Internet-based Media Companies

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Gregory Campbell

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is right, but what happened was completely predictable. Responsible publishers choose not to publish things that are designed to provoke. I have not seen the video, but I persuaded someone in my office to, and the clear intention of the material is absolutely to provoke. It was irresponsible for YouTube to carry the video.

In its response, Google, rather like my hon. Friend, uttered pious words about free speech and the first amendment, but I would like to make some observations about that. Google is an exceptionally profitable business. It is not a charity, or an agency that can lay claim to moral or political leadership in any credible way. I say that not just because of the mounting number of times Google is being hauled, in relation to other parts of the internet, before the courts and regulators and losing. The company seems to be highly selective about the parts of the law that it wishes to observe.

Many Muslims in the UK and throughout the world—some of whom reacted in the way my hon. Friend described, and some of whom simply demonstrated peacefully outside Google’s UK headquarters—were deeply offended by the video and by YouTube’s failure to remove it, except in the two countries where the company acknowledged that there might be violent protests. I understand that YouTube has now also disabled links to the clip in at least two other countries, including India. It became clear, therefore, as the tragedy of the video unfolded, that the company did not have an absolute fixed position that it would defend to the nth degree. It was a movable feast, but it moved too slowly, and only after too many people had died, been injured or had their property destroyed. That highlights the inadequacy, or at any rate the inconsistency, of YouTube’s processes. I have looked at those processes so that I can try to advise people who have been hurt by the video, and the processes are almost deliberately opaque and make it hard for people to find any mechanism to address their hurt.

I shall not address the issues that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) has led on in Parliament, because she wants to speak later, and I want other Members to have a chance to contribute to this debate, but I am concerned that decisions—the Muslim video is one example—appear to be taken on an ad hoc basis. A codified, publicly available system would help to show that Google—this applies to other companies, too—is serious about its responsibilities. The companies need to grow up. They are not young cowboys battling on the wilder edges of a new territory about which we know little; we now know a lot, and it is time that that was reflected in the behaviour of internet businesses.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is outlining the thrust of her powerful argument against the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, but she has not said what sanctions, if she were successful and her campaign moved to a logical conclusion, a Parliament in an individual nation state might apply that could protect the people whom she and I seek to defend.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is right that I have not stated the sanctions that Parliament could apply, because in this debate I am arguing, in the first place, for the industry to grow up, take responsibility and properly self-regulate, and not to say, “Oh, whoops, we are being embarrassed, so we are going to do something,” or, “Oh, whoops, it is dangerous in that country, so we will sort it there.” I am saying, “Come on; you are in the last chance saloon, and you need to take responsibility. If you do it well and right, the Minister will not need to intervene, but if you do not, I will be the first person, not just in this Chamber but in the House, arguing for much more powerful regulation.” That is not where I want to go first. I expect companies not to be surprised when they get it wrong, and to ensure that they put in place proper mechanisms to protect not just vulnerable internet users, but all of us.

My final point is about child abuse images. The Internet Watch Foundation is a model and example to the rest of the world, but it addresses only a narrow, albeit important, part of the internet—the web and newsgroups. Figures recently released by five police forces in England and Wales—Cambridgeshire, Dyfed-Powys, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire—show that between 2010 and mid-2012, they seized 26 million pornographic images of children, which is an incredibly troubling number, but think about this: someone calculated that that might mean that more than 300 million images were seized across the country in the same period. Not only does that beggar belief, but it tells us that something is definitely not working as it should. Somehow or other, the industry and all of us need to up our game and confront such harm.

Convention on Domestic Workers

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Gregory Campbell

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Signing the convention would make a difference in three ways. The first is the signal it would send to traffickers, who will otherwise believe, no doubt, that the UK is joining their infamous gang and saying that this country is open to human trafficking. We know how extensive human trafficking is in the UK and that it is more profitable than drug dealing. It is the most profitable activity for organised crime, although the field of human trafficking is unorganised as well as organised, because people as well as agencies supply domestic workers. Moreover, individual families bring domestic workers with them. It is, therefore, important that Britain sends out a signal that we are closed to that kind of abuse.

Secondly, the victims themselves would also get a signal. People who work with victims of trafficking have told me that those victims believe that they have no recourse to help and that the clear signal is that they are dependent on their owners/employers, who usually retain their passports. They do not believe that anyone can help them. They are frightened of approaching the police and, frankly, our national referral mechanism is an incompetent way for them to get help.

Thirdly, if we were signatories to the convention, the Minister would have to do something about this level of labour exploitation. Our laws apparently say, and we claim at international events, that we have fantastic working hours and protection and so on. However, 67% of the migrant domestic workers who approached Kalayaan said that they did not have any time off, were working seven days a week and worked on call for 24 hours a day, and more than half of them worked for 16 or more hours a day. The Minister may say that the UK’s position is that people ought, voluntarily, to be able to work for more than 16 hours a day, but I do not believe that those workers were working voluntarily for more than 16 hours a day when their salary was £50 or less a week. If the Minister were a signatory to the international convention, I think that he would actually have to do something about this level of labour exploitation in people’s homes.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government’s position appears to be that signing the convention would either make no difference or create a series of other, consequential problems? Other nations, communities and countries have supported and signed the convention, so does she also agree that the Minister should outline the difficulties that the Government think have appeared and that the rest of us are unaware of?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I think that we all find what has happened to be depressing.

As well as being subject to labour exploitation, these workers are also subject to horrific working conditions. About half of those who approached Kalayaan did not have their own room and had to sleep on the floor. We do not expect to see those sorts of working conditions in Britain in the 21st century. Two thirds of them were not allowed out unaccompanied, and two thirds had their passport withheld. That is unlawful. I know of no prosecution, except in cases in which someone has succeeded in being declared as having been trafficked, but that applies to only a tiny minority of these poor victims. Many of them are also victims of psychological abuse.

I have tried to show the ways in which the abuse is widespread and serious. I do not want to accuse the Government of bad faith, but, having talked to people who participated in the ILO process, I was shocked at the way in which our national representative behaved during the negotiations as the agenda approached its conclusion. It suggested that our aim was not in any way to improve conditions for these vulnerable workers. Apparently, the UK often led European Union amendments to attempt to dilute the convention in areas such as working hours and occupational safety and health. I have described the working hours that migrant domestic workers frequently face. Will the Minister tell us what working hours he thinks are reasonable for workers in people’s homes? Does he think that they deserve effective, not theoretical, protection in relation to working hours?

Even when all other countries had agreed on positions, the United Kingdom cited continued objections to the consensus, for example, on the working and living conditions of children. What protections does the Minister think that children should have when working in other people’s homes? The United Kingdom stated that the final text of the convention would be unratifiable. Indeed, the Government intend not to ratify the convention and will not even vote for it, citing apparent conflicts with EU regulations. The EU bloc and all other major countries decided wholeheartedly to endorse and vote for the convention, so the United Kingdom representative was the only dissenting voice in the plenary voting session on the convention.

On 23 May, less than a month prior to the final decision, the Minister said in reply to a question asked by two hon. Members about the matter:

“The Government will seek a workable convention that can be ratified by as many countries as possible, and consequently protect vulnerable domestic workers worldwide”.—[Official Report, 23 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 469W.]

The Minister does, therefore, recognise that an international convention can protect vulnerable domestic workers worldwide. However, having abstained on the ILO vote, can the UK Government play a positive role in encouraging other countries to ratify the convention or protecting vulnerable domestic workers worldwide? We have completely lost moral leadership. Will the Minister tell us what contribution he thinks Britain can make to international action to protect this vulnerable group of workers?