Digital Economy Bill

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support the amendment but not necessarily for the reasons articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Our concern is that if the Government started to appoint members of the British Board of Film Classification and therefore it was not independent of government, we would have a situation in which the Government would potentially be involved in deciding which films or material should be censored or not, which is not a path we would like to go down, particularly in the current climate of populism and the historical issues that that raises.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has just given the speech that I was rather expecting the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to give. The amendment suggests that the Government should be completely out of the running of the BBFC, yet in his very interesting and important remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said that he was a bit concerned that the Government should think it right for this private company, over which the Government have very little power, to have such responsibilities.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was right to say that the current position is that the BBFC appoints itself. The council of management is chosen from leading figures in the film industry; that council chooses the president and the director, and then they do this important work. If we are to change that, we need some evidence that either there is a risk of the Government interfering in these decisions or that these decisions are being got wrong in some respect. I am not aware that these decisions are being badly taken. As far as I can tell, the BBFC is doing a pretty good job, and until we are clear what regime we want to go to, I would rather leave the law as it is.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who contributed to this brief debate, especially the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who demonstrated his long experience in the world of film trivia.

The BBFC is an independent, not-for-profit, non-governmental body which classifies films and videos. The BBFC operates a transparent, trusted classification regime based on years of expertise and published guidelines that reflect public opinion. It is self-financed through fees from industry for the work it carries out on classification. It protects children and other vulnerable groups from harm through its classification work, which is legally enforceable and empowers consumers, particularly parents and children, through content information and education. In addition, it is the independent regulator of content delivered via the UK’s mobile networks. Using the standards in the BBFC’s classification guidelines, content which would be age-rated 18 or R18 by the BBFC is placed behind access controls and internet filters to restrict access to that content by those under 18 on all non-age-verified phones.

Amendment 71A introduces a new clause which seeks to clarify the position of the BBFC as an organisation independent of the Government. This proposed new clause also seeks that all appointments made by the BBFC be subject to fair and open competition. I am afraid we do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that it is necessary to make provision for the independence of the BBFC. The role of age-verification regulator will be one that the BBFC carries out alongside its other independent roles. We do not seek this requirement for its work under the Video Recordings Act, where BBFC officials are also designated by the Secretary of State via notification through Parliament.

The Bill sets out clearly the powers of the regulator, and where it is thought appropriate that the Secretary of State should have a role, this is made clear. For example, in relation to ISP blocking it will be important that the Government and the BBFC work together on a deconfliction process. The Bill provides for a parliamentary procedure for the designation of the regulator, as it is right that Parliament should have the opportunity to scrutinise this important appointment. As we have already covered, the DPRRC has made a recommendation on the designation of the regulator and I assure noble Lords that we are currently considering this carefully before responding.

The other requirement in this proposed new clause is that any appointments made by the BBFC should be subject to fair and open competition. The BBFC is an independent body, and it is not the place for government to set prescriptive guidelines on its recruitment practice in a Bill. The BBFC is a well-respected organisation, as my noble friend mentioned, and has unparalleled expertise in classifying content. I have every confidence the BBFC will deliver on its aims.

With that explanation, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

Adult literacy, in particular, urgently needs to be encouraged in every way possible, and this is one way to do so.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom]

My Lords, conscious as I am of the time, I shall simply say that I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to this for the very good reasons given by both noble Lords who have just spoken. It is a matter of natural fairness; it reflects the convergence issues which have been spoken about in this Committee already; it reflects the technological tsunami that my noble friend Lord Black has spoken about; and it reflects what the Minister Matt Hancock has said in another place.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I too support this amendment, but—there is a “but” to it—there are of course two types of e-books. There are those physical books which have been transferred over and copied into an e-system, but there are also increasingly a number of authors who write an e-book directly; they do not publish them at all in written form. I am not sure that this amendment takes account of the fact that there are increasingly these two different types of e-books.

Secondly, the fact is that Amazon which, rightly or wrongly, is the major contributor to the e-book revolution—I have a Kindle in my own pocket, which I read, and I have never picked up a book since I bought it—does not take part in the British national library system at all, as far as I am aware, although it does in America. Increasingly, Amazon is setting up its own lending system, where you can borrow an e-book from Amazon for a relatively small sum of money. You can only borrow it for three or four weeks at a time, but you can borrow it directly from Amazon. I have just a quick question to the Minister. Is there any progress in terms of Amazon becoming part of the system? I gather that one of the problems is that it uses a different type of e-book to the one that is used by the public libraries in this country.