Oral Answers to Questions
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries (Sir John Whittingdale)
Rapid development of AI poses major questions for many industries, including our vital press sector. We are hosting roundtables with broadcasters and news publishers to discuss the risks and opportunities of AI to journalism, and we intend to continue the conversation with the sector over the coming months.
Disability and Gender Inclusivity in the Media
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)
I will call Dr Lisa Cameron to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to make a winding-up speech.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered disability and gender inclusivity in the media.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela, in a debate on disability and gender inclusivity in the media, which is such an important issue. In this short debate, I plan first to look back at where we have come from. Then I shall look forward and refer to some of the progress that has been highlighted to me since I secured the debate. That progress comes from a number of media companies that are trying their best to strive and go forward.
To start, it is important to remind ourselves that the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have empowered women around the world to speak out against sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. That has given hope to a new generation who are marching on a path towards equality. However, we must be cognisant of the fact that the report “Gender Inequality and Screenwriters”, supported by the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society, has revealed an alarming set of statistics, such as the fact that only 16% of film writers in the UK are female. It has also been uncovered that only 14% of prime-time TV is female written. That consistent imbalance was observed over 10 years, and the evidence indeed demonstrated that those figures had flatlined during that period, with no signs of recent improvement in gender representation. We can see from the figures presented in the report that the glass ceiling is still firmly in place and the problem remains locked for so many women—so many talented people who should be contributing to industry.
For an example, we can look way back to the roots of patriarchal society and the ’50s and ’60s, when Sylvia Anderson was a female pioneer in television. As most of us will know, she co-created many groundbreaking children’s shows and characters, from “Fireball XL5” and “Stingray” to “Thunderbirds” and the iconic Lady Penelope. Sylvia Anderson was described in the publicity material of their own production company, AP Films, as the driving force behind the puppet kingdom, and she devised the characters, co-wrote the scripts and the storylines, and often directed the filming herself at a time when there were so few women in such pivotal roles.
During Sylvia’s lifetime, as a result of a patriarchal system, she found herself often omitted from the work and creations that she produced alongside her husband. To this day, those productions are still often referred to with no mention of co-creator Sylvia.
Gender inequality is not limited to writers, as many main creative roles in film production are held predominantly by men. Worldwide, women are still being denied their voice and their due recognition, so why, in 2022, are we still having this debate? Why should this argument exist at all? It seems that, like Sylvia, women are still suffering the effects of gender inequality in respect of which intolerance of women’s place is still a huge factor.
We are pleased to have Dee Anderson, Sylvia’s daughter, with us here today. Dee is supporting the Time’s Up campaign in order to promote gender inclusivity in the media and take forward a more inclusive and gender-balanced industry for the future. I congratulate her on all the work she is doing in that regard.
I want to look briefly at some progress that is being made. I have heard from a number of organisations, such as the BBC, which contacted me to let me know that it is driving forward a campaign called 50:20:12, which has as its targets 50% women, at least 20% people from an ethnic minority background and 12% disabled employees. The BBC is using the campaign to drive a senior leader index for each of its departments. This is so important. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for disability, I have heard from so many people who have told me that they have no role models within the industries who are from their area and background, and have their characteristics. That can be extremely disheartening.
To see industry trying to drive forward inclusion and equality on our screens is like osmosis. We take this in every day of our lives, when we are watching television, live-streaming or looking at media. Those are the images we see, the people we hear from, the presenters who face the world on our behalf. It is so important that young people from every background and sector of society have those role models to aspire to and know that they can achieve their full potential.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and congratulate her on securing this debate. Does she agree that public service broadcasters have an important role to play when it comes to inclusivity, whether disability or gender? Will she join me in applauding the work of Channel 4, particularly ensuring that the Paralympics coverage in 2012 not only gave opportunities for people to reappraise or rethink their views on disability in front of the camera, but gave many people behind the camera the opportunity to establish careers, when they might have found that difficult before because of their disability?
