Community Theatre

Bobby Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Smart]

I strongly agree. I remember growing up, with this accent, and really welcoming it when somebody sounded like me on the BBC or in a theatre production. It matters to all of us to see and hear ourselves and to hear our stories being told. Community and local theatre plays a hugely important role in that.

Community theatre also plays an important role in saving money from the public purse. We have so many young people on a waiting list for assessment and treatment by child and adolescent mental health services. They might be out of mainstream school and struggling as they live with a mental health condition. Participating in the life of a theatre, whether in a production or at the front or back of house, can make people feel they belong. It can help them to find their voice and support them, thereby reducing the cost to the state in other areas. It also offers invaluable educational opportunities.

At the Forum, local schools benefit from theatre experience days, when students can learn about career opportunities in the creative industries, which can be life changing. I am thinking about David, who discovered his passion for lighting and sound design during a school visit. When he left school, he became the theatre’s first apprentice, allowing him to master his passion over a two-year programme.

The charity that operates the theatre, NK Theatre Arts, also ensures that financial hardship does not prevent participation. The theatre vowed never to turn down a potential member due to financial difficulties. Recently, a long-time member of a much-loved drama class stopped attending, because her family was experiencing a tough time financially, and they decided they could no longer afford it. The theatre team pushed through and insisted that the member continue and only pay what she could.

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend’s passion for her local theatre is clear to see. She mentioned the form of ownership, a charity in that case. In Carshalton, we have the CryerArts centre, a local theatre owned and operated by the local community, by a company specifically set up for that purpose. Does she agree that that kind of ownership structure should be encouraged by the Government and supported as much as possible?

[Lisa Smart]

I strongly agree that assets that are owned and run by the community are a powerful way of empowering that community to deliver what it needs. The Forum theatre is owned by the council but run by NK Theatre Arts, and I will come to some of the challenges that that funding model presents, but I think that communities being involved in improving themselves brings about the best for them.

Online Safety Act: Implementation

Bobby Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Social media has the power to provide spaces for connection, free speech and content creation that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. I remember what it was like to be a part of the first generation of teenagers to use social media. I hear the likes of MSN, Myspace and Bebo are no longer a thing among the youth, but I understand the joy of platforms like them and why we would not want our parents involved and snooping around on them. None the less, exactly how much space and freedom we should afford teenagers as parents and as society is the subject of intense debate.

When I speak to parents or teachers about social media, they tell me that they are concerned about how much time children spend on their devices, who they are speaking to and the fear that comes from not knowing what they are watching and reading. That is no surprise, because we as adults are struggling on the same platforms in the same way, and there is very little reassurance that the experience that young people get is much different from our own. The violence, the pornography, the hate—we all see it, and they see it too.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a horrific stabbing in my constituency involving a teenage boy. The video was posted all over social media within minutes. It kept popping up in my feed on Facebook, as it was shared across local groups, and I was tagged in the video on X. The video depicted the whole scene, unfiltered, without a warning. My thoughts went to the victim’s family and to the young teenagers at the college around the corner, who I am sure will have been watching it, too. I do not think I am imagining it when I say that, not long ago, a video like that simply would not have got around as quickly or been seen as frequently as that one. It would have been taken down, at least eventually, but with the purposeful rolling back of moderation by giants like Meta and X, violent content is not just becoming more frequent, it is becoming normalised.

How have we got here? Ultimately, it is because we have allowed the tech giants to become too powerful, with regulation arriving too slowly and without enough teeth. Once upon a time, the greatest minds took up careers in law and medicine, but now the big money and prestige is in big tech, an industry that, on the face of it, sells us nothing, but while we do not pay for their services with money, we pay for it with our attention. The longer they can keep us looking at their platforms; the more ads we see, and the more money they make, so we have the world’s most talented people working out the circuitry of our brains and creating products that are, by design, addictive. What we look at does not matter, only that we are looking, so there is no inherent commercial incentive to fix the problem of dangerous and harmful content.

Just imagine if all that energy and talent was directed into fail-proof age verification, taking fake accounts down, and other safety-by-design measures. Tough law and regulation is our only answer. The concern expressed in this debate is that the Online Safety Act was watered down on its way through Parliament, and further weakened by Ofcom’s guidance; my fear now is that it is under further threat, as in trade negotiations with the US this tech bro-fuelled Trump presidency may demand a further weakening.

As it stands, small companies are already off the hook. It does not matter how harmful the content is as long as its user space is small. The large companies have the legal representation and increasing soft power in practice to avoid compliance, and we are already seeing the consequences of that. Will the Government give us assurances in this debate that, as the mood music in America is to backslide on protections, the UK will stand strong? Will the Government commit to do the opposite of backsliding, to engage with children’s charities and other campaigners who have deep concerns about the gaps in the existing legislation and regulation by Ofcom, and to work to strengthen those protections further in the coming year?

It sounds very obvious, but the kids of today will soon become adults. The world that surrounds them as children will shape their views as adults. One of the most depressing things I have read recently is that teenage girls are the group most likely to be victims of domestic abuse. That is attributed in part to the rise of misogynistic content. If we fail to get the most profitable companies in the world to act, we fail everybody.