Domestic Violence

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Bates

Monday 9th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We have sought to ring-fence resource—£40 million—during the lifetime of this Parliament for support of victim and survivor groups. The £10 million to which my noble friend refers was an additional amount to support in particular the availability of places in refuges for victims of domestic violence.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

The Minister is quite right: that £10 million was made available to try to make way for all the refuges that have had to close down and all the women and children who have been made vulnerable by the cuts programme of his Government. Why was it necessary to use a freedom of information request to obtain the release of the information in January of this year which led to us now knowing that there have been 3,760 applications under Clare’s law so far and 1,300 disclosures? Can the Minister assure the House that it will never again be necessary to use the freedom of information legislation to get important figures on how Clare’s law is progressing, that such figures will be available annually, with the kind of breakdown that my noble friend has mentioned, and that each police force reveals how it is delivering Clare’s law?

[Lord Bates]

The publishing of data is a very important part of the plans which the police should have. The reality is that we would have preferred to take the time to cross-check as part of the review all the data that had come forward, the number of applications for release of information and the number of releases which were granted and the reasons for that. We had to honour the freedom of information request, but if there had not been that request, the data would have been published anyway in the annual review.

Children: Online Privacy

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Bates

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the online privacy of children in the light of recent social media hacking.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are concerned by recent reports about the hacking of social media and have established the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command of the National Crime Agency, with the powers and international reach to tackle these types of crime. The National Crime Agency offers advice to children and parents, and our Cyber StreetWise campaign also advises individuals and businesses on how to stay safe online.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. As he will know, many of the more than 100,000 pictures leaked online in the so-called Snappening incident were of young children, and many of those pictures would constitute child pornography. What are the Government doing to ensure that social media companies tighten up their security? Are the Government considering tougher penalties for social media companies that have not taken sufficient action to protect their customers from data hacking, including pictures? Indeed, why are the Government not taking a harder line on protecting children online?

[Lord Bates]

Obviously, I recognise the expertise and the consistent interest that the noble Baroness has shown in this important issue. I reassure her and the House of the absolute seriousness and determination that I am sure that we all share to protect children against this type of event. For the benefit of the House, it should be said that the Snapchat incident was not in relation to the messaging application itself but in relation to Snapsave, which was an online website that was hacked into. The scale of that, with some 700,000 images per day uploaded by children, also affects the challenges that we find. As for what the Government are doing, one thing that we have done is to establish a joint US and UK taskforce to look at this whole issue. We are delighted that today the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, who heads that taskforce, has been introduced into your Lordships’ House, and can help us in developing and strengthening further the protection that we all seek.