Digital Economy Bill

Debate between John Whittingdale and Maria Miller

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion No. 3: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and I share his regret that it is not possible to address online abuse in this Bill. I hope that the Minister will show the Government’s determination on this issue, as Ministers have done regularly in response to questions on a number of other measures. I particularly noted his response to my intervention about codes of practices. He is right to say that the industry has been able to move swiftly and effectively to deal with issues relating to terrorism and child abuse, but I think issues relating to online abuse more broadly are just as worthy of their attention. I hope that he is clear about the Government’s priorities in this area, to make sure that the industry really does act.

It is an art form to draw the scope of a Bill, and the Minister should get a grade-A medal for drafting the scope of this Bill extremely tightly to make sure that a number of issues that many of us would have liked to have drawn to the attention of the House are not covered by this Bill. That does not, however, mean that they are any the less important.

I really welcome Government new clauses 28 and 29 on the powers to block access to material where age verification is not sufficiently robust. That shows the Government’s intention. They have done well to reflect the intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) in her new clause 1 and of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). It shows action and energy from Government to try to clean up the internet so that it is safer for children to use. My amendments 27 to 34 raise the question of whether the Government could have gone further in that, although I acknowledge that they are very much adhering to the manifesto commitments we made at the general election.

We have heard from the Minister at length, and I listened carefully, particularly to his response to my amendments. With his usual elegance and wit, he attempted to explain how this Bill can be at odds with Government policy but people can be very happy with it—I may be being a little unkind. He often tells us at the Dispatch Box that what is illegal offline is illegal online too, but it is illegal for children under the age of 18 to view adult material—I refer not just to pornography; as he knows, “adult material” is drawn more broadly than pornography alone. It therefore seems a little arbitrary for us to introduce a new law that makes such a distinction. I do not understand why one needs to be made.

[Mr Whittingdale]

My right hon. Friend says it is illegal for children to view adult material, but she will be aware that vast amounts of adult material are broadcast by our national broadcasters after the watershed at 10 o’clock, and it is not illegal for children to watch that, although it may be undesirable. How does she propose to deal with BBC iPlayer, ITV Play and 4oD, which broadcast 18 material?

[Mrs Miller]

My right hon. Friend, the former Secretary of State, makes an extremely important point. I suppose that the advantage broadcasters have over the online world is that they can use a notional watershed, although, as he rightly says, that is clearly not the case when it comes to iPlayer. I shall come on to technology that is on our side. Technology has moved on and given us opportunities, which my right hon. Friend would welcome, to make sure that children do not view things that we have said in Parliament are inappropriate.

I gently urge the Minister to consider how he might embrace my amendments in future. The law makes it clear that adult material does not just mean pornography. In response to my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State, that is the point that I am making. Whether it is extreme violence, beheadings, sadomasochism or other such behaviour or material, it is deemed as adult-related. However, for reasons that are unclear, that is excluded from the Bill. Perhaps the Minister can give me a little more information about why he decided to do that, and assure me that in future that will be dealt with.

I took the time to talk to some primary schoolchildren in my constituency about the sort of things that they came across on the internet. A group of them talked about viewing age-appropriate material—I think it was pictures of small kittens—but at the end material popped up that frightened them to their core. They were young children, and they were not out and out looking for such material—it just popped up. Restrictions and parental controls could be put in place to catch that, but the Minister has an opportunity to make sure that organisations such as YouTube are more careful about advertisements linked to child-related material. That is an important point for him to consider further in relation to my amendments.

Ofcom has done a great deal of work in this area, and the Minister will be well and truly aware of that. It says that this is a significant problem, and that this year, one in 10 under-11s has seen something online that is “worrying, nasty or offensive”. Two thirds of young people think that sites should do more to protect them from that type of adult content. One of the guiding principles of the new regulator, the British Board of Film Classification, is to protect children from harmful media content. We protect them on television, albeit with the problems that my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State has mentioned, and we protect them in the cinema. In one of the most uncontrolled environments —online—we allow them freely to view things that are far more difficult for us as parents to control. My amendments would help to draw those restrictions and website blocking more broadly if proper age verification procedures are not put in place, and it is worth the Government considering that further.