Dr Cameron
Absolutely. I entirely commend the fantastic work that the right hon. Lady does on equality, right across Parliament. It is second to none; she is a force for good in showing leadership in those roles. She is absolutely right. I spoke to Channel 4 a number of years ago in my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on disability. They told me that, at the start, it was seen as a big risk to have so many hours of livestreaming of the Paralympic games. They were not sure how that would go with regard to audience participation and numbers. It has actually been overwhelmingly positive. People are so engaged and inspired by the Paralympians. They see first hand on their screens the achievements of so many people who have overcome adversity and challenged their disabilities, turning them to ability and potential. I congratulate Channel 4, who sent me information about the work they are doing, which I can mention alongside that which the right hon. Lady highlighted. That was a pivotal moment in disability representation.
Disability Rights UK contacted me with the following information:
“Disabled people make up a fifth of the population. There are disabled professionals in all walks of life—politicians, lawyers, academics, sports people, doctors, business owners—and disabled people working in every part of public life. But when we watch the news or read the media—social, print or digital—it is rare to see disabled people, and when we do, we are almost always speaking about individual disabilities or personal horror stories. A huge lack of representation means our stories are going unreported, talent is unrecognised…and negative attitudes towards disability are going unchallenged. We do not have enough of a percentage of a voice. A fifth of us are disabled but we are not a fifth of the news. Media often represents us as heroes or scroungers.”
Even when representation does happen, it can be stereotypical and quite depressing for the audience. It is important that people are engaged in employment in every sector, particularly in the media. We have to change the mindset, the attitudes, the representation, behind the scenes as well as in front, in order to make a long-term difference. Newsrooms rarely include disabled staff. Newspapers have columnists, but how many are disabled? How many programmes currently harness that talent? Those issues need to be collectively worked on and taken forward by Government policy, agencies, organisations and the whole sector in order to make sure that we can turn the situation around for those who feel unrepresented at the current time.
I understand that the Daily Mirror ran a week of features called “Disabled Britain: Doing It For Ourselves”, which was the first time that Disability Rights UK recalled a national paper allowing disabled people to tell their own stories in their own way. Most importantly, rather than focusing on individual impairments, it spoke strongly about a social model of disability, which posits that people are impaired by the lack of access in society and the inability to engage, rather than by their impairments alone, and that the public do not understand the social model of disability. There is still an “us and them” mindset when it comes to disability, but the truth is that—we can be quite candid about this—with our populations living much longer, many people who have not previously had disabilities will develop them in the future. Having a normalised representation in the media supports everybody, takes us all forward together, and reflects the society in which we live.
I will speak a bit about the work that the BBC is doing on the workforce, because one of the issues is the disability employment gap, which was mentioned specifically by Disability Rights UK. I know that the BBC has been very committed, and I have met its representatives to discuss the projects that it is working on and the launch of its disability passports. The BBC is trying to enable the movement of disabled talent right across the industry, alongside being a Disability Confident employer at leader level 3. Throughout my time in Parliament, I have been encouraging MPs to walk the talk in this regard and to make sure that we are signed up to being Disability Confident employers, in line with the Government’s programme. The BBC is really trying to change things behind the scenes and on screen, and it has formed a partnership with Netflix to develop and fund new, ambitious dramas featuring disabled creatives, with two productions already in development. We are keen to see them in the near future.
I turn now to Channel 4. As has been mentioned, it is the home of the Paralympics, “Born to Be Different”, “The Undateables” and “The Last Leg”, and it champions talent such as Rosie Jones, Billy Monger, Briony Williams, Ed Jackson and Ruben Reuter. The station has also cast people with disabilities in major formats, including “Big Brother”, “First Dates” and “The Great British Bake Off”, which we all love to watch, but which I could never emulate, because my cakes are always total flops—I have no chance of ever participating.
Channel 4 also makes “Hollyoaks” and “Googlebox”, and it is driving change. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) mentioned, the 2020 Paralympic games reached 20 million viewers—a third of the UK population. The “Super. Human” marketing campaign reached 81% of the population. I have to say that I am not the most up to date with technology, but there was also a bespoke Paralympics hub on TikTok, which generated 4.1 million views. With the Beijing 2021 winter Paralympics, Channel 4 built further on its work, proudly announcing a 100% disabled line-up of world-class presenters. Progress is definitely being made.
