GCHQ Centenary

Debate between Alex Chalk and Julian Lewis

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend, who makes an excellent point with his customary eloquence and force.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this debate forward. Will he also pay tribute to the people who did so much in the predecessor organisation GCHQ during the second world war, and lived out their lives afterwards in complete secrecy, claiming no credit for their great achievements? I can remember the year 1974—two years before he was born—when the book “The Ultra Secret” revealed what had happened, by which time it was far too late for many of the people who had done those deeds to claim the credit they deserved.

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. Selflessness and discretion are the watchwords that so many of these dedicated public servants live by, and he has explained the point extremely well.

Cyber-bullying: Young People’s Mental Health

Debate between Alex Chalk and Julian Lewis

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman rightly raises a really important point. It is only recently of course that revenge porn has become a criminal offence, but I dare say there is more that could be done. It is just one aspect of the hinterland of cyber-bullying but an extremely important one to raise.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is doing us tremendous service by bringing this topic to the House. To what extent is anonymous bullying a factor? We all know from before the age of the internet the devastating effect of poison pen letters, even on a small scale; here one can have anonymised poison pen electronic letters that are accessible worldwide. Is it people who are known to victims mainly or is it people sheltering behind anonymity?

[Alex Chalk]

That is an extremely good point. In truth, it is both, and not only is it the nature of the bullying but the volume. Social media provides the opportunity, whether through sham accounts, spoof accounts or whatever, to multiply the torment, so my right hon. Friend raises such an important issue.

The most striking thing of all perhaps was that 83% of the young people told our inquiry that they thought the social media companies should do more to tackle this scourge. They felt that the onus was on the victim to act—to block or delete—and that reporting all too often felt like shouting into an empty room. There is a perceived lack of consequences for those who engage in bullying behaviour online in a way that is different from real life. There is some evidence from some platforms of temporary sanctions for cyber-bullies to nudge them back to good behaviour, but they remain the exception.

In fairness, the message is starting to get through. In his new year 2018 message, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, vowed to “fix Facebook”. One of the priorities he highlighted was “protecting our community from abuse and hate”, and he admitted that enforcement of house policies was failing. I am afraid we concluded that he was right. It is particularly impactful and devastating when the people who are being affected are under the age of 18. They are just children.

While we were grateful for the constructive engagement of social media companies—and it is true to say that the larger companies tended to take the issue more seriously—the unavoidable overall impression was that announcements and measures were largely tokenistic: slow and inadequate. Because there was so little transparency about the number of reports and the nature of the response, it was, in effect, impossible to determine whether the resources allocated bore any relation to the scale of the problem. The companies essentially continue to mark their own homework. As one witness put it, companies faced with growing alarm about the implications for young people’s mental health are “walking backwards slowly”. That is not acceptable, because our evidence showed that those failures have an impact on children and young people, and that the effect is particularly profound, concerning and long-lasting.

It is important to emphasise that tackling cyber-bullying must be a joint endeavour. Parents, guardians and teachers all have a role to play, but it is equally true that when it comes to minors, social media companies bear responsibility as well. It is simply not enough to sign children up and then just let them get on with it. It is important for the companies to be age-appropriate, and to do more to identify under-13s and, when appropriate, gain explicit consent from parents or guardians. They should provide timely, effective and consistent responses to online bullying, and they must become more accountable. What do I mean by that? I mean that they must publish data about their responses to reports of online bullying. Only then—if we know the number of reports, and the nature and timeliness of the responses—will any sensible assessment of the efficacy of those responses be possible.

As for the Government, I think that they ought to do what they reasonably can to improve our understanding of the role of social media in adolescent mental health. We are very much in the scientific foothills of our understanding of these issues, and the firmest possible evidence base will help to tailor the best solutions. I recognise, however, that the Government have gone a long way with the digital charter to increase the tempo, and I urge them to continue that important work.

My final comments are thanks. I thank the young people—more than 1,000 of them—who responded to the inquiry and gave evidence, and without whom the report would have had no currency. It was their evidence that gave its conclusions their heft, and it was their experience that left such a marked impression on all who took part in the inquiry.