Internet-based Media Companies

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I compliment the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this extremely valuable debate. I know she has campaigned tirelessly on the issue and will continue to do so.

I would like to narrow the focus of the debate specifically to the internet service providers. In the UK the top six companies control and sell about 95% of access into the home, which is the place where most of the children to whom the hon. Lady refers are accessing such troubling images. Those companies generate some £3.5 billion a year through access fees, and they are, by and large, well known household names, typically with a well developed sense of corporate social responsibility.

Historically, we have had an ideological situation in which the internet has been treated differently from any other form of media. As the hon. Lady says, back when the internet was a few pony-tailed developers and was a specialist thing that we had dialling up slowly in the corner of our sitting room, that was just fine. Indeed, the light-touch regulation, or lack of regulation, and the global nature of the internet is what has made it such an extremely valuable and innovative forum. Of course, that has changed. The internet is now, arguably, one of the most mass-market forms of communication. With technological convergence, particularly with the rise of internet-enabled televisions, 3G and 4G networks and view-on-demand systems, the internet is rapidly overtaking all other forms of media as the place where many people, particularly the young, socialise and access information and news.

As the hon. Lady alludes to, although children use the internet for all those incredibly productive and wonderful things, with their extraordinary curiosity they also seek out and stumble across material that is very troubling to many. We asked a group of adults whether they are concerned about the ease of access, particularly to adult material, on the internet, and 82% said that they are extremely concerned about how easy it is to access not just pornography but websites on self-harm, suicide and bullying, which are the things we would all like to protect our children against but struggle to do so.

Why do we struggle to do so? I, of course, am a great believer in personal and family responsibility. It is my job as a mother to keep my children safe in the online and offline worlds, but I submit that the technology we have been using to do that is almost obsolete. We have been asked since the earliest days of the internet to download device-protection filters ourselves. People who live in a household like mine will have multiple internet-enabled devices, which we are supposed to protect individually. The download process can be slow, and I submit that in many households the teenage child is the web tsar and computer guru, not the parent. If the parent says, “Have we downloaded the safe search and protection filters?” big Johnny or Janie will say, “Of course, mum and dad, don’t you worry. Off you go. Don’t trouble your little heads about it.” As a result, the proportion of parents who say they have downloaded internet controls or filtering software in households with a child aged between five and 15—remember that 95% of children live in internet-enabled households—has fallen 10 percentage points over the past three years to 39%. That means that six out of 10 children potentially live in households where there is no filtering of content. Troublingly, that proportion drops even further to 33% for teenage children, so two thirds of children aged 13 to 15 live in unprotected households. We can debate for ever the rights and wrongs of that, and how it is all the responsibility of parents, but we know that 82% of parents care about this, so it is not a non-issue. The technology and the compact of responsibility have broken down.

What to do? This debate has been started many times. Indeed, the previous Government worked very hard and commissioned a number of reports, including the Byron review. They took the issue very seriously. We have moved on, but little has been done.

We tend to debate ideology. Free speech comes up frequently, and, of course, when defining pornography, one woman’s pornography is another man’s enjoyable Sunday afternoon.

[Mr Tom Harris]

Don’t look at me!

[Claire Perry]

Sorry, I was not looking at the hon. Gentleman with an accusatory glance.

My point is that the debate has often been sterile, ending up with discussions of censorship. I would never like to see that, because I do not believe in censoring material; I believe in responsibility and companies signing up to an agenda.

The hon. Member for Slough and I, as many Members did on a cross-party basis, suggested a parliamentary inquiry. We took a lot of evidence and came up with the idea that an opt-in system is the best way to deliver protection. Each home would have a clean feed, using the same filtering technology as is used in device-level filters and in schools—the technology is simple and cheap—and people opt in to receive adult content. There would be choice, there would be no censorship and the material would still be available. That proposal was very popular, and almost two thirds of adults say they like the idea of opt-in technology.

I am proud to be part of a Government who have continued to take the issue seriously. The Prime Minister commissioned the Bailey review, which examined child sexualisation and child safety and resulted in the first little step forward in the internet safety debate: active choice, in which people are forced to say whether they want filters installed. To return to the big Johnny or Janie problem, how many households truly involve the adults in making that decision?

