Digital Economy Bill

Claire Perry Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion No. 3: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 10, 32 and 7, which stand in my name and those of my hon. Friends, the Government new clauses, which the Minister has outlined, and new clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), whom the Minister mentioned. I will also refer to some of the other amendments in the group.

In Committee, Labour Members, and indeed the hon. Lady, made it clear that we could not see how age verification could operate without a backstop power to block sites that failed to comply. In Committee, the Minister resisted that strongly. He said:

“The powers are not a silver bullet; sites that were actively trying to avoid the Bill’s other enforcement measures would also be able to actively avoid these measures. It is questionable how much additional enforcement power they would bring, given those downsides.”

He went on to say:

“I think the Bill has ended up with the correct balance.” —[Official Report, Digital Economy Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2016; c. 209.]

Clearly, the Secretary of State disagreed with him on that. She has now overruled her junior Minister by tabling new clauses 28 and 29 in her name, as we can see on the amendment paper. The new clauses tabled by the Secretary of State, who unfortunately is no longer in her place, represent significant changes at quite a late stage in the passage of the Bill in the Commons, confirming our contention that the Bill as published was not ready to leave home when it was allowed to do so.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows from his ministerial experience, it is the job of junior, middle-ranking Ministers to do all the work and Secretaries of State to take all the credit. In this case, I assure him that the ears of all the Government Front Benchers were open to the changes that he and I wanted to make.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful for that intervention. All I can say is that I have just given the Secretary of State credit for the change, as the hon. Lady suggests I should.

The new clauses introduce significant changes at this late stage in the consideration of the Bill. We support blocking, but concerns have been raised in the press that the new clauses go beyond a backstop power to block sites to under-18s and could be used in practice to extend internet censorship to adults. The Government need to be clear whether that is the intention of the new clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Earlier today I waded through schedule 1, after which I was no wiser about its relevance to my argument. He, as a Member with a reputation for having an eye for the fine detail of legislation, will have spotted that in rather less time than it took me.

According to Virgin Media, it costs a communications service provider—Virgin Media or any other—150% more to put in infrastructure than it costs a water company, and 66% more than it costs an electricity company. I do not want to steal the thunder of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr), although I condemn him roundly for not using new clause 27 as an opportunity to resolve the problem—that is not a criticism, really—but I ask the Minister to consider this problem before the Bill gets to the House of Lords. I have a handy amendment available if he wants one, but if he does not, I shall try to persuade somebody in another place to table it so that the issue can be more thoroughly debated there.

[Claire Perry]

As the House knows, I welcomed part 3 of the Bill on Second Reading, but I did raise, as did many other right hon. and hon. Members, the question of enforcement. We considered the possibility of internet service providers being asked to block sites that disregarded the Government’s requirement for age verification, and I tabled a series of amendments on that point in Committee. I disagree with the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) because I think that Ministers absolutely were in listening mode about a manifesto commitment that they were clearly keen to deliver. Against that backdrop, I am delighted to speak on Report by welcoming new clause 28 and Government amendments 35 to 42, which address this critical concern.

The Government had argued for rather a long time that it was disproportionate to make provision for statutory IP blocking because that had been dealt with on a voluntary basis for child pornography—we are all aware of the wonderful work done by the Internet Watch Foundation—and with reference to terrorist material. There was perhaps a hope that internet service providers would voluntarily get involved in blocking sites in the absence of age verification. Many right hon. and hon. Members campaigned for years for the voluntary introduction of family-friendly filters by internet service providers. We have led the world by working across industry and across the Government to produce a sensible set of provisions. We now have online filters that are introduced—in some cases automatically—by ISPs and others on a voluntary basis, and they seem to be working well.

There were, however, significant problems in assuming that ISPs would operate voluntarily. It was not just me and other colleagues in the House who were concerned. Bodies such as Christian Action Research and Education, the Children’s Charities Coalition for Internet Safety, the NSPCC, the British Board of Film Classification, which is now the regulator, and the Digital Policy Alliance were concerned that this sensible provision for age verification would not stick unless there was a more robust enforcement regime.

I am delighted that new clause 1, which I tabled, has been co-signed by 34 colleagues from seven political parties. That demonstrates that although we might like to stand up and shout at each other, our best work is done when we work together on such vital issues. It is a testament to the power of this place that we can work together so effectively to get this done. I know that this is a difficult argument; we have only to look at some of our Twitter feeds to see that. I am no longer on Twitter, but we know from other parts of the internet how difficult these conversations are because they go right to the heart of issues surrounding the regulation of the internet, which grew up, very properly, in a regulation-free environment, and in many respects that environment contributed to its growth and its glory.

Are we asking Governments and companies to restrict legal material for adults? I would argue strongly that the new clause is not about censorship or the restriction of legal access for adults; it is about proving that those who are consuming the material are indeed over 18. The new clause simply puts in place the sort of Government regulation and advice, and corporate socially responsible behaviour, that has been seen in many other industries. Example of that include the watershed in broadcasting, the fact that adult content often sits behind PINs on online media, and restrictions on what children can buy on the high street.

There is also a sense that the argument in relation to child sex abuse images and terrorist material is really not relevant. There is a strong global consensus that images or movie materials relating to neither of those things should be tolerated, so there is no need for statutory compulsion. However, the sites we are talking about, which offer material defined as pornographic, are quite different, because they provide a product that it is generally entirely legal for adults to access, and in many cases entirely reasonable, as there is no sense in which this is a kind of anti-pornography crusade. In that context, it is completely unsurprising that the ISPs made it clear they would not block pornographic sites without statutorily defined age-verification checks. Indeed, in evidence given on 25 October to the Communications Committee in the other place, the director of policy at Sky said of IP blocking under part 3 of the Bill:

“If there is a desire for ISPs to be blocking access to those sites, then legislation is required…If you want ISPs to block, I think they will struggle to do so, unless they are compelled to, and not because they do not want to but because they would probably be breaking the law.”

