Karen Bradley
Main Page: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)Digital Economy Bill
Karen Bradley Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Karen Bradley)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
We live in a digital economy. Almost £600 billion of online sales were made in the UK in 2014. That is the largest per capita online sales figure in the world, of all the major economies, at just over £1,500 per head. To put that figure in context, it is more than 50% higher than that of the United States, which is the next highest valued market. The rate of job creation in digital industries is nearly three times as fast as in the rest of the economy; it was 1.56 million in 2014, and it is growing. Supporting the digital economy was core to our manifesto, and that is why this Bill is a central plank of the Government’s legislative programme in this Session. The Government are working tirelessly to help people and businesses to benefit from digital.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
On that point about benefit, is the purpose of part 5 to claim rights of ownership over all data? The definition of benefit in clause 29 is so broad that I cannot think of a piece of information that would elude it. Can the Secretary of State name a piece of information that falls without that clause?
Karen Bradley
I think my right hon. Friend has just made a bid to serve on the Bill Committee. He has clearly taken a great interest in the Bill—although, as a former Whip, I wonder whether that much interest qualifies anybody to be anywhere near a Bill Committee. I assure him that that is not the function of the Bill or the intention behind it. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be able to explore that question further during our line-by-line scrutiny in Committee.
To return to digital, our £1.7 billion roll-out plan means that 95% of all homes and businesses will have access to superfast speeds by 2017. We have one of the fastest 4G roll-outs in Europe, and 98% of premises will have indoor 4G coverage by the end of 2017.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
My right hon. Friend raises, quite rightly, the impressive programme for the roll-out of superfast broadband. Does she share my concern that too many new homes are still being built without that as standard? Will she work with her colleagues across the Government to make sure that that situation changes?
Karen Bradley
I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention. When she was Secretary of State, she was involved in much of the work that has put us in the situation we are in today. That is an extremely good situation, but there is still much more to do. She makes an important point about new build, and I assure her that I am discussing it with my colleagues in Cabinet.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
May I congratulate the Secretary of State on her new post and welcome her to it? I pay tribute to her predecessor and to the former Minister with responsibility for the digital economy, who did assiduous work on this. The Secretary of State mentioned 95% coverage by 2017 and linked it with mobile coverage, but many of the areas in the 5% that will not be covered do not have 4G or 3G coverage either. Will she tell the House that when the roll-out plan for universal broadband is done, she will consider giving that to areas such as mine, which could be a pilot scheme? It is a serious point, because if people do not have mobile or broadband, they do not have communications in the 21st century.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I have a similar constituency, so I know well what it is like to be in the last 5%. This is all about connected and joined-up digital, and making sure that we give everybody access to the digital economy, whether they are in the final 5% or in the 95% that is already in the plans. I will say more about the universal service obligation shortly.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to shaping the digital world to ensure that no one is left behind. Is she aware that those who are deaf or who have hearing loss are being excluded by the lack of subtitling? That is required on linear television, but it is not provided on the vast majority of on-demand services. Will she look at that exclusion? There is a huge opportunity to amend the Bill, so will she think again about extending the Communications Act 2003 to include the deaf and those with hearing loss?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I am aware of that point; it has been raised with me, and I am working on it with the Minister for Digital and Culture to improve the situation. I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that there has been progress in that area, but I fully take the point that we always need to do more. If she will forgive me, I will make some progress now, because I am aware that many right hon. and hon. Members want to contribute to the debate.
When it comes to broadband coverage, we are ahead of our major European competitors. In 2015, the UK maintained its No. 1 position for the widest access to superfast broadband, ahead of Germany, France, Italy and Spain. That connectivity drives business. Edinburgh, for example, has a thriving FinTech sector; Cardiff and Swansea have a particular specialism in cyber-security; Belfast’s strengths include app and software development; and Manchester boasts a world-class digital media cluster. The Government are supporting and enabling that, by providing funding through Tech City and supporting businesses through UK Trade & Investment.
Most fundamentally, we are ensuring that our citizens have the skills to keep the UK ahead. We were one of the first countries in the world to put computer coding in the national curriculum, and we are focusing on digital skills for adults, so that no one is left behind. The House may be interested to know that last year the most popular A-level was mathematics, and I am extremely pleased to hear that it is doing so well in the A-level stakes.
