Digital Economy

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The Minister is being very generous in taking a great many interventions, and I appreciate that she is giving thorough answers to the questions she is being asked, but we only have 58 minutes left, and many Members want to take part in the debate. She might want to bear that in mind.

[Margot James]

Thank you for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, which I will take on board, but I will just deal with the point raised by my hon. Friend. The measures that will be acceptable to the BBFC will be of greater rigour than the examples he gave. I hope that I will be able to satisfy his concerns, but I may write to him, rather than dwell at length on the important issue he raises.

I now turn to the guidance on ancillary service providers. Paragraph 3 of section 3 provides a non-exhaustive list of classes of providers that the age-verification regulator may consider as within scope. However, to ensure that this policy remains flexible for the benefit of future developments, it is necessary that this is a non-exhaustive list. Where new classes of ancillary services appear in the future, the BBFC’s guidance explains the process by which these services will be informed.

The guidance includes additional material, as this is a new policy and the regulator considered that it was important for its stakeholders that the guidance set out the wider context in which the age-verification regulator will carry out regulation. This includes valuable guidance on matters such as the BBFC’s approach, powers and material on data protection.

We are aware of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s special interest report. The Committee raised similar concerns to the JCSI—for example, on the content threshold—and the responses to the SLSC’s concerns on these points are the same as the responses we have given to the JCSI reports. However, the SLSC also suggested that the House may want to ask what action the Government will take to tackle pornographic material available on a non-commercial basis. We have already debated these issues during my remarks.

I appreciate that pornography is of course made available by means not covered by the regulations. We have already covered those issues, but they were also the subject of extensive discussion during the passage of the Digital Economy Bill. In particular, concern has been expressed about social media platforms. As I have said in response to hon. Members’ interventions, we expect those platforms to enforce their own terms and conditions and to protect children from harmful content. Indeed, the Government have been clear that online platforms must do more to protect users from such harmful content.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call the Opposition spokesman, let me say it will be obvious that many people wish to speak. This debate runs until 8.36 pm and I see people with large wads of notes. It might be helpful for colleagues to know now that they should edit down their notes to some three or four minutes.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You can see by the number of people who want to speak and the amount of notes we have that this is something we are really keen for the Government to get right. May I therefore ask whether there is any opportunity to extend the debate, at least towards its allocated time?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That is a perfectly reasonable point of order, but not now. There was a point when Mr Speaker asked whether the House agreed to take the three matters we are discussing this evening together or separately. At that point, anyone could have objected and each would have been taken separately; thus there would have been a much longer debate, but I am afraid that that moment has passed. However, it is very good, just for once, to have a point of order that is a real point of order, and I thank the hon. Lady for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. As I indicated earlier, we will start with a time limit of four minutes.