Internet (Governance)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[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.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

A friend of mine has recently become a special constable. When people are recruited to become special constables, it is very much about being on the front line, patrolling the streets. However, in the cyber-age, we should perhaps also invite people to become special constables to work on issues such as cyber-crime and on using the internet as a tool for policing.

[Alun Michael]

The Minister’s comments reflect something I said a while ago in the presence of some people from the Metropolitan police. They included Charlie McMurdie, who said afterwards, “Yes, it’s a good idea—we’re already doing it.” The Minister is absolutely on the ball, and some police forces are very much up to date, but others are not enabling staff on the front desk to tell people what they need to do when they wander into the police station and say, “This has happened. What should I do?” We therefore need to improve communication and to make better, more focused use of Get Safe Online, as I said.

The more we use language that emphasises the human damage, rather than the technology, the more likely we are properly to inform public policy and to reassure the public. That is why I am a bit dubious of using the word “cyber” as if it identified something different and discrete from human behaviour.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I welcome the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) to her position as Labour spokesman on communications and creative industries.

I pay a heartfelt tribute to the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), not just for securing this debate but for his leadership on this important issue, both as a Minister and since leaving post. In the spirit of co-operation that I think has characterised the debate, let me put on record how helpful he has been to me as a new Minister, in establishing myself in the post and finding my way around it. His co-operation and knowledge sharing has helped me to get up to speed and to continue, I hope, to represent the UK effectively in these important debates. The hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who was with us at the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi, is now following these matters very closely, and will be an important contributor to debates on this issue.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) for his contribution on broadband, and I shall briefly touch on that issue now before turning, in the main part of my response, to internet governance. On the issue of the spectrum, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), we obviously know that the internet is very important. At lunchtime, I was at a retail store with people we were encouraging to get online—there is a campaign called “Give an hour”, run by Martha Lane Fox. Pat Harran, Mohammed Mir, Errol Hall and someone called Pitchit were there to get online, and I promised I would mention them so that they could look up Hansard online. Showing them how to find a Hansard debate on the Parliament website on an iPad was instructive because it was almost impossible; there is a message there for the parliamentary authorities.

I learnt an interesting statistic today that marries my two responsibilities in culture and communications. During the Frieze art fair, which lasted just four days and had 60,000 visitors, 1 terabit—a trillion bits of information—was downloaded. Incidentally, 85% of visitors were using an iPhone or an iPad, which shows the dominance of Apple, at least in trendy circles such as contemporary art. In 1993, 100 terabits was the entire amount of information transferred across the internet—I was virtually middle-aged then—so we can see how things have changed in a short time. My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West are entirely correct to focus on the spectrum, and it is vital that Ofcom gets the auction rules right and that we are able to auction the 4G spectrum as soon as possible, because otherwise it will become more and more difficult to use the smart phone gadgets on which we all depend.

Turning to the substance of the debate, which is the Internet Governance Forum and the multi-stakeholder approach, I shall recount a short anecdote for the benefit of the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. The Foreign Secretary does not like the term “multi-stakeholder”; indeed, he has said that it is an ugly term, and at the London conference, which begins next week, I think he plans to use “co-operative governance”, which is a bit of a mouthful for a Conservative—he might even stretch to “mutual governance”. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary’s power will shift us away from “multi-stakeholder engagement,” but that is the term that people across the world understand.

The conference in Nairobi was very useful. I went because of the persuasion of the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, and I am grateful that people said it was good to see a Minister there. It was certainly worth my while, and I will continue to go as long as I hold this job, because it is important to have a presence there and engage with not just stakeholders but Government representatives who might have a different approach. The multi-stakeholder model is not universally accepted, and different models have been put forward. The right hon. Gentleman knows that moves are afoot to transfer responsibility for internet governance to the International Telecommunication Union—the ITU. The UK Government does not support that, and so in answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we will continue, I hope, to lead on this issue and support the multi-stakeholder approach.

There is a proposal from India, Brazil and South Africa, known as the IBSA model, to set up a new global body within the UN system, but I think that that would be an unravelling of the world summit on the information society—WSIS—principles that were established, thanks to the right hon. Gentleman, in Tunis in 2005. In addition, China and Russia have submitted to the UN General Assembly a proposal for the international management of the internet.

I subscribe to the multi-stakeholder model. The internet was built from the ground up. It is an innovative medium, and not just Governments but other stakeholders, civil society groups and business all must have their say if it is to remain so. One reason for the debate in this area is the continued role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Recently, there have been concerns about ICANN’s approach regarding the .xxx domain name, but I am glad that as a result we have had significant reforms of the corporation and a more coherent role for its Government Advisory Committee—GAC—and are now well placed for the corporation to move forward, particularly as it releases more generic top-level domain names from next year.

We also have the re-letting of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority—IANA—contract, which is currently operated by ICANN under the auspices of the US Government. It is absolutely clear that the US Government take their responsibility in that regard very seriously, as a steward for the global internet. People who suggest that they would somehow seek to turn off the internet are completely wrong —there is even an untrue anecdote that they cut off Syria four or five years ago. It is important, however, that the US recognises such concerns, and I think that it does. For example, when the IANA contract is let, it might go to ICANN or it could go to another body, and that will be seen as a global body, although it will be registered in the US. Local law will apply to the country that owns the domain name, so .uk will continue to be subject to UK law. In any dispute, the relevant domestic law of the domain name will prevail.

In consideration of new generic top-level domains, there will be a requirement for community support for IANA to amend the root and thus add a new domain—.scot for example—to protect us against controversial root domain names coming forward. The operator of IANA will also have to introduce enhanced transparency so that a request for root zone changes can be tracked through the system. I hope that people who feel that somehow a UN or an ITU route would be better—in that it would reduce the influence of the Americans— understand that the Americans do not seek to influence the governance of the internet and that they regard themselves very much as stewards.

I have very little time left, but I am glad that I have covered the main points: support for the multi-stakeholder approach; concern about the two proposals that I have mentioned; contentment that the issue between GAC and ICANN has, I think, been resolved and moved forward; and the United States Government’s recognition and addressing of the concerns about the re-letting of the IANA contract. We have the important London conference on cyberspace next week, and I hope that some of the Members present will be able to attend. If not, I ask them to please let me know. I am sure that they will be able to attend if the problem is at our end.

Let me make a couple of other points. There is the importance of internet protocol version 6. We have run out, as it were, of domain names and need to move to IPv6, and I want to use this opportunity to call on industry, particularly the internet service providers and the mobile operators, to support 6UK, which is the business body charged with raising awareness of IPv6. So far, support has not been forthcoming, and it now needs to come from the people who will reap the main benefit—the ISPs and the mobile operators. On the philosophical approach—if I may put it that way—that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland took, there is potentially common ground between us. I am interested in her monopolistic and mons—

[Helen Goodman]

Monopsonistic.

[Mr Vaizey]

I will not even try to say it. I will not give any views on that approach because I do not want to set any hares running.

There is also the self-regulatory approach to try to protect people from inappropriate content on the internet, and I welcome the ISPs’ code of conduct on active choice, which is designed to do precisely what the hon. Lady says, to give parents easy tools with which to protect their children. My approach with these businesses is to say, “This is the policy problem. You have the technical knowledge, so help us to solve it. Don’t simply say, ‘It can’t be done’.”