The Government are also digitally transforming. Our Government Digital Service has made us one of the world’s first “digital by default” countries—a model that has been copied around the globe. We are aggressively modernising the way in which the Government interact with citizens. Managing information well brings benefits, such as allowing drivers to share their licence information with insurers and car hire companies, which makes transactions faster. There is a new system to ensure that the electoral roll tallies with benefits data to stamp out fraud, and there are automatic fuel discounts for vulnerable pensioners.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
On sharing information, does the Secretary of State agree that technologies such as blockchain will challenge how we share information and, critically for the financial sector, how we make payments more quickly and get rid of the middle man?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are already looking at this and trialling it. The more we can do to use data and digital to enable people to transact more quickly, the better. Clearly, we have the challenges of data protection; we must ensure that people’s data are protected. There is a tension, but it is one that we are acutely aware of and working on.
We can be proud of our successes, but the Government’s ambitions are greater than that. Although 19 in 20 premises will be able to access superfast broadband, one in 20 will not. For that significant minority, the Bill brings good news. Implementation of the new broadband universal service obligation will require the designated communications provider to connect customers on demand at an affordable price. Eventually, technological developments will allow everyone to have a superfast connection, but until then the Bill will provide a safety net, so that by 2020 a minimum broadband speed of 10 megabits per second should be available. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) murmurs from a sedentary position, but that is the absolute minimum safety net.
Chris Bryant
The Secretary of State forced me—she virtually begged me—to stand up. I hear all the self-congratulation, and as much as I admire the former Minister with responsibility for the digital economy, the truth of the matter is that the original target was to get all the superfast broadband done by May 2015. That target has not been met, and the new target is December 2017. The Secretary of State is talking about a superfast speed that would not be recognised as superfast anywhere else in Europe, and 10 megabits per second is simply not enough to deliver for this country.
Karen Bradley
I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) will be delighted to be admired by the hon. Gentleman, but the hon. Gentleman is simply misrepresenting the position. Is he saying he is opposed to that position? Is he saying he is opposed to the Bill? Is he saying he is opposed to the measures in the Bill, which will make sure we have the maximum roll-out so everybody has access to broadband?
Chris Bryant
The Secretary of State is asking me questions now. It is normally the other around. If she is going to keep on stimulating me in this way, let me say that, no, I think the Bill should be far more ambitious. We should be making sure that 4G is available to everybody, not have 70% of people in rural areas not getting any 4G at all, and we should have a universal service obligation of 15 megabits per second.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman should listen to the rest of my speech and then support the measures the Government are introducing. We want to make sure that we deliver—to ensure that there is access to broadband, that there is access to 4G and that everybody is connected.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, notwithstanding the comments of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), no infrastructure, resources or finances were in place to deliver the USO previously, and that substantial progress has been made during the past six years to get on with the job?
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head, as he always does. He is absolutely right. I want to make it clear that the Government will not allow people to be left behind. Whether they are running a business, staying in touch with distant family, watching catch-up television or helping children with homework, everyone should have a right to decent connectivity.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Karen Bradley
I want to make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
To engage citizens digitally, we need the market for communications services to work for them. They need to be able to assess quality, and they need to navigate an increasingly complex array of choices. They also need to be confident that in making such choices they will not suffer hassle and disruption, and end up disconnected and out of pocket. The fact that recent surveys show that less than half of respondents trust their communications provider and that customer satisfaction in the sector is low is a real worry. The future of our economy depends on digital connectivity, and the Bill will address these problems head-on.
Consumers need information, but not the spreadsheets and reports that Ofcom produce. During the summer, the Competition and Markets Authority argued that to guide consumers in choosing banking services, apps need to be developed to guide consumers through the plethora of different products. This is no gimmick. These are technologies to empower consumers and drive the economy, and the communications sector is no different. The Bill provides the necessary powers to ensure that we can deliver this change—informing consumers, helping them to switch providers and compensating them if things go wrong.
Underlying such support for consumers, we need a strong and effective regulator that is able to tackle market failures and to keep the system in balance. Ofcom needs to make important decisions not just on implementing consumer-switching regimes, but on how core infrastructure is accessed and shared, how the radio spectrum is licensed and managed and how we can grow connectivity and capacity, migrating from yesterday’s copper to tomorrow’s fibre technologies.
Nick Herbert
Given that the extent of fibre to premises is so low in this country at only 1%—we are in danger of falling behind other countries in future—should not the regulator be confident in looking at the monopoly and in breaking it up where necessary to encourage more investment and competition? Does not BT’s monopoly with Openreach now need attention?