Ofcom was charged with looking at common media standards four or five years ago, so perhaps the Minister can update the House on the progress that has been made in that area. Can he explain how the new regulator will balance its narrow responsibilities to look solely at pornography with the organisation’s broader remit offline with regard to adult-related material? Organisations such as Childline have to deal daily with the aftermath when young people look at more broadly defined adult material online, as I have said before, in videos of extreme torture, violence, and—this is particularly upsetting—beheadings. My amendments, which have the full support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children seek to put safeguards that we take for granted offline into the online world. Content that would require an 18 certificate in a film or video game would be subject to an age-verification system.

The technology exists to do that. We have an incredible IT sector in this country, and it has invented ways to verify age in an anonymised way online, particularly with the use of passport data and biometrics. Companies such as Yoti have developed facial recognition apps linked to passports so that they can make sure, using anonymous data, that individuals are the age that they say they are. These things exist; Parliament does not need to invent them.

Accepting that adult over-18 material should not be viewed by children does not undermine freedom of speech, because we insist on it offline. It does add to costs for businesses, but we accept that cost for offline businesses, and I believe we should accept it for online businesses too. Fundamental rights and freedoms have always been subject to limits within the law, and the amendments simply call for the law relating to adult material in general to apply online, and for children to be protected. People who choose to flout the law should be subject to the same action by the regulator as people who distribute pornography.

I should like briefly to touch on a couple of other amendments in this group. New clause 3, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), talks about the creation of personal accounts and removing anonymity on the internet. I sympathise with the measures that it proposes, but it is as important for non-commercial sites as commercial sites to adopt such a measure, and I do not think that the Bill is the appropriate vehicle for such a change.

New clause 10 was discussed at length by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. As I said in an intervention, I sympathise with the point that he made, because the guidance on sex and relationships education is 16 years out of date. It does not quite pre-date the internet, but it is close to doing so, and it does not address issues such as pornography and the way in which it drives young people’s understanding of relationships—something that no one in the Chamber feels very comfortable with. I do not believe, however, that the Bill is the proper vehicle for him to achieve the objectives that he has set out, as he may well end up distorting the issue, because people might think that we have addressed it with his provision. However, we would not have done so, because the measure deals only with online pornography. He will agree, especially if he has read my Select Committee report on sexual harassment in schools, that any measure to address SRE and its improvement in schools should be drawn much more widely than the internet alone. I hope he will forgive me for not supporting that narrowly drawn provision, although I accept that he probably did not have any choice, given the scope of the Bill—he is absolutely right about that.

I urge the Minister to consider stronger undertakings than those he gave me in his opening statement, given the importance of prohibiting children from viewing adult material in the broader sense, rather than the narrow sense on which the Government have chosen to focus. He has a personal responsibility to children who use the internet day in, day out. We need to make sure that it is a safe place. He has done more than any other Minister today in making the internet a safer place for children such as mine and his, but he needs to do more, so will he give me that undertaking today?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Whittingdale and Maria Miller

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

T9. Fast internet connections are fast becoming a necessity, not a luxury. Should other local authorities follow the lead of Hampshire County Council, which has called for all new homes in the county to have superfast broadband built in from day one as part of planning consent?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. It is now absolutely essential that new estates should, as a matter of course, be linked up to superfast broadband. I commend Hampshire County Council for the actions it is taking to achieve that. My hon. Friend the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy is meeting my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning to discuss what further measures we can take to ensure that other local authorities follow Hampshire’s lead.

FIFA

Debate between John Whittingdale and Maria Miller

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for the measured way in which he is dealing with the situation. However, football fans—not just throughout the United Kingdom, but elsewhere in Europe and, indeed, the world—will be listening and watching in disbelief at what is happening. My right hon. Friend talked briefly about the importance of securing a co-ordinated response; perhaps he will take a few moments to give us a little more detail about how he will ensure that the change that is needed receives widespread support, not just in the United Kingdom and not just in Europe, but throughout the world.

[Mr Whittingdale]

My right hon. Friend is right to stress the need to gather together as many allies as possible. Obviously, that will be discussed by UEFA in the first instance, and when I see Greg Dyke later this week, I will certainly talk to him about the further steps that he intends to take. It is worth noting, however, that while we understand that most of the northern European countries voted against Sepp Blatter, we believe that most, if not all, Latin American countries did so as well, which shows that concern about the way in which FIFA is behaving now extends well beyond Europe .