Internet (Governance)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Alun Michael

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Alun Michael]

My hon. Friend is right; I agree that the agenda is broader. The Commonwealth IGF started by looking at child protection, but behaviour is the big issue.

The development of a co-operative model for internet governance has developed quickly and positively. However, compared with the exponential growth and the mind-boggling levels of innovation that the internet has unleashed, that development looks, and feels, slow. That is why we in Parliament must be more ambitious, more impatient and better connected in every sense of the word.

To improve the quality of debate in Parliament, those involved informally in the work of relevant all-party groups have tried to bring everyone together to serve Parliament better. It is fair to say that for several years the cross-party architecture that focuses on internet and communications issues has been in a state of flux, with a proliferation of groups. Companies found it increasingly difficult to determine which meetings to attend and which groups to engage with. Equally, many MPs found the complexity and diversity of cross-party structures very challenging to digest. In fact, in the last two Parliaments, most MPs chose as the simple solution non-engagement, rather than struggling to get their heads round an ever-expanding ecosystem of interwoven groups and associations. I pay tribute to the 2010 intake of new Members, who have provided refreshing input from both sides of the House. That encourages me to believe that we can make a difference nationally and internationally in the future.

The online world and the associated technologies and patterns of use are constantly evolving at breathtaking speed. Without a cohesive and continuous commitment from parliamentarians to be connected with and informed about current developments in this sphere, Parliament will quickly fall hopelessly behind.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate and I share his hope that Parliament will debate the internet at least once a year. On the point about the internet’s fantastic speed of innovation and the changes that it has made to our everyday lives, does my right hon. Friend agree that it was unfortunate that following the unrest—the riots—during the summer, a number of parliamentarians on both sides of the House were seen to react by condemning aspects of social media that enable people to communicate with one another, while not equally recognising the tremendous support that the internet and social media give civil society? Does my right hon. Friend further agree that we need to ensure that parliamentarians are champions of the internet and the innovation that it brings, while obviously recognising the dangers?

[Alun Michael]

My hon. Friend, who is one of the exciting group of 2010 new Members to which I referred, makes an excellent point. In the Internet Governance Forum, it was rather worrying to find that a large number of participants from across the world “knew” that the UK had tried to close down social networks. We had quite a battle to make it clear that the UK had not done that. Fortunately, the European Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, took the opportunity to dive in and endorse what we were saying. Given the pressure from the media to do something about something as cataclysmic as the riots this year, it was understandable that all Members of Parliament representing relevant constituencies felt under pressure to say something and, indeed, that the Prime Minister felt under pressure to say something when he arrived back in the country. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Immediately after the Home Secretary said that she intended to call together representatives of the social networks and give them a good talking-to—I paraphrase slightly—I wrote to her on behalf of the group, having spoken to some of the officers, and offered our help. I said, “There are Members of Parliament who take an interest in these issues. Can we help and can we engage our industry members in order to make a constructive contribution?” That was welcomed by the Home Secretary—we had a very good response—so it is another example of how the creation of a coherent, single group in Parliament has the capacity to help Government and properly inform public debate.

That is an example of exactly the point that I was making—the need for parliamentarians to be coherent and to work together on these issues. I said that without a commitment from parliamentarians to be connected with and informed about current developments in this sphere, Parliament would quickly fall hopelessly behind. That would be a great disappointment to those of us who know that knee-jerk legislation is not the answer to most or indeed any of our emerging technological challenges. As Gibbon said in “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, laws rarely prevent that which they forbid. That is even more true about the internet than it was some 150 years ago, when those words were written. Legislation is a blunt, unwieldy and ultimately retrospective tool, incapable of the speed and flexibility required to regulate such a rapidly evolving system. That is why we, as parliamentarians, need to be quicker on our feet, more joined-up and more immediate in our response to events.

However, reluctance to legislate does not mean that we should not seek to regulate online activity. The point is simply that we will not achieve the results we want by enacting laws that would be out of date by the time they hit the statute book. The time scale for a new technology coming in or a development that moves people on from Facebook, or whatever the current means of communication is, means that legislation will be well out of date by the time it is enacted, so flexibility is required.