[Mr Harris]

An aspect of that has been raised with me. One potential problem with the opt-in system—the hon. Lady will probably be able to answer this—is that there are numerous teenagers who cannot rely on being able to speak to their parents about sensitive sexual health issues. With an opt-in filter when signing up to a new internet service provider, I am told that there would be a danger of blocking sites that give reproductive health advice. Many children cannot ask their parents about such issues—I expect about 99% cannot, now that I think of it. That could be a dangerous consequence. Has she considered that particular aspect?

[Claire Perry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that thoughtful intervention. Those are some of the questions that get raised: blocking sites that help children with their homework, or that concern sexual health, sexuality and other things that we know children are more comfortable talking about to friends and others on the internet than to their family.

We asked the Family Planning Association, a laudable organisation that publishes a lot of material about sexual health and guidance, and it was supportive. The FPA says that the problem right now is that children are accessing porn as a way of receiving sex education. That is not good sex education. It teaches children nothing about relationships. The FPA felt that using an age verification system—

[Rushanara Ali]

I support the hon. Lady’s proposal. It will protect young people not only from being groomed but from being radicalised on the internet; we have seen examples. It happens particularly to Muslim parents but also to others—those whose children are converts, for instance. The individual responsible for the attack on my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) was radicalised on the internet. We need action not just to protect children against harassment but on those kinds of issue. Anything that can address the problem would be welcome from both perspectives.

[Claire Perry]

I thank the hon. Lady for pointing out that it is not just what we might think of as pure pornography that is a problem, but many other things too. I say to both hon. Members that in the debate on this issue, we have always been in danger of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Filtering systems are well established. A lot of human intelligence goes into the filtering systems used by companies such as TalkTalk, which has gone furthest. It is completely possible to amend the system while ensuring that appropriate levels of material are available, just as they might be in a school environment. However, it is a worthy point.

I will continue, as I know that others are keen to speak. I was extremely proud that with the help of Members from across the House, we were able to persuade the Government to lead a formal inquiry into the opt-in proposal, led by UKCCIS. I will raise the question of Government complexity in a moment, but the inquiry had more than 3,500 responses, and I was proud to help deliver a petition with more than 115,000 signatures to No. 10 calling for an opt-in system and calling on the Government to take the issue seriously.

I think the Government do take the issue seriously, but there are many complications that must be addressed. First, as the hon. Member for Slough said, we do not have a regulator; we have a mish-mash of organisations involved in regulating the internet. In such a system, it is easy for companies to behave in an irresponsible manner or, as she mentioned in referring to a large search company, to basically make it up as they go along, with every test case being a different case. There is no clear regulation setting out a course of direction or what responsible behaviour looks like. That was one of our recommendations: give the issue to one regulator.

Secondly, there is the ideological question. It behoves us all not to have the debate about free speech versus censorship here. Of course, we must have that debate, but it is a false debate here. We are talking about children in unprotected households accessing damaging, dangerous and violent material, and we know that people are concerned about it. It is important to have a pragmatic solution rather than an ideological response.

I say not to the Minister, to whom I know it does not apply, but to others that we run in fear of the internet companies in many cases. I have asked repeatedly for evidence suggesting that an opt-in solution would be disproportionately costly or technologically impossible, or would somehow damage Britain’s internet economy, which is extremely valuable—it contributes about 8% of GDP—and is growing rapidly. Evidence there is none. It is a pence-per-1,000-users solution. It already exists, the technology is there and it is well developed. We can deal with the question of false positives and false negatives. If I ask start-up companies located at the Shoreditch roundabout, “Do you care if we have opt-in filtering on home broadband or internet provision?”—that is the most developed part of the market; only six companies offer 95% of services—they look at me as though I am mad. It has nothing to do with their business model.

I urge the Government to review the evidence. We have not yet had the evidence review session that we were promised on the inquiry. I understand that faces have changed. I would like to get it right rather than do it quickly, but also to focus as best we can, given the number of Departments involved, on the right solution to protect our children.