Baroness Uddin
Main Page: Baroness Uddin (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will begin by thanking the noble Lord Speaker and adding my own condolences to President Mandela’s—Madiba’s—family. I recall meeting him about a decade ago now in the British Museum, when he addressed a number of parliamentarians. He mentioned in his speech the quote, “When injustice becomes the norm, or law, resistance becomes duty”. Since that time I have had that in my diary every year, and it is very appropriate in this context.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for tackling an issue which is at the forefront of many parents’ minds when their children access their computer. I join the noble Baroness in her acknowledgement of the Prime Minister’s leadership and commend the work of John Kerr, with numerous Members of this House over the years, and more recently, of course, Claire Perry from the other place.
We have all succumbed to the allure of the internet; it can positively enhance and fulfil our lives. However, we must recognise that, while adults may or may not have a rationale to exercise self-discipline, it is our vulnerable children and young people in their formative years who are the main prey of paedophiles and organised paedophilia. Cyberbullying, sexting, junk mail, chain mail, false advertising, online chat rooms—many such methods of communication have a potential for falsification of details which are devised to promote attention to our youth.
We all need to be educated and brought up to speed on the digital facts of life, no matter what one’s age or experience of cyberspace is. Most households now have access to a variety of devices to access the internet at any one time: tablets, computers, mobile phones and games consoles have all been mentioned. Christmas is upon us and we all know that these possessions will treble in many households. Monitoring who is accessing what at any one time could be nigh on impossible, particularly in larger families. Parents have often felt isolated when trying to monitor access by their children and young adults. Sometimes we parents can easily become complacent, particularly with rapidly changing technology, where we rely on our tech-savvy children to negotiate these gadgets and gizmos. That is why I wholly agree with the noble Baroness that only statutory law can provide credible protection.
In our country, despite child protection being taken seriously within the legislative and societal framework, we have continuously witnessed the grotesque abuse of our children, including those detailed by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton—although I do not agree with his assessment of the role of absent fathers as one of the causes.
Many of the taboos have been broken: the new frontier of the internet has created another set of barriers where protecting our particularly vulnerable children is a more complex challenge. In the privacy of own space, many children have access to the internet; for some, it is a secret doorway through which exploiters and abusers may enter. According to NSPCC figures, 93% of all five to 15 year-olds used the internet in 2013. The proliferation of explicit images of children—graphic and grotesque—has resulted in 1 million online according to CEOP, but only 40,000 have been reported.
The statistics are extremely stark. The UKCCIS research project “EU Kids Online” surveyed 25,000 children who use the internet. The survey showed that 48% said that they found things on the internet that bothered them; 12% of 11 to 16 year-olds have received unwanted sexual images; and 29% of children in the UK have had contact with someone they had never met. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre receives more than 600 reports of grooming every month. CEOP outlines four key threats. One is the increased number of images: it received 8,000 reports of indecent images of children being shared, featuring 70,000 images. There was a 70% increase in the number of female victims under 10 years old and a 125% increase in images of penetrative sexual activity involving a child or children or both children and adults.
According to Internet Watch Foundation statistics, 21% of UK children have been bullied; 19% of UK children aged 11 to 16 have seen one or more type of potentially harmful user-generated content; 60% said they had been asked for a sexual image or video of themselves; 40% said they had created an image or video of themselves; and 25% said they had sent an image or video of themselves to someone else. Add to those the lethal set of statistics detailed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and it is clear that there is a lot to be done to protect our children.
In carrying out my research for this debate on Wednesday, I googled the word “sex”, although “sex and porn” is what I had intended to write. However, as soon as I pressed the word “sex”, there were visual images showing the sexual act and anal sex, and advertisements for book titles on the first page of the search results. What representations does the Minister’s department intend to make to urge those who manage search engines to refine their direct search returns now, and not wait for this legislation to come through?
We are all vulnerable to such images, young or old. In the early years of House of Lords usage of laptops, I frequently used to report to the PICT services pop-ups that would suddenly come up. I was told that I was not the only one in the House to have received them. Although things have improved enormously since then, with all our sophisticated security, generators of pornography have been able to infiltrate the internet system of Parliament, at least in the past.
The characteristics and circumstances that render some young people more vulnerable are complex, as is the comprehensive response required to prevent abuse; this was eloquently explained by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We will not do away with abuse and sexual exploitation of children today or tomorrow, but we can strengthen our formal protection systems and our laws. I welcome this Bill and the pronouncement of the Prime Minister expressing his will that by the end of 2013 ISPs should automatically provide family-friendly filters on internet packages for all new broadband customers. He also called for search engines to take measures to block illegal content, adding to the work of CEOP and others to track down paedophiles using a single database linked to the police force, devised from the blocked content. The progress report on the Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood suggested that all these efforts should make it easier to block adult and age-restricted content on the internet, so we should not take no for an answer.
As a former social worker responsible for providing statutory protection of children, I do not see any distinction between responding to the abuse of children on the internet and that which happens elsewhere. I am confident that all social services and police have formal procedures in place to deal with these in the same vigorous ways. However, I feel strongly that social workers, teachers and NGOs, as well as parents, require significantly more training and awareness, especially in their dealings with vulnerable sections of the community, including those who have learning disabilities.
It is to be welcomed that the Government are determined to address this matter head-on. I support the key provisions of the Bill, particularly the duty of child safety placed on Ofcom; the duty of manufacturers of electronic devices to provide means of filtering content; the duty to provide information about safety online to customers on internet providers and mobile network operators; and particularly the duty placed on the Secretary of State to educate parents and children under the age of 18 about online safety.
All these are welcome steps, but we have to address the design of the malicious software itself. Therefore, I hope Ofcom will have a strong power of enforcement when internet content providers transgress the expected standards and good practice. We also have to continue to widen the reach of ChildLine and other organisations so that no communities are disadvantaged by the lack of knowledge about what is happening as result of this Bill. I am particularly concerned about the positive impact of this Bill not reaching those parents who are not computer literate or literate in English. How do the Minister and his department intend to address such groups and their learning needs, not only in terms of the duty to protect their children but how they can protect and support them in practice?
This has been a good week for the protection of children. Our PM’s leadership on this matter may have reached far beyond our shores. In the wake of criticism from the United Nations Panel on the Rights of Children over the handling of abuse cases, His Holiness Pope Francis is to set up a Vatican committee to fight the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church and offer help to victims. This will come as a relief to many hundreds of thousands of survivors. We all have a moral duty to act now and not hide behind the old dictum of a free society—not if it infringes the rights of millions of children all over the world. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that a criminal offence should be considered. We must not allow those who wish to harm our children to hide in the safety of an anonymous web. This Bill is a stepping stone on that path. I end by quoting Nelson Mandela, who said:
“It always seems impossible until it’s done”.