Growing up with the Internet (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, when I put my name down to speak in this debate I asked to go on late, for reasons to do with having to occupy the Woolsack for a bit. I knew that when I got to the end of the debate there would be little left for me to say. I did not quite anticipate feeling that everything that I might have wanted to say had not only been said by other people, but said so much better and with so much more passion and authority than I could possibly muster that, frankly, every ounce of confidence I ever had about participating in this debate had drained out through my toes. I will therefore make only a few brief remarks, which are reflections on what I have heard in the debate.

I am a member of the Communications Committee, which I joined just as this piece of work was getting under way, so I participated in it. I thank our sometime chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Best, for the skilful way he led us—in our very different states of grace in relation to the information we were given—to a series of conclusions to which we were all happy to sign up and to which I here publicly sign up. I do not intend to tell the House all the reasons why I agree with the report, because at the end of this long debate that seems entirely redundant.

I will, however, say something that bears on something the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said about—I may get this wrong—Facebook for Dummies and for “senior dummies”. I fall into the dummies category but not yet into the Facebook category. I make it clear that part of the reason I struggled to understand a lot of what was put in front of us as this report took shape was that I have resolutely set my face against participating in social media. The reason for that is not because I do not know how to use the internet—I do, pretty much, and I use it—or because I disapprove of it in some high-minded, moral way. It is because I do not wish to know the things it wants to tell me. That includes all the kind of rubbish that runs about on Twitter—and I say that knowing full well the sort of rubbish that is—and all the trivial stuff that my children and now, increasingly, their children, want to say to each other through Facebook, Twitter and other things.

I can use WhatsApp and am very pleased to do so, because I can get lovely photographs of my grandchildren and take lovely photographs of the hedgehogs that live in my garden and send those to my grandchildren. That seems entirely benign. What is not benign is the impact of, first, some of the content available through social media networks—much of which has been extensively described, or at least alluded to, as the debate has gone on—and, secondly, the amount of our children and young people’s brain space and time that is being taken up by stuff which, yes, of course, has great value and is extremely useful to them in lots of ways, including in facilitating some social relationships, but much of which is at best trivial and at worst downright harmful.

I am not foolish enough to think that you can stuff any genie back in its bottle, so I do not subscribe to the view that by simply saying “We don’t like this” we can make it go away. The report does not in any way try to do that. The noble Baroness, Lady Shields, referred to being perpetually in a state of catching up. What the report tries to say is that we will be running behind the developments that the large tech companies can come up with and behind the ability of young people, for whom it is a natural part of their lives to use that technology for uses of which we may approve and of which we may not approve. But although we will continue to be on the back foot as legislators, or indeed just as old people—I do not mean to imply that everybody in this debate is old, but I am—in all seriousness, we must not therefore decide that nothing can be done.

I learned so much from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in the course of this report’s creation, as I did from all my colleagues, from our special advisers and from many of the witnesses who came before us. I listened to her yesterday proposing several amendments to the Data Protection Bill, which she is supporting along with other Members of your Lordships’ House, and it was an absolute masterclass in clarity and focus, which was bedded in very deep knowledge about the issues that we are discussing this afternoon. I have heard others speak today from exactly comparable depths of knowledge and all of them, including in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, are saying that there are things we can do. They may not be absolutely infallible, may have to be changed and may address only some of the issues that worry us, but something can be done.

I do not need to repeat what those things are because they are in the report and lots of others have talked about them. But will the Government, and the noble Baroness on the Front Bench when she replies, please take seriously the strong indications given by the report that it is not good enough to say, “This is too difficult”? It is difficult and there will be resistance from very powerful interests that do not wish, for perfectly obvious reasons, to have constraints placed on their ability to operate as commercial entities. We do not have to see them as monsters; we simply have to see them as commercial entities acting in their own interests. In lots of situations, we want to encourage people to act commercially in their own interests. But there is a great deal about the way in which tech companies, large and small, are—I hesitate to say this but I will—preying on our children that is absolutely not benign. It does not conform to any of the values to which I think most people in this place today, and beyond, think that we should subscribe.

One of those values is something that arose from the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, about the centrality to our ability to live fulfilled lives of direct human contact and relationships. When I walk down the street, I see groups of young people who are physically together, but every single one is looking at his or her phone. I cannot help but think, “Why are you doing that? What on your phone is so much more beguiling than the person next to you who is your friend?”.

I do not know the answer, but we must ask the question, and we must surely attempt to require more of these very powerful corporations, of which we have need and of which we are in some awe—let us be honest. If you are me, you really do not get how they do it, but you jolly well know that they do, and that they have a responsibility to those who are growing up now, which means that we must require of them the highest possible standards. I recommend to the Government that the very first thing that they do to make this happen is accept the amendments to the Data Protection Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which had the support—as I understood it yesterday afternoon—of many people across the House, on all sides. That would be an extremely good place to start, although it will certainly not be the end.