Media Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

It is always a great honour to speak after my noble friend Lady Stowell, who spoke powerfully of the need for more resources for our committees, which I endorse. It is also a great honour to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and I will lean into his comments, and those of my noble friend Lord Forsyth, about the ownership of the Telegraph Media Group. Foreign ownership of our media assets is a long and proud British tradition, one that I am proud to defend, but the ownership of British media assets by an overseas Government is a different matter altogether and something I do not welcome at all, and I very much share the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on that matter.

I will speak on one specific subject: minimum standards for classification. As many noble Lords may know, 40 years ago Parliament passed an incredibly specific piece of legislation to regulate age ratings given to film and video content: the Video Recordings Act, a really thoughtful piece of legislation that is widely recognised around the world. It gave the Secretary of State the power to designate the British Board of Film Classification as the national authority for age ratings. It has done that job for the decades since then.

In the 40 years since then, our system of age ratings for cinema and home releases has become the most widely recognised and best understood in the world. Our independent classification guidelines are fully transparent and informed by regular consultations with the public. They are highly endorsed by viewers themselves. It is because of these high standards that parents instinctively know the difference between, say, a PG and a 12 and something for older viewers. That is why over 90% of them trust the BBFC ratings.

So I ask the Minister: why is a system that works so well not applied in the digital world? I have a particular interest in this key question of the application of rules in the real world and in the digital world. Why is the digital world of content in some way exceptional, in that content hosted on digital platforms is treated differently from that hosted in the real world? We do not leave it up to Warner Bros, MGM or Universal to decide the age ratings of the films they produce, or to Odeon or Showcase to decide whether nine year-olds are allowed to see this or that film, or to HMV to decide which DVDs they can buy, so why do we leave it to Disney+ to mark its own child protection homework?

Although Netflix and Amazon Prime have chosen voluntarily to work with the BBFC to use its age ratings system, to great success—I must pay tribute to their efforts—the same cannot be said for other platforms, notably Disney+. It refuses to publish its classification guidelines and there are numerous examples of it age-rating highly inappropriate content as suitable for children. Unfortunately, therefore, we cannot rely on the good will of these platforms and treat them like our domestic public service broadcasters; nor can we rely on Ofcom to, off its own bat, come up with a set of regulations of equivalent strength to those that Parliament has endorsed.

It should be our job as legislators to set the rules of the game and the job of Ofcom to referee the match. Instead, in its current form the Bill gives Ofcom not only complete control of the rulebook but the power to rewrite it whenever it likes. This is an issue not of media freedom or light-touch regulation but of child protection, so only the very best is good enough.

It would be a complete failure on our part to abrogate our responsibly to protect children from harm by not including some form of minimum standards in the Bill. I know this was discussed at some length in the other place, with various amendments proposed, so I flag to the Minister and the Chamber that it is my intention to table an amendment to close this gap. This is our one and only chance to have any influence over the regulation that is being outsourced almost entirely to Ofcom. Setting minimum standards for child protection is an important step, and I hope very much that the Minister will engage with those supporting this approach to work towards a common approach to change the Bill.

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[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a broadcaster on Times Radio, chairman of Marlow Film Studios and chairman of Common Sense Media in the UK. It is a great pleasure to follow the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hall. I loved working with him when I was a junior Culture Minister many years ago.

Many noble Lords have said during the debate that this is the biggest media Bill for 20 years. Of course, the last big media Bill, in 2003, created Ofcom. It was genuinely a very big media Bill and Ofcom has indeed proved itself to be an effective and robust regulator. It has increased its reach and powers, even to the extent that it now sits in your Lordships’ Chamber, keeping watch over the debate to see that we stick to the rules and give it appropriate praise. It has taken over the regulation of the BBC, which I oversaw and was very much in favour of. But when it comes to broadcasting, interestingly, Ofcom is wrestling now with the difficult question of impartiality—particularly some of the challenges posed to it by, for example, new and innovative stations such as GB News, which is testing the boundaries.

Interestingly, there does not seem to be much room in the Bill or this debate to discuss impartiality, or indeed the Broadcasting Code itself and whether it is up to speed. I am not putting forward a specific view here. There is a particular recognition by Ofcom that the broadcasting landscape is changing as more people are able to start television channels, but a debate on how the Broadcasting Code should adapt to this changing landscape is perfect for this House.

This is not a very important or very big Bill. That is not an insult to either the Government or the Minister, because we are simply tweaking the edges. In my view, the biggest media Bill we have had since 2003 was the Online Safety Act, which gave Ofcom very important powers to regulate the content of platforms. That, of course, encapsulates the change we are debating, because we are now a country that watches streamed content, and people are moving in their droves online. That is what the consumer is doing naturally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, pointed out in her robust speech on the quality of children’s programming, for which she has been a staunch advocate for many years.

It is true that, as my noble friend Lord Mendoza said, the streamers make great investment in the UK but the link to the public service broadcasters is important. Many of the senior executives you might meet from these big companies trained at places such as the BBC, so we still provide not just quality broadcasting but quality broadcasting executives to the streamers. It seems that at the heart of this debate is the support for our PSBs, particularly the BBC, no matter how much it annoys us. The existential question at the heart of the debate, which we have to address, is: what are we going to do when all the content we consume as British subjects is owned by the Americans? It will be on Netflix and Disney; it will be on Amazon, Apple and YouTube. If we are to preserve British cultural content, if we believe that to be important, we are going to have to support as best we can the BBC and the public service broadcasters. That may mean asking difficult questions such as whether their three streaming services should be allowed to merge— presumably in the face of opposition from the Competition and Markets Authority —and whether we can bring a degree of scale to this debate in order to have any sense of competition.