I want to turn briefly to ITV, which was in contact with me, before asking the Minister for an update on how the Government can collectively work with the sector to harness disabled talent and move things forward in a positive way. ITV got in touch and spoke to me about its diversity acceleration plan, which commits to increasing representation of disabled people in senior editorial positions, ensuring that ITV better reflects the lives of disabled people on screen, improving diversity and career progression in TV production and improving opportunities for working on programmes or behind the scenes. ITV has 9.6% of disabled talent on screen to date, which it says is the highest proportion of all broadcasters in the report “The Fifth Cut: Diamond at 5”.
Progress is being made across the board. ITV also spoke to me about improvements it has made. Of course, we have heard some more historical examples, but ITV says it has 49.6% women representation on screen and off screen in production teams, and that, in the workforce, 52.6% of all colleagues and 49.2% of managers are women. It has also launched a menopause policy. It will support colleagues who are going through the menopause, ensure that they have adequate time, reduce stigma and ensure that the menopause does not adversely impact careers. ITV says that 48 women are in its 100 top earning roles, and it is committed to achieving a 50:50 gender balance.
This debate is important because we seek to represent those who have perhaps not had that representation in the past, and we want to make changes. As drivers of change in Parliament, we must work together across parties. Certainly, as chair of the APPG for disability, I am very keen to take this agenda forward with the industry—print, media and more modern types of screening—but also, as parliamentarians, we need to keep the momentum towards equality going.
I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke for coming to the debate and taking time out of her busy schedule. She is a champion in this field. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Nigel Huddleston
The hon. Gentleman’s final comment is an unfortunate characterisation. He will be aware that many elements of the tourism sector are devolved matters, but we are working co-operatively with the Scottish Government on many issues. The Scottish Government have developed their recovery plan and we have developed one as well, and it does have UK-wide implications. For those sectors in England that have been unable to get grants and support automatically, we have put in place measures to help them, such as the additional restrictions grant. We will continue to assess support measures.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
The Minister for Media and Data (Mr John Whittingdale)
The Paralympic games are one of the highlights of the sporting calendar. In recognition of their special national significance, we added the Paralympic games to the listed events regime in 2020, meaning that they will remain available on free-to-air television. I wish all our athletes every success in Tokyo and very much welcome Channel 4’s plans to broadcast live coverage of the Paralympics throughout the games.
Dr Cameron [V]
New research by Scope has shown that 69% of people with disabilities believe that the Paralympics help to tackle negative attitudes. This comes as three in four people with disabilities believe that the public’s perceptions of disabled people have worsened or not shifted during the pandemic. Scope and ParalympicsGB have teamed up to call for the Paralympic games to be a catalyst for change. The all-party group on disability, which I chair, asks the Secretary of State and the Government to commit to work across broadcasting to champion inclusion in sports and employment for people with disabilities, alongside celebrating the fantastic achievements of our Paralympians.
Mr Whittingdale
The Government absolutely share the ambition of the hon. Lady and her all-party group to increase the participation by disabled people in sport. The Paralympics have been an extraordinary success in demonstrating the remarkable achievements of disabled athletes. I share her hope that the Paralympics will again receive record viewing figures and that the UK Paralympic athletes will continue to do as well as they have in recent times.
Elected Women Representatives: Online Abuse
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on being a continual champion of women in Parliament and on bringing this extremely important debate to Westminster Hall today.
This debate is timely, of course, because we currently have our elections in the Scottish Parliament, and only recently a survey undertaken by Holyrood magazine found that nine out of 10 female MSPs had feared for their safety. These are absolutely catastrophic figures, and I believe that things are only getting worse, so many fine prospective female candidates are likely to be put off entering public life, as we have heard today.
I would also like to draw the Minister’s attention to the importance of intersectionality in these matters, particularly with religion. Unfortunately, as a practising Christian and an individual with a Jewish family history, I can speak from personal experience regarding this abuse. Personal abuse and attacks often focus not just on my being a woman, but on those very aspects of my being and religion.
