the new use by AI of their work?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

That is exactly what we are trying to achieve. Creatives need to be properly respected and rewarded for their activities. We need to make sure that when scraping and web-crawling takes place, there is transparency about that and the originators of the material are properly recognised and rewarded.

Electronic Media: False Information

Debate between Viscount Colville of Culross and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, of course I am very happy to meet the noble Baroness to discuss this further, and I pay tribute to the work she has done on this issue in the past. On “small but risky” services, as she knows, the Secretary of State has written to Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, and a very detailed reply was received today from Ofcom. We are still absorbing everything that it is proposing, but it is clear that it is taking this issue very seriously. That will give us the focus for our discussion when we meet.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, we have seen the first charge under the Online Safety Act’s false communications offence. To facilitate further prosecutions for false communications, can the Minister support statutory guidance to further define the term “non-trivial psychological harm” on a likely audience caused by disinformation?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, all this information will be detailed in the Ofcom guidance to be published in due course. This includes not only illegal harms but all the other issues under the category that the noble Viscount mentioned, all of which will be covered by the Ofcom codes to be published in due course.