[Alun Michael]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I want legislation that is based on values, sets out broad principles and is technology-neutral. It is the behaviour that is bad, and it is intellectual property that we need to protect, rather than getting too deeply into detail. We need to go back to the legislation that set down broad principles and to go back on the excessively prescriptive and detailed legislation that removes flexibility. Essentially, I am arguing for us to concentrate on fostering a climate in which Parliament, Government, industry and civil society share perspectives, best practice and expertise to deliver a more adaptable and responsive regulatory approach, based on partnership and co-ordination, rather than top-down legislation. In other words, we need underpinning legislation for a coherent, co-operative style of governance.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way to me a second time. May I respond to the very good point made by the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley)? Is it not also the case that there is a lot of existing legislation that applies as much to the internet as to any other form of communication and behaviour, whether it takes place in the real world or the virtual world—for example, libel laws—and that new legislation is often not necessary if the existing legislation is properly applied?

[Alun Michael]

Indeed. This is about good legislation, rather than the internet. I take great pride in certain legislation with which I was associated, such as the Ragwort Control Act 2003, the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, because properly framed legislation will stand the test of time. In the examples that I have given, it was a case of using capacity that already existed and simply providing underpinning legislation that would allow the real mischief to be tackled. The real mischief is the behaviour, rather than the technology.

On the issue of parliamentary representation and how we bring people together, Mr Speaker kindly hosted an event last year for representatives of different parliamentary groups engaged with internet-related issues, along with those concerned with international issues, particularly the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and those who serve the House through PICT—Parliamentary Information and Communications Technology—and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. That gave us the impetus to link the informal work undertaken by parliamentarians in partnership with industry to the mainstream and formal work of the House, so we have merged the long-standing Parliamentary Information Technology Committee, or PITCOM, and a relative youngster, the all-party group on the digital economy, to form the Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum, which is an associate parliamentary group.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk for the work that he has done to ensure that Parliament has a well-informed and vibrant all-party group that benefits from the solid and senior engagement of both MPs and representatives of business and industry. We are delighted that Mr Speaker has agreed to be the president of the new group to signal the importance of that development. We are adopting a new and innovative model, with parliamentarians in the lead. Individual officers of the new group, across parties, some of whom are present, are taking responsibility for different parts of the work, which will include ordinary meetings, as held in the past by PITCOM. Lively discussions have been brought into the new group by members of the former group. We have continued the successful primary schools competition, “Make IT Happy”, with which many parliamentarians have become increasingly engaged and which was endorsed by the Minister in the House only last week.

We have a CEO forum, at which a strong representation of chief executives—no representatives or delegations are allowed—and of parliamentarians debate big issues with experts. For instance, on Monday, we were joined by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and by Professor Ian Hargreaves, whose work will be familiar to the Minister and whose recent report deals with intellectual property, which is important to our economy. Past discussions focused on a range of important issues, from cloud computing and cyber-security to the growth agenda and the boosting of UK technology skills; I know that the Minister has taken part in one of the discussions.

[Alun Michael]

We have not needed to. We have had three Ministers this year by mutual agreement, and I am pleased by that response. Ministers have been prepared to come to meet us and industry representatives. The fact that Ministers and parliamentarians are at the table brings chief executives there, and the fact that chief executives come complements the other meetings that we have, in which people with more technical or detailed knowledge are able to take part. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire prompts me to note that I had missed out a reference to the British-American Parliamentary Group, another of the distinguished band of organisations that are important in the work.

I have already referred to the fact that the arrangements are already working in relation to our communications with the Home Secretary. In response to the request for comment, we have received responses from a number of parliamentarians, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Harlow (Robert Halfon), and others who were more frequently involved in the all-party group’s work. Key points were made that the riots were not a breakdown of society as a whole, but isolated incidents of unrest followed relentlessly by the 24-hour media, and that the internet and online social networks were a channel for a widespread outpouring of positivity and reconstructive effort after the riots. That must be considered in balance with the use of the internet by some people to organise some of the activity. In the case of the police in Manchester, when people tweeted to say where the next activity was going to take place, the police tweeted back to say, “Thanks for telling us. We will be there too.” Therefore, it is not all one way.

