Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Baroness Laing of Elderslie

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is a great champion and advocate for Barnet’s schools and, indeed, for maintained nursery schools, which, as she says, play a unique role in our system in carrying out those particular functions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Last year the National Audit Office reported that 700,000 children were being taught in schools needing major rebuilding works. On top of the problems caused by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, construction issues are emerging daily with block and beam flooring, high-alumina cement and asbestos—all long past their shelf life—up in North Tyneside and down to Luton and beyond. Fourteen years of Conservative Governments have left children learning under props and in portacabins and sheds. Given that this Government’s plan seems to be to leave it for the next Labour Government to sort out those problems, can the Minister at least inform us of the latest estimate of the total school repairs bill?

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Damian Hinds and Baroness Laing of Elderslie

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Very good, that was wonderfully brief.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

May I join others in welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) to his place on the Front Bench? He brings a considerable amount of expertise. I also, although it is a shame he is not here to hear me say nice things about him, pay tribute, as others have, to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp). I had the opportunity to work with him, his wonderful team of officials and wonderful officials at the Home Office on some aspects of this Bill, and it was a great pleasure to do so. As we saw again today, his passion for this subject is matched only by his grasp of its fine detail.

I particularly echo what my hon. Friend said about algorithmic promotion, because if we address that, alongside what the Government have rightly done on ID verification options and user empowerment, we would address some of the core wiring and underpinnings at an even more elemental level of online harm.

I want to talk about two subjects briefly. One is fraud, and the other is disinformation. Opposition amendment 20 refers to disinformation, but that amendment is not necessary because of the amendments that the Government are bringing to the National Security Bill to address state-sponsored disinformation. I refer the House in particular to Government amendment 9 to that Bill. That in turn amends this Bill—it is the link, or so-called bridge, between the two. Disinformation is a core part of state threat activity and it is one of the most disturbing, because it can be done at huge volume and at very low cost, and it can be quite hard to detect. When someone has learned how to change the way people think, that makes that part of their weaponry look incredibly valuable to them.

We often talk about this in the context of elections. I think we are actually pretty good—when I say “we”, I mean our country, some other countries and even the platforms themselves—at addressing disinformation in the context of the elections themselves: the process of voting, eligibility to vote and so on. However, first, that is often not the purpose of disinformation at election time and, secondly, most disinformation occurs outside election times. Although our focus on interference with the democratic process is naturally heightened coming up to big democratic events, it is actually a 365-day-a-year activity.

There are multiple reasons and multiple modes for foreign states to engage in that activity. In fact, in many ways, the word “disinformation” is a bit unsatisfactory because a much wider set of things comes under the heading of information operations. That can range from simple untruths to trying to sow many different versions of an event, particularly a foreign policy or wartime event, to confuse the audience, who are left thinking, “Oh well, whatever story I’m being told by the BBC, my newspaper, or whatever it is, they are all much of a muchness.” Those states are competing for truth, even though in reality, of course, there is one truth. Sometimes the aim is to big up their own country, or to undermine faith in a democracy like ours, or the effectiveness of free societies.

Probably the biggest category of information operations is when there is not a particular line to push at all, but rather the disinformer is seeking to sow division or deepen division in our society, often by telling people things that they already believe, but more loudly and more aggressively to try to make them dislike some other group in society more. The purpose, ultimately, is to destabilise a free and open society such as ours and that has a cancerous effect. We talk sometimes of disinformation being spread by foreign states. Actually, it is not spread by foreign states; it is seeded by foreign states and then spread usually by people here. So they create these fake personas to plant ideas and then other people, seeing those messages and personas, unwittingly pick them up and pass them on themselves. It is incredibly important that we tackle that for the health of our democracy and our society.

The other point I want to mention briefly relates to fraud and the SNP amendments in the following group, but also Government new clause 14 in this group. I strongly support what the Government have done, during the shaping of the Bill, on fraud; there have been three key changes on fraud. The first was to bring user-generated content fraud into the scope of the Bill. That is very important for a particularly wicked form of fraud known as romance fraud. The second was to bring fraudulent advertising into scope, which is particularly important for categories of fraud such as investment fraud and e-commerce. The third big change was to make fraud a priority offence in the Bill, meaning that it is the responsibility of the platforms not just to remove that content when they are made aware of it, but to make strenuous efforts to try to stop it appearing in front of their users in the first place. Those are three big changes that I greatly welcome.

There are three further things I think the Government will need to do on fraud. First, there is a lot of fraudulent content beyond categories 1 and 2A as defined in the Online Safety Bill, so we are going to have to find ways—proportionate ways—to make sure that that fraudulent content is suppressed when it appears elsewhere, but without putting great burdens on the operators of all manner of community websites, village newsletters and so on. That is where the DCMS online advertising programme has an incredibly important part to play.

The second thing is about the huge variety of channels and products. Telecommunications are obviously important, alongside online content, but even within online, as the so-called metaverse develops further, with the internet of things and the massive potential for defrauding people through deep fakes and so on, we need to be one step ahead of these technologies. I hope that in DCMS my hon. Friends will look to create a future threats unit that seeks to do that.

Thirdly, we need to make sure everybody’s incentives are aligned on fraud. At present, the banks reimburse people who are defrauded and I hope that rate of reimbursement will shortly be increasing. They are not the only ones involved in the chain that leads to people being defrauded and often they are not the primary part of that chain. It is only right and fair, as well as economically efficient, to make sure the other parts of the chain that are involved share in that responsibility. The Bill makes sure their incentives are aligned because they have to take proportionate steps to stop fraudulent content appearing in front of customers, but we need to look at how we can sharpen that up to make sure everybody’s incentives are absolutely as one.

This is an incredibly important Bill. It has been a long time coming and I congratulate everybody, starting with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) and others who have been closely involved in creating it. I wish my hon. Friend the Minister the best of luck.

HM Passport Office Backlog

Debate between Damian Hinds and Baroness Laing of Elderslie

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy]

My constituent went to Durham passport office to collect his passport only to be told that there was an issue with the photo that had previously been approved. He has just been to deliver new photos, but staff told him that they have no record of his interview, despite the Home Office telling me two hours ago that it was on the system. He flies to America on Monday. What do I tell him?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. This is the Minister’s winding-up speech; it is not the place for a new speech. I let the hon. Lady finish because—[Interruption.] Do not argue with me. I let her finish because she was speaking on behalf of a constituent, and it matters, but that is not how we conduct debate.

[Damian Hinds]

I think the hon. Lady will appreciate that it is impossible—literally impossible—for me to comment on the details of that case and the particular issue with the photograph and so on from the Dispatch Box of the House of Commons, but if she speaks to our colleagues in the hub in Portcullis House, or with me or the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay after the debate, we will be sure to pick it up.

The difficulties that we have heard about today absolutely must be taken with great seriousness, and that is happening. I assure hon. Members that we will continue to look at ways to further improve performance. I also remind them that 98.5% of UK applications across March, April and May were processed within the published processing time. Indeed, the overwhelming majority were processed more quickly than that, with more than 91% of those completed in May having been processed within six weeks.

I certainly do not seek to minimise the frustrations that have been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House during the debate, but I assure the House that everybody at Her Majesty’s Passport Office is completely focused on meeting the needs of customers ahead of their long-awaited and hard-earned summer holidays.

Question put.