Proposal for Designation of Age-verification Regulator

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 General Committees

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma— I think it is the first time I have had that honour. I congratulate the Minister on her new role. This is the first time we have faced each other in such a debate, and I am very much looking forward to spending an awful lot more time with her in Committee Rooms as the Data Protection Bill weaves its way through the House of Commons.

At this stage, I would normally preface my remarks with a lacerating attack on how the Government are acquiescing in our place in the world as a cyber also-ran, and I would attack them for their rather desultory position and attitude to delivering a world-class digital trust regime. However, I am very fortunate that this morning the Secretary of State has made the arguments for me. This morning, before the Minister arrived, the Secretary of State launched his new app, “Matt Hancock MP”. It does not require email verification, so people are already posting hardcore pornography on it. When the Minister winds up, she might just tell us whether the age-verification regulator that she has proposed, and that we will approve this morning, will oversee the app of the Secretary of State as well.

I noticed that the main contributors to the app are journalists, although it looks as though Ed Balls has also been on, because someone has posted “Ed Balls”. Those are the only words that have been posted, but it is the second-most favourited comment on the app this morning. For reasons that are not quite clear, when someone signs up to the “Matt Hancock MP” app, the app asks whether it can access that person’s photos. It is not quite clear whether that is an unintended breach of users’ privacy, but perhaps the Minister can tell us her attitude to that when she winds up as well. If people are posting pornography on it, as I am told they are, perhaps she could raise that with the Secretary of State when she returns. In her wind-up remarks, we expect her to tell us whether her regulator will include in its purview the app launched by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport this morning.

The second substantive point I wanted to make is a plea to the Minister. This morning she has contributed to the complete mish-mash and muddle that is digital regulation in this country. We already have Ofcom responsible for content regulation, unless it is on a platform such as Facebook or Twitter. We have the Information Commissioner, which is responsible for data protection. We have the Advertising Standards Authority, which is responsible for regulating adverts, but not political adverts. If the Republic of Russia paid for attack ads attacking Brexit mutineers, such as some of the hon. and right hon. Members sat on the Conservative Benches, that is not covered by the ASA. Now we have a fourth regulator to add to the mix: the BBFC. The challenge the Minister has is that so much is now falling through the cracks that she is in no way able to rehearse an argument that we have a digital regulation regime that is fit for the 21st century.

Let me give the Minister advance notice of some of the arguments we need to have during the consideration of the Data Protection Bill. This is a mess, and the Government have to bring forward substantive proposals to clear it up. The challenge she has got this morning is that she is proposing as an age-verification regulator an organisation that is hopelessly underfunded with no sense of what its scope should be. According to the BBFC’s annual report for 2016, it has £5.4 million in turnover. It has a grand total of 52 employees, and that is not up but down on the number for 2015. It receives no subsidy or budget from the Government. The Minister needs to tell us how much money she will ask for in Commons votes to fund the BBFC to fulfil this important new regulatory role.

Secondly, the question of mission creep is an important one for the Minister to answer. The BBFC said this month at the Free Speech Coalition leadership conference that it sees the powers under the Digital Economy Act as meaning that even social media sites such as Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr would have to eliminate adult content or block all under-18s from using them. If the BBFC’s attitude to Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr is that they need to block content for all under-18s, then “Matt Hancock MP” the app should be included in the purview of the regulator. I know the Minister will set our minds at rest. The question for her is how on earth this regulator with 52 people will ensure that Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter are taking down all adult content or blocking under-18s. We need to hear a concrete plan and some substantive reassurance from her this morning.

We are told that the enforcement of age verification will be undertaken not on a proactive basis, but by people reporting in complaints, yet the whole regime for collective redress has been shot through by the Government in the other place. Parents on their own cannot even get together with consumer organisations such as Which? to bring substantive redress under the terms of the Digital Economy Act.

The BBFC has given some reassurances that it will be able to distinguish between pornography and sex education, but it has not told us how. It claims to have a system for mobile devices that blocks websites with inappropriate content, but in evidence to the Public Bill Committee, the Open Rights Group said that the system is inaccurate, people have to actively choose the websites that are blocked, the websites are not automatically blocked, the websites are often blocked incorrectly and harmful websites are slipping through. We need to have substantial reassurances that the Minister is absolutely confident that the BBFC has the powers, resources, methodology, people and a strategy for fulfilling the terms of the statutory instrument. I would like some reassurance on those points, but crucially we all want to hear whether “Matt Hancock MP” the app will be included under the terms of the regulator.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I thank my right hon. Friend for confirming what I suspected. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is extremely able in the digital world, and I am sure that what he has put out is of very high quality.

I wish to respond to some of the criticisms and questions from the debate. First and foremost, over the choice of the BBFC—

[Liam Byrne]

Tom Bateman, a political editor with BBC politics, tells us he denied the app access to his photos and yet it uploaded pictures anyway, so it is not clear to me how the Secretary of State has been able to produce this app in a way that is violating the country’s privacy laws.

[The Chair]

Order. If we could keep to the legislation—