Since 2015, I have received numerous death threats online, like many others who have spoken today. Unfortunately, and unacceptably, this has even extended to death threats towards members of my family. After conscience votes, I have openly been targeted for abuse and harassment. In relation to antisemitism, I recently received an email from an individual citing themselves as SS, saying that Jews are witches and calling for extermination of the Jews as a mandate of the United Nations.
However, this does not just happen online, unfortunately. What I want to emphasise—I hope that the Minister can recognise this, because we are working on the online harms Bill collectively in Parliament—is that online abuse is very much a gateway for some individuals, whose behaviour escalates to direct harm. Online abuse has changed our culture and, with the anonymity that has been spoken about, is now almost considered acceptable, because there are no consequences. People continue, become emboldened, and, for a significant proportion of individuals, it is very much a gateway to behaviour that escalates towards direct harm.
For example, I await the sentencing next month of an individual who harassed me and my staff via emails, then acted aggressively in person at my surgery. During the 2019 election, my election leaflets were posted back through my door to me covered in swastikas. In fact, it was being investigated by the police at the same time that the local newspaper editor wished to run a story on where election candidates lived, and I had to raise fears for my family’s safety once again.
Over the last parliamentary term, I have really prioritised my role as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on religion in the media. I would ask the Minister to look at the excellent report published just last week by the APPG. At its launch, I was also heartened that Alison Phillips, editor of Mirror Group Newspapers—the first female editor of such a large corporate newsgroup—will be taking forward training for journalists on diversity and religious inclusion.
We can agree that today it is horrendous. Being a woman in politics carries a risk of violence, and often direct threat to the woman and her family. It puts too many excellent candidates off. Would I recommend a career in politics to my daughters at this point in time? Not a chance. I do hope, however, that the dire risks are fully addressed and that the Minister can listen to the many poignant experiences of the individuals speaking today and take action, because online abuse is that gateway to actual harm.
Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) [V]
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on securing today’s debate. There are two issues that I want to touch on briefly in relation to anonymity regarding online accounts.
The first issue is impersonation online, which I experienced in 2019 just prior to the general election as I gave up my Twitter MP handle. Within an hour, someone had stolen it and followed a number of my colleagues, and began to tweet out as though they were me with my Twitter name DrLisaCameronMP. It was not a parody account, which we can all relate to, but one which I believe to have been made in malice to impersonate an MP. We all know how many constituents contact us initially through social media with crucial private issues who would have been affected by this individual acting with impunity.
When we reported it, we were originally told that there was nothing that breached standards. However, this is a serious matter not just for public figures but for those who come in confidence to seek our help. My situation could not be rectified until I contacted the CEO of Twitter. Following the election, I even had difficulty getting my own handle back, as I was initially advised that it belonged to someone else. No one was held responsible and it would have taken a police investigation to find out. It should simply never be allowed to happen. Where it does, there should be some means of recourse due to the adverse impact on our most vulnerable constituents.
The second issue relates to my role as vice-chair of the all-party group against antisemitism. Sadly, and as we might expect, antisemitism and extremism are a key concern in relation to online anonymity. Disguising one’s identity is not new for extremists, as the Antisemitism Policy Trust pointed out in its briefing on online anonymity. The Ku Klux Klan and others have long sought to cover their faces in order to carry out extreme acts. The internet now offers anonymous abusers and spreaders of radical and violent ideologies a degree of protection by allowing them to hide their identities. Looking at the Community Security Trust’s incident statistics for October 2020, nearly 40% of reported antisemitic abuse online during that month came from fully anonymous and partially anonymous users. That is an extremely worrying trend.
Placing sensible checks on anonymity and incentivising against harm from anonymous accounts can help victims regain a sense of control and confidence, and would surely disrupt what are presently significant levels of abuse. I urge that restrictions be applied to online abusive actions, much more so than they currently are. Existing legislation urgently needs to be updated through the proposed online safety Bill.