Mr Speaker
Order. The intervention was too long. A lot of Members wish to speak in the debate. It is very selfish behaviour.
Matthew Pennycook
This is related to the right hon. Gentleman’s point. What comfort can the Secretary of State offer my constituents, in relation to developments in the heart of our capital city without fibre connectivity, who are trying to engage with BT Openreach to get a connection and are getting no response, even through me?
Karen Bradley
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman contact me, and I will make sure that those points are raised. In response to my right hon. Friend, I have been clear that we will not stop or cease until we get the right result. If that means the structural separation of BT and Openreach, this Government are prepared to consider that. Ofcom has made some recommendations. We are looking carefully at them, and Ofcom is consulting on them. We need to make sure we get it right and that we get this delivered, but nothing is off the table.
The Bill will ensure that Ofcom is held to account, but not at the expense of delay and intransigence. As well as holding industry to account, we must of course be supportive. The Bill will bring billions of pounds of benefits to industry. The new electronic communications code recognises that digital connectivity is as important as a connection to water or electricity supplies. Providing new rights to install communications infrastructure will herald a revolution in rural connectivity, bringing the digital economy to all parts of our nation.
Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I would be very grateful if my right hon. Friend outlined how the reforms—for example, to prevent abuse of the wayleave system—will reduce the costs of providing infrastructure, so that places such as my Chipping Barnet constituency can get full access to fast fibre broadband?
Karen Bradley
If my right hon. Friend will allow me, I will come on to that later in my speech.
As well as reforming land rights, the Government are reforming the planning system. I think that my right hon. Friend was referring to that. The Minister for Housing and Planning will shortly introduce regulations to ease the installation of vital masts to fill not spots. The Bill will ensure that the planning reforms introduced in 2013 for five years, for poles and cabinets, can be made permanent.
The radio spectrum—the invisible resource on which all modern technology relies—will be better managed to ensure that we maximise capacity and avoid interference and that the UK is ready for the arrival of 5G, the future of mobile connectivity. We will lead the world on that, thanks to this Government’s £11.6 million investment in the innovation centre at the University of Surrey.
As well as access and infrastructure, the Bill will tackle harm online. First, our manifesto pledged to protect children from online pornography. Children now spend more time online than watching television, and one in five children recently surveyed had encountered pornographic images that had upset them.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I of course support the Government’s intention to protect children from inappropriate content, but does the Secretary of State agree that compulsory, age-related sex and relationships education in our schools must be central to protecting children?
Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about having age-appropriate and good-quality sex education in schools, as I very much advocated during my previous job in the Home Office. However, we need to be clear that we have an incredible problem of pornographic images being available to children. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that children as young as seven are being treated for addiction to pornography. This cannot be addressed through one measure alone, but the measures in the Bill will help. There is no silver bullet; a joined-up approach across the whole Government is needed to deal with it. I hope that he agrees that as we age-classify films, restrict age-inappropriate broadcasts to after the watershed, put age-inappropriate magazines on the top shelf and keep children out of sex shops, so equivalent and proportionate measures are needed online.
The Government have already made good progress on this subject. Frist, since 2013, public wi-fi is automatically filtered and pornography is blocked in many places that children regularly visit. Following agreement with the Government, the four largest internet service providers offer their customers family-friendly filters, which, since last year, are now turned on by default. The Bill now goes further. Pornographic websites will be required to have adequate age verification, which is equivalent to what the gambling industry already implements. The regulator will pass on details of the non-compliant to credit card companies and other service providers to enable them to withdraw business support. We will drive cultural change in the sector to ensure that children are protected.
Secondly, we will protect consumers from nuisance calls. The Government have already taken steps on this matter. In May, we required direct marketers no longer to withhold their caller identification information, so that consumers can see the number of who is ringing. The Information Commissioner seeks to enforce the law, and we will help her further by placing the direct marketing code on a statutory footing, so that penalties stick.
Thirdly, we will help to protect businesses from attacks on their intellectual property. Burglars can be sentenced for 10 years in prison, but the criminal gangs making vast sums of money through exploiting the online creations of others only face a two-year sentence. We will increase the sentence to 10 years. Criminals such as Paul Mahoney, who profited by almost £300,000 and cost industry millions by facilitating access to illegal films on the internet, need to be sent a clear message. We need to ensure that enforcement agencies and their partners have the right set of tools to tackle all types of piracy, which is why those measures are so important. We will make it easier to register designs, cutting costs for our creative industries while increasing protections.