Part of PICTFOR’s role is to raise our game at the international level, persuading more parliamentarians to engage with the IGF, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the IPU, and directly with members of overseas Parliaments, particularly the Americans, whom we are engaging through an annual internet event in Congress. The most important aspects are to use the partnership between MPs and industry representatives to inform Parliament in the mainstream rather than at the periphery, to ensure that we continue to punch above our weight in protecting the concept of an open, co-operative and multi-stakeholder approach to internet governance, and to fight off attempts to impose a centralised and bureaucratic approach to managing the internet, whether in terms of critical infrastructure, online behaviour or the exploitation—in a positive sense—of the internet’s potential.

We are bringing together opinions from industry and Parliament. I wish I had some time to enumerate the comments that have come in. We had hoped for a longer debate, but we are grateful for the opportunity today to raise these issues. We intend to summarise all the issues and provide them to both the Minister and MPs to inform future debates.

Just to pick up one point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, there will be one debate a year to look at the overarching issues with the internet. The internet touches on so many issues that there are bound to be debates on Bills and on the Adjournment regarding specific issues, including those that have been raised by some hon. Members in their interventions on me.

My message to parliamentarians and to business is that, although good governance may sound boring, it is essential. Banking governance was boring, until the failure of governance in the world’s banks brought the international financial structures to collapse. Let us avoid such a debacle online by fighting for good co-operative governance of the internet now.

At a time of massive constraints on the public purse—I will not go into the discussion about whether they need to come so fast or cut so deep—it is not just tempting to use the efficiency of the net to deliver public services, but right and essential. However, that would involve a massive improvement in the quality of public procurement, of which I had some experience as a Minister. It is vital to recognise that some 40% of those who are not online at the moment were shown in recent research to be so resistant to going online that they would not do so even if they were provided with free broadband and a free computer. Some may be resistant or even perversely reluctant; others may simply be unable to cope. That latter group includes some of the most vulnerable people in our society. It follows that the exploitation of online delivery options by the Government needs to be costed in a way that ensures the availability of services to those who do not go online, which might involve paying for facilitation, perhaps at local libraries or in post offices. However, if it is not built into the Government’s model, it will bring online delivery into disrepute and widen the digital divide into a chasm, ultimately creating a problem that will involve even more expense to solve than building in the solution at the design stage.

Cloud computing is often highlighted as a challenge to public services, but in many ways, it is already with us. The challenge, in my view, is good management, including good data management, rather than major issues of principle. Security of infrastructure and our national security are enormously important, and they are given considerable emphasis by the Government. However, it is also important to deal with the low-level crime and nuisance activity that face people every day. I am pleading for a broken windows approach to the internet. Having succeeded in local crime reduction, that approach would be able to help us in the online world.

I am also a little concerned about the language that is creeping into the discussion. I challenged some police officers who talked about “cyber” as if it were a term of art to describe a discrete chunk of reality. They responded by saying that the police were merely reflecting the language of Ministers. If that is the case—I am not sure that it is—we need to change the language. Internet-related crime is not entirely about technology; indeed it is mainly about human behaviour and criminal activity. The use of the internet is relevant only in the same way that a burglar uses a motorway or footpath to reach someone’s house to break in.

[Chi Onwurah]

Regarding the police’s attitude to cyber-crime, does my right hon. Friend agree that all serving police officers should be knowledgeable of the way in which the internet can be used for crime? Does he also agree that to criticise those serving in the back offices of the police and to imply that we can tackle crime by being only on the physical front line does the police no service and may reduce the possibility of tackling virtual crime?

[Alun Michael]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is part of the discussion that we have been having in the Select Committee on Home Affairs on what constitutes the front line and the back office. Protection against the use of the internet for organised crime, as well as some of the issues that have already been raised, is extremely important.