Online Harms
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
I thank the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for bringing this extremely important issue to Westminster Hall for debate. She spoke very eloquently and comprehensively on these issues, highlighting the lack of consequences under current legislation and the absolutely devastating impact of online abuse.
In the time that I have, I will speak briefly about a couple of different issues. The first is mental health. In this generation, one in five individuals online are children, so there will be an absolute tidal wave of mental health issues linked to online abuse. Indeed, that is already happening: I see it with my own children and their peers, and I see it across my constituency and, indeed, the UK. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mentoring, which provides the secretariat for the Diana Award, I recently spoke to the ambassadors on its youth board and heard that online bullying is one of the most fundamental issues that children have to cope with every single day of their lives. When I was young, bullying used to happen at school, but a child could come home from school and there was a gap, and they could receive support from elsewhere. Nowadays, it is constant. Now children are linking with their peers all the time—the majority of that is online, as well as occasionally in person, now that they are back at school.
The mental health impact must be addressed, and the legislation is crucial to that. It is a starting point, but we also need to support the youth ambassadors in schools who want to do anti-bullying work, be mentors to peers and ensure that they progress that good work to build resilience in their generation against this abuse. We look to the Minister to ensure that the legislation is robust and provides support in schools. I echo the words and sentiments of the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who spoke about the importance of tackling antisemitism, particularly online. The Community Security Trust is recording the data and found 185 online instances in 2015 and 697 cases in 2019. That is a massive increase of 277%. That is another issue that really has to be tackled.
Finally, will the Minister look closely not only at the individuals who are online anonymously, but at those who impersonate others? I had that myself at the last election. As soon as I gave up the “MP” in my handle, someone online took that handle and started to tweet as though they were me. I am raising this not from my own perspective particularly—although it could have been extremely damaging—but because, as everyone here knows, constituents contact us online to tell them about their personal issues as a first port of call. Will the Minister consider meeting me to discuss that important issue further?
BBC
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Whittingdale
I do understand the feeling of my hon. Friend’s constituents. On the point he makes about decriminalisation, that is something we are seriously considering. We are currently going through the responses to our consultation on that matter, and we will be announcing the outcome very soon.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) [V]
Alongside free television licences for the over-75s, which I will keep campaigning on, may I raise how, during lockdown, a number of elderly and vulnerable members of the East Kilbride West church have been tuning in to the BBC’s “Reflections at the Quay”—enabling them to join the service on a Sunday morning, when they would normally have been attending church—which, appallingly, has now been taken off air, leaving them absolutely devastated? Many are still shielding, lonely and now more isolated than ever, and my constituents want this important programme back. I urge the Minister to have a discussion with the BBC about the importance of religious broadcasting in supporting the most vulnerable at this time.
Mr Whittingdale
As the hon. Lady knows, religious broadcasting is part of the public service obligations. How the BBC goes about fulfilling those obligations is a matter for it. However, I can fully understand the concerns of her constituents, and I would urge her to take up that matter with the BBC.
Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [Lords]
Lisa Cameron ExcerptsMonday 9th March 2020
(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) and to have listened to some excellent maiden speeches. I am pleased to take part in this debate, not least because I had an important statutory instrument Committee on coronavirus at 6 pm, so had to slip seamlessly out of and back into the Chamber. I am grateful for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I welcome the fact that the 2022 Commonwealth games will be held in Birmingham. It is a brilliant opportunity for the country, especially the west midlands—which, I am sure hon. Members have noticed, I am not from. I wish to focus my remarks on part 3 of the Bill, specifically with regard to ticket touting. As the House will know, I have campaigned against abuses in the secondary ticketing market for over a decade, and it can rest assured that I will not stop until fans stop being ripped off. We have had some notable achievements, in the last 18 months especially, but we are not there yet. The Bill provides the Government with an opportunity to address some of the issues relating to the secondary ticketing market. The Minister outlined some of those in his opening speech and I will be excited to see the detail when it works its way through the House.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
The hon. Member is making an excellent point about ticket touts. Does she agree that it is very important that people across the UK can attend the games, no matter their socioeconomic class or how much money they have in their pocket, and that the organisers take ticket pricing extremely seriously?