Indeed, Ofcom gave the Committee a similar message a week later, saying:

“If ISPs were to take any action blocking non-compliant sites, they would do so on a voluntary basis…I think you…have heard from ISPs about the legal difficulties they…would face if they were to undertake voluntary blocking…it would raise issues in relation to net neutrality.”

The second point, which has been widely raised among colleagues, is that there is overwhelming support among the majority of the British public for introducing these age-verification measures robustly. Eight out of 10 people absolutely support this very good manifesto commitment and want it to work. Indeed, the BBFC, which the Minister has chosen to be the regulator—I think all of us absolutely support it as a trusted brand in the space; it is not me or anyone else deciding what is over-18 material, because that will be based on the BBFC’s tried and tested guidelines—said itself that it felt that the regulator needed this power if it was effectively to carry out its work.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend says that this power is consistent with the guidelines that the regulator uses already, but my point was that it is not. Its powers are far more broadly drawn with regards to adult material over and above simply pornography.

[Claire Perry]

I do have great sympathy with the provisions my right hon. Friend has tabled; she is absolutely right to keep pushing on the issue. We defined the manifesto commitment and the Bill very tightly in terms of the online pornography space, and I wanted to achieve that first before we moved to broader definitions which, as she will be aware, quickly throw up many more questions about the scope of regulation. As she and I both know, there is a great desire in this space to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and with almost every advance we have made, we have been told, “Back off,” because something is not absolutely perfect. She, I and many other Members think that this is a process of iterative steps forward, and the Government are doing a great job in that respect.

The final argument for putting such blocking on a statutory basis is the precedent for IP blocking in the case of copyright infringement under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It would seem perverse for the House to argue that it was legal to instruct people to block sites that infringe copyright, but not those that infringe a legal requirement for age verification. It would be quite wrong for us to suggest that child protection is less important than protecting the interests of often very large commercial businesses.

I have two other quick points to make about why the case for change is so compelling. The first is that the BBFC has said that it will focus primarily on offshore sites, which are the main source of much of this material. Of course, as we know, it will be very difficult to enforce fines outside the UK jurisdiction. Secondly, we know that many sites are not reliant purely on financial transactions coming through the sorts of sites discussed in the Bill, given that there are systems such as Bitcoin and other forms of revenue generation.

I am absolutely delighted that the Government have tabled new proposals. I will not press my new clause and I will support their measures wholeheartedly. However, I want to probe the Minister—perhaps he will answer this question in a moment—about who will actually enforce the Bill. My understanding is that the BBFC does not currently have the enforcement powers required by new clause 28, which was why many of us assumed that Ofcom would be the enforcer of choice, as was set out very explicitly by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). We would therefore be keen to hear who will actually enforce the Bill, because we know that, without robust enforcement, there will be little incentive for websites to implement age verification, despite these new powers, and I think almost the whole House will support me in saying that we want this to be a great success.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Whittingdale]

I start by making it clear that I fully support the provisions in the Bill to require age verification to access pornographic sites. As I observed on Second Reading, it is just as well, since my name is on the front of the Bill.

I would like to introduce an element of caution. Unlike a lot of other material online that has been discussed—child pornography, racist material, hate speech, extremist encouragement and copyright breaches—we are talking here about legal content. Like it or not, the sites we are discussing are visited by millions and millions of people every day. They are some of the most popular sites on the entire internet.

As I have said, I support the idea of age verification to ensure that only those who can appropriately view this material do so, although there are concerns. I have yet to see exactly how age verification is going to work. We have seen examples of existing content access control systems through things such as credit cards, or mobile phones that have been verified as belonging to an adult. It is, in my view, asking a lot to ask people who want to access legal content to hand over their credit card numbers to pornographic website operators. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) was absolutely right to flag up the data protection concerns about that. I hope that Ofcom will look very carefully at how the CAC systems work.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the main ways in which young people are now exposed to pornography is through social media such as Twitter, and I do not really see that the Bill will do anything to stop that happening. That is not to say that we should not take action against pornographic sites. The original Bill contained a number of quite significant enforcement measures, such as requiring payment providers, website hosting companies and advertisers to stop dealing with websites that had been identified as not complying with the law under the Bill. There are already signs that a number of the big providers are going to comply. MindGeek, which is probably the biggest operator, has said that it will introduce age verification systems, although it wanted others to do so as well. I hope that it will happen.

[Claire Perry]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am very conscious of the Deputy Speaker’s strictures.

I was not persuaded of the necessity of introducing ISP blocking. It represents a considerable infringement of the civil liberties of individuals who want to access material that, as everybody has recognised in this debate, they are perfectly entitled to access. At a time when we are very concerned about the growth of censorship online, and when certain countries would like to take this as a precedent for saying, “It is fine to block content that we do not particularly like,” I think that it is a dangerous road to go down. I hope that the measures originally in the Bill will prove sufficient, that operators will introduce age verification and that we will pause before taking the next step and introducing ISP blocking. To that extent, I rather hope that this Digital Economy Bill is like the Digital Economy Bill that we debated in 2010. That Bill provided for the Government to intervene and require ISP blocking, but the measure was never introduced.