As we build our digital economy, investing in infrastructure and empowering citizens, the Government must transform and become more digital. The Government want to use and manage the vast amounts of information we keep better. Let me be clear that that is not to develop some Big Brother state that sees and knows everything. We want to manage information better for the same reason that shopkeepers, farmers, insurers, car manufacturers, educators—practically anyone in our economy who has ambition—do. Quite simply, we want to deliver better services—to create, to improve and to deliver in the public interest, for the citizen’s benefit.
The Bill will allow public services to be targeted and delivered better. If one arm of the public sector knows who needs a service and the other arm is trying to deliver that service, the two need to be brought together, to work for the public benefit. Of course, we are doing that already in many places, but often only after legislating to enable specific data-sharing arrangements. All that takes time—time we do not have and can now save because of the Bill.
As the private sector knows well, information is a mineable commodity, from which value can be extracted. That value to the Government will come in better decisions, based on quality research and statistics. The Bill will allow us to spot problems and grasp opportunity for the benefit of everyone.
We will shortly be publishing the draft BBC charter for the next 11 years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) led one of the largest and most open consultations ever conducted, and the new charter will provide the foundations for a stronger, more independent, more distinctive BBC that will inform, educate and entertain for many years to come.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Karen Bradley
I am about to conclude and I know many Members wish to speak, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
The Bill will provide the necessary powers to enable Ofcom to take on its new regulatory role and to allow the BBC to manage TV licensing for pensioners.
The Bill is good news for all. It is good for people wanting to get online, for telecommunication companies wanting to grow their sector and build consumer confidence and for creative industries wanting to protect their property and have an economy to sell into. It is good for families wanting to help their children with homework on the internet, without stumbling across harmful material. It is also good for civil servants who want to be entrepreneurial and deliver better services and for people who want to transact with the Government efficiently, without burdens and bureaucracy. We will grow the economy and we will grasp the future. I commend the Bill to the House.
Thangam Debbonaire
I am getting nods from the Secretary of State, so I am glad that I have got that right.
The Bill could and should be a vehicle to boost the UK’s creative industries and the legal economy, and reduce the proliferation of illegal content online. I would like the Government to consider adding two things to the Bill. First, I ask the Secretary of State to consider making online providers who make music available on their sites legally liable to ensure that that music is legally available. This would mean that they would need either to obtain relevant licences or take active steps to prevent infringement, and could not take any advantage of the safe harbours provision in the e-commerce directive, which was written many years ago and no longer covers what we need today.
Secondly, I would like the Secretary of State to consider imposing a code of practice between online intermediaries and those who hold the rights to music in order to deal with piracy if voluntary talks fail. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, this is not just about music, and he mentioned films. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) referred to e-books. There are many art forms to which this could apply. I am taking music as an example, but it could do the lot.
Estimating the loss to the legal trade in music through piracy is difficult, but using data from Ofcom, there is evidence to suggest that the losses could be anything between £150 million and £300 million a year. Whatever the true scale of the figure, this is a significant loss to the UK economy, to music producers, and above all to the musicians and the artists who make the music.
Online copyright infringement is as serious as physical, off-line copyright infringement, as others have said in relation to online pornography or other aspects of the internet and the digital economy. It is as serious as that. One would not expect to walk into a shop and remove a CD without paying, walk into a club or a local live venue and not pay your door fee, or walk into an orchestral concert without a ticket. The two things are exactly the same.
I have often heard it said that the online world is impossible to regulate—that it is a sort of modern-day wild west. Well, as anyone who loves western movies as much as I do knows, the wild west was eventually tamed—sort of. The good guys do eventually win, usually, and the bad guys usually get taken out—they do in Morricone films, anyway. [Interruption.] Yes, with great music. It is not always the sheriff who is successful in asserting good over evil, and in the online world it does not necessarily have to be the law that intervenes and pursues prosecutions to make it work. Nevertheless, we do need that regulation. Music lovers themselves want to make sure their loved bands and artists are paid properly, and they know that they can be if they pay through legal download sites or through ad content. Musicians and the industry have done well out of an increase in digital music, some of it free to download or available on a subscription service.