Mrs Hodgson
I totally agree, and I shall say more about that shortly. I know that the Minister and, in particular, my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State share our passion for fairness in this regard, and I hope that the Bill will be a strong instrument in sorting out some of the worst aspects of touting in the ticket marketplace.
Part 3 says that touting tickets for the games will be prohibited. Hear, hear: that is excellent news. It will help the organising committee to ensure that tickets are both accessible and affordable for genuine fans, and I welcome that aim. The ethos of the sporting industry is to give people who will not necessarily ever have attended a sporting event—people who are typically young, or from a low socioeconomic background—access to affordable tickets, so that they can attend events and engage with, and potentially take up, the sport involved. They may then become the grassroots that can keep a sport alive. It is outrageous that ticket touts, operating outside the law, can take that opportunity away from people who might need it and sell tickets, many times above their face value, for personal profit.
Ticket touting does not benefit the sport, the players, the organisers or the venue; it only benefits the tout. Tickets for the games will be rightly sought after and I am sure that we will all try to get hold of some, so how will the Government enforce the regulations? What support will Birmingham Trading Standards be given to enforce them, in the form of finance and resources, and will West Midlands Police be given additional funds to support Trading Standards? Given that much of the touting activity targeting the games will be online, will the National Trading Standards e-Crime Team receive additional funds to tackle online breaches of the legislation?
Birmingham Trading Standards does not have the expertise or, currently, the trained staff that are needed in this highly specialised area. A Minister in the other place, Baroness Barran, said:
“Enforcement officers already have a suite of investigatory powers available to them through schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2020; Vol. 802, c. 200.]
However, enforcement officers do not have the funding and resources that they need to implement these powers, and the “deterrent” in the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not work. I hope that the convictions, just two weeks ago, and the sentencing of two ticket touts in Leeds will deter ticket touts; but they, too, will know that enforcement agencies do not have the necessary resources to do anything about their illegal behaviour. There are simply too many touts for an under-resourced agency to deal with.
Touts have been able to get away with it scot free for far too long, and the Bill must ensure that that is a thing of the past. According to the Department’s press release about the Bill last year,
“buying tickets will be clear, simple and affordable.”
However, the Minister will be aware that Google has allowed Viagogo to have “paid-for ads” for most events at the top of its search engine. Will the Government ensure that Google does not take sponsored ads for games tickets from secondary sites such as those of Viagogo and StubHub? As the Minister knows, ads for Viagogo that appear at the top of Google searches give consumers the impression that this a trusted and verified website, but that could not be further from the truth. Will he please tell us who, if the ads do appear and tickets are found on the secondary ticket websites, will be responsible for reporting the existence of those tickets? The games organisers will have enough to do without having to search and check that there are no fraudulent tickets for sale online. What guidance and support will the organising committee be given to establish a mechanism to reassure those who buy tickets that they are buying them from official ticketing platforms for the games?
London 2012 showed that we can protect tickets for events. That worked really well, and the Commonwealth games, or any other ticketed event, should not be any different. As we saw in 2012, ticketing regulations must be supranational, and ticket touting must be made an offence anywhere in the world. People operating abroad or using servers that are abroad, and selling tickets to the games, must be subjected to these regulations if we are to protect consumers and the reputation of the games. It should not matter where a person is, or where the server that that person is using is: ticket touting must be an offence anywhere in the world.
The Government can and should protect consumers from the abuses of the secondary ticket market. The Commonwealth games need not have a special status; the Government can use the points that I have briefly made as a blueprint for other high-demand music, sporting and theatre events that attract visitors to the UK. I urge the Minister to look into this issue as a matter of urgency. The Government need to fund enforcement agencies properly, so that we can stamp out ticket abuse once and for all.