I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hall, mentioned that he was pleased that radio has its own section in this debate, because radio is something I am passionate about. While I might have used this opportunity to big up Times Radio, what I actually want to talk about is Global. I was delighted to see that the founder of Global, Ashley Tabor, got a CBE while the chief executive, Stephen Miron, who has led it for 16 years, has just announced that he will be stepping down and becoming the chairman. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Allen, one of our own, is the current chairman. It is a great British success story because we love radio in this country. Global took some assets such as Capital Radio and has turned them into real broadcasting powerhouses. It has been helped to do that by a process of deregulation, so I am pleased to see that the Government are continuing that process.

Behind deregulation lies the ability to trust the broadcasters to know where their audiences are and to use technology to provide local content—not necessarily having to be based locally, but still able to present local content. On that point, I would challenge how we have debated genres for public service broadcasters, because if we sit in this Chamber and decide what we think are important parts of the broadcasting genre land- scape, we will end up disappearing down a rabbit hole. I would err on the side of deregulation simply to give our broadcasting companies, whether public service broadcasters or commercial, room to thrive.

Specifically on radio, I would love to hear the Minister’s views on switchover. I avoided the date for switchover like the plague. There is nothing worse than having a person of a certain age with eight FM radios, one in the garden shed, coming at you if you tell them that they have to buy a digital radio. It seems that, rather like DTT, this should be led by the industry. I am a passionate supporter of community radio and would be interested in the Minister’s views about its future. I would also challenge the BBC because, again, if there is any area where the BBC can have a major impact, it is on local radio. I simply do not understand why it keeps pulling back from local radio and making such a mess of it.

The regulation of video on demand is fascinating. I would love to see how it is to be implemented in practice—how to effectively regulate a library of content with things such as impartiality or a watershed. I am delighted that Channel 4 can now invest in its own content. The debate on privatisation, which again I was open-minded about, proved to be an enormous and costly distraction for Channel 4. I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Bethell that the British Board of Film Classification should be given a monopoly on ratings; I should say that Common Sense Media provides excellent ratings, which are loved by British parents, and there should be a choice. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that the one issue we have not debated, partly because we do not have any answers, is the impact of artificial intelligence on content.

I end by congratulating my noble friend Lord Forsyth on moving his amendment. I did not realise that if you put in a regret amendment, you get to speak at the beginning and the end of the debate. I put the House on notice that I will be putting down a regret amendment on every Second Reading of every Bill that comes before your Lordships in future.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend that no one should be given a monopoly on minimum standards. However, my amendment will be advocating that there should be minimum standards.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I look forward to supporting the noble Lord’s amendment.

Media Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th May 2024 Lords Chamber

As the Bill is clearly not going to mandate BBFC age ratings—that is ideally what I would like, but I accept the Government have a different view—the very least it can do is set minimum standards to help Ofcom assess whether any age rating system is likely to be effective for child protection. This does not create double regulation, as I believe some streamers have been suggesting, and, in any case, Ofcom already references BBFC ratings in the Broadcasting Code. This amendment and the others in this group propose common-sense standards that are not a high bar to expect companies to meet. Principles such as transparency, clarity and alignment with UK cultural expectations are the bare minimum for effective age ratings and should be set out on the face of the Bill.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who put the case for this group of amendments incredibly well. I do not want to go over the ground he has already covered, but I would just like to endorse three key points behind them.

First, children should be afforded the same protections against inappropriate content, whatever channel they are on. As my noble friend the Minister will remember well, what goes on in the real world should apply also to the digital world and vice versa. Secondly, it is the role of Parliament—no one else—to set out the rules when it comes to issues as important as the safety of children. Thirdly, companies that wilfully and knowingly fail to take steps to protect children should face the consequences. Those are the three principles behind this group of amendments and I thank the noble Lord for putting them so well.

I also thank some of the companies and stakeholders with whom I have engaged in the drafting of these amendments. As noble Lords may have noticed, the amendments have changed quite a lot between Second Reading and our meeting today. The reason is that companies have made good points and we have adjusted the amendments to reflect some of those: I thank in particular Disney and Sky for the engaging, positive and constructive way in which they have conducted these conversations.

Amendment 60 is incredibly straightforward. It is to include the British Board of Film Classification as a statutory consultee when Ofcom is drafting new video on demand codes. Statutory consultees are very common. The Children’s Commission was added during the Online Safety Bill and the BBFC is highly respected. So I hope very much that that could be waved through by my noble friend the Minister.

Amendment 61 is really the main focus of my remarks today. It would bring in a minimum standard across all ratings across tier 1 services. It would allow providers to either use the BBFC’s world-class and highly robust system or—and this is a very important “or”—a system of their own that meets equivalent standards. That is the gap that this amendment seeks to fill.

Following discussions with the providers, it also includes a provision for services provided by linear broadcasters to use a system based on the Ofcom Broadcasting Code. If I can, I will briefly explain that point. Many broadcasters have a linear service that is quite reasonably overseen by Ofcom and have a Broadcasting Code arrangement. It seems sensible—to me at least—that those standards should apply to their VOD broadcasts as well. That was one of the changes we were pleased to make to the amendments we have laid.

Amendment 61 sets out the process by which Ofcom can assess the ratings systems that are not based on the BBFC’s and, following the discussions I mentioned, the ability for Ofcom to designate some content, such as news or live events, as exempt from age ratings. That seems like a sensible exemption to me. Amendments 62 to 66 are consequential on Amendment 61 and would extend Ofcom’s enforcement powers to cover breaches related to the minimum standards for age-ratings requirements.

During Second