Digital Economy Bill

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

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

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. That may be the test of whether the prosecution is brought, but if it is brought because the prosecution is thought to be in the public interest, and the journalists want to say that the public interest defence is why it has been done, then the Government ought to think again. If I may, I ask them to do so.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I rise to speak to new clause 23, which would ensure that all services provided by the UK Government respect the right of the UK’s 700,000 Welsh speakers to receive those services in our language. “Digital by default” must translate as “‘digidol yn ddiofyn”—not something to request but something that is clearly available and welcoming to use. Digital language use increasingly touches every area of communications, from social media to digital government. If a language is not on the web, it can be said, in a sense, no longer to exist for 21st-century communications. The Welsh Language Commissioner has voiced criticism of the UK Government for weakening the Welsh language services on their gov.uk website since its 2012 launch, saying:

“Over the past year I have seen agencies of the Westminster government approaching us complaining about the Cabinet Office and gov.uk and saying that it is now hampering their work and they are concerned that the strong bilingual services that they have put in place have been hampered by gov.uk.”

Given the issues arising from legacy IT systems and designing bilingual platforms, I urge the Minister to consider our new clause and commit to ensuring interactive and user-friendly Government digital services for Welsh speakers on the same basis as that for English speakers.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 34. I should start by saying that it is not an attack on Facebook or Google, but it does ask Ofcom to examine whether the digital advertising world has made our media impossible to sustain. By that, I mean, “Today our local papers, tomorrow our national papers, and perhaps in due course our TV networks.” I do not ask for a review because I think there is a single answer, or even because I necessarily think that this is simply a moment in history where our media must reinvent itself for a new age that may yet be brighter than the last. The fact remains, though, that local papers and even national papers are closing, and it cannot be right for the Government to stand idly by in the knowledge that these undesirable events are happening.

Via this new clause, I seek to plant in the vast expanse of the Minister’s mind the idea that the Government should seek to reassure themselves and our constituents that if our media falls into a state of disrepair, we will have explored every possible option—whether considering copyright laws, or looking at who owns the lucrative conversation around a story to ensure that a publisher and a platform benefit equally—to find the media a role. I hope that we will ensure that we do not lose the press that have kept us all on our toes for many years, simply for want of looking for a solution.