Online Harms White Paper
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Wright
The hon. Gentleman will recognise, because he is a fair man, that the Furman review was produced only in the past few weeks, and it is important that the Government take the time to look properly at its conclusions. He is right, however, that one of the significant aspects that Professor Furman and his panel picked up on was the potential advantage of users having more control over their data and the impact that that might have on the competition questions he was concerning himself with. The hon. Gentleman has my assurance that we will look carefully at the recommendations and respond to them fully.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for an excellent White Paper. I am extremely pleased that a regulator will be taking things forward. Only last week, an individual pled guilty to sending me threatening messages which have had a grave impact on me and my family. What became difficult was understanding the extent of the abuse, because a victim is blocked very quickly and pages are closed down. What more can be done to allow the police to access closed pages and blocked accounts?
Jeremy Wright
I am very sorry to hear about what has happened to the hon. Lady. As she knows and as others have said, she is sadly not alone. It is important that we consider what online platforms can do. As I have said, closed groups and encrypted communications are a particular challenge. None the less, we think that online companies should do everything they can, with the restrictions that apply to encrypted communications, to keep their users as safe as they possibly can. The regulator will be entitled to ask, as it is entitled to ask in relation to other matters, whether the platform really is doing everything it could. If it is not, there will be consequences.
Sub-Committee on Disinformation
Lisa Cameron Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Damian Collins
The hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Select Committee, makes an important point. He will know that we discussed the role of groups with Facebook during our investigation. We believe they play a significant role in spreading disinformation; it is not just through targeted advertising that someone can drive content through a platform such as that. Indeed, as he knows, the Committee’s final report on disinformation touched on how far-right organisations are using closed Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of members to spread content very quickly through the web. Content posted into the group by a group administrator goes immediately to the top of the news feed of members, who may in turn share it.
These closed groups may be closed to the public, but Facebook can tell what is going on in them, and it should act where closed groups are behaving irresponsibly or maliciously in spreading lies and disinformation about people. It can see who the administrators are and who is doing that.
As a consequence of the attacks in Christchurch in particular—having an independent regulator with the power to go into the tech companies to see what is going on would facilitate this—we should do an audit of the sorts of groups and organisations that were sharing and promoting the vile content involved. That could provide a really important map of the way in which these far-right groups, in particular, co-ordinate online and spread disinformation.
The hon. Gentleman is quite right that this is not just about global news stories such as the Christchurch attacks; disinformation is also taking place in individual communities. We should be able to report such things to Facebook and know that it will investigate and take action against groups, including by closing them or the administrator down if necessary.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman and all members of the Committee for a very important report. I know that the Minister is working extremely hard on these issues.
My question is about making it easier or more streamlined for the police to investigate closed Facebook pages. At this point in time, it seems to be very difficult for the police to access information even when they have suspicions about it. The fact that individuals can post anonymously without giving their own details seems to exacerbate the situation whereby they feel they can post whatever they like without any responsibility.
Damian Collins
The hon. Lady raises a number of very important issues. Co-operation with the authorities is important. We have seen too many cases where different social media companies have been criticised for not readily sharing information with the police as part of an investigation. Often the companies have very narrow terms of reference for when they would do that; sometimes if there is an immediate threat to life or if information might be related to a potential terror attack, they will act. However, we see hideous crimes that affect families in a grievous way and those families want the crimes to be investigated efficiently and speedily, and for the police to get access to any relevant information. I think we would have to say that the current system is not working effectively enough and that more should be done.
There should be more of an obligation on the companies to share proactively with the authorities information that they have observed. They might not have been asked for it yet, but it could be important or relevant to a police investigation. Part of, if you like, the duty of care of the tech companies should be to alert the relevant authorities to a problem when they see it and not wait to be asked as part of a formal investigation. Again, that sort of proactive intervention would be necessary.
I also share a general concern, in that I believe tech companies could do more to observe behaviour on their platforms that could lead to harm. That includes self-harm resulting from a vulnerable person accessing content that might lead them towards a pattern of self-harm. Indeed, one of the particular concerns that emerged from the Molly Russell case was the content she was engaging with on Instagram.
The companies should take a more proactive responsibility to identify people who share content that may lead to the radicalisation of individuals or encourage them to commit harmful acts against other citizens. I think the companies have the power to identify that sort of behaviour online, and there should be more of an obligation on them to share their knowledge of that content when they see it.