Consumer Rights Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Grand Committee

While I recognise that self-regulation is a step forward, it cannot be anything other than a very short-term arrangement. If we are serious about pioneering child safety online, and if we really believe that nothing matters more than keeping our children safe, we cannot accept the current arrangements, where part of the market is not covered and where there is no age verification prior to disabling default filters. These shortcomings, and some others, are all addressed by my Amendment 104. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in the very best parliamentary traditions, my noble friend has been persistent, dogged, assiduous and determined. I have been privileged to support her on earlier occasions when she raised this issue. I will speak briefly in support of her excellent amendment today.

All of us, especially those with teenage children, know how important the arguments are that she has advanced to the Committee today. Her three basic arguments are incontrovertible. First, it cannot be right to say on the one hand that default-on is an important protection for children and yet to settle for an arrangement where over 10% of households are serviced by ISPs that are not party to the agreement and where some are completely opposed to that form of protection. Those ISPs that object simply will not introduce a protection unless they are obliged to do so by law.

That recalls an argument I had in the 1990s, when a Member of another place had promoted legislation to protect children from video violence. During a meeting with the then Home Secretary and his civil servants, I was pretty shocked to hear one of them say, “Really, this legislation will affect only a small number of people”, as though those people did not really matter. My noble friend made the point that 10% of children will not be covered by the current arrangements. Can the Minister say, when she comes to reply, how many families that means and how many children the Government estimate that 10% represents? If there was only one uncovered household left in this country with children in it, surely it would be our duty to protect those children.

Secondly, it cannot be right that we settle for a form of age verification that is not age verification at all. Anyone seeking to opt in to access adult content and to disable adult content filters must obviously be age verified before doing so, as mandated by this amendment.

Finally, if we care about children and protecting them, we must afford them protection through the law, backed by sanctions. As my noble friend said, it is absurd to have protections offline but not online; there has to be some logical consistency in the way we view these issues. If this issue is important—and it clearly is—we must bite the bullet and place the obligations on ISPs and mobile phone operators to provide default adult content filters that can be lifted subject to prior expeditious age verification on a statutory footing. We do not allow a child to buy an 18-rated DVD offline, so why do we afford them less protection online?

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[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that the Government remain committed to improving the safety of children online and have a strong track record of working with the internet industry to drive progress. I thank her for her continued interest in this area. I am aware that this amendment is drawn from a Private Member’s Bill and that similar provisions were debated earlier this year as part of the Children and Families Bill. Speaking as a parent and grandparent, this issue is close to my heart. I know that many noble Lords will feel similarly and I am pleased to update the Committee on recent progress in this area.

The Prime Minister’s speech in July last year set out a series of measures, to which he asked the industry to commit, to help parents to limit their children’s access to age-inappropriate and potentially harmful material. We have seen excellent progress in all these. As the noble Baroness said, the four major ISPs, which cover almost 90% of the UK’s broadband market—BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media—have delivered on their commitment to provide parents with the ability to easily filter content. They all now present new customers with an unavoidable choice about whether to use free, family-friendly network-level filters. Existing companies are making good headway with the rollout of these provisions. Smaller providers are also stepping up: for example, KC launched a free parental control service for its broadband customers last month. This has been a huge and complex undertaking, but it has seen results.

The noble Baroness might be interested in public wi-fi providers. The six major providers, covering more than 90% of the market, now provide family-friendly public wi-fi wherever children are likely to be. This summer, the Registered Digital Institute launched the Friendly WiFi logo, giving parents the assurance that a particular business, retailer or public space is filtering out inappropriate material.

Three of the UK’s four major mobile network operators already automatically provide adult content filters for pay-as-you-go and contract customers, with the remaining provider, Three, committed to doing so by July 2015. This means that the great majority of mobile customers are already covered by default-on filters. The Government have also been working with mobile virtual network operators to ensure that they are doing the same. These measures could not have been achieved as quickly through legislation, given the pace of change in this complex environment.

I thank the noble Baroness for setting out the reasons why she feels that further action is needed. The Government are of course open to considering different options and it would be appropriate if we had a meeting between now and Report.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

The Minister will recall that I asked her specifically how many people are not currently covered by this legislation. How many families and children do the 10% represent?

[Baroness Jolly]

I have many answers here to the noble Lord’s questions. It is vital to understand the full implications of any actions that we take and whether they are likely to be effective. I am sure that the noble Baroness will agree that it is vital that we encourage parents to talk about these important issues with their children. Parents told us that they do not always feel aware of the risks that their children face when online. This is why, in May, the four major ISPs launched Internet Matters, a multimillion-pound campaign aimed at helping parents to understand filters and a range of issues related to online safety.

Education is key in all this and we are doing more to educate children. Since the start of the school year in September, the new computing curriculum has included information for five to 16 year-olds—key stages 1 to 5—about how to stay safe online. Some schools are also promoting child safety at special events for parents. As the noble Lord said, children are often savvier than their parents. Ofcom is monitoring progress in this area. Its latest report, published in October, showed that nine in 10 parents mediate their child’s access to the internet in some way, with most parents using a combination of approaches.

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The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked how many families and children are covered by the ISPs that refused to accept child filters. We estimate that around 10% of households—I am sorry that I do not have the number of households in the UK off the top of my head—are served by smaller providers that may not have filters available. He said that more than 10% of ISPs are opposing child protection and will not do it voluntarily. This is not the case. We are working with smaller ISPs and some progress is being made. We can provide more detail in writing.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I was just about to ask the noble Baroness that very thing. If she would be good enough to write to Members of the Committee telling us exactly how many families and how many children the Government estimate will not be covered by these arrangements, that would help to inform the debate before we get to Report.

[Baroness Jolly]

That is a fair point. However, the noble Lord is suggesting that more than 10% of ISPs are opposing child protection, but the four major ISPs cover pretty much 90%. We have also heard that KCOM, which is quite a large player in this market as well, now offers child protection. We are working on it; we are picking off all these ISPs one by one. Perhaps the noble Baroness could let us know which provider sees it as a badge on honour not to do this; that would be useful. However, it certainly is not the case at all that 10% are against this. That is not a fair statement. For the moment, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. We would be more than happy to sit down and talk with her to see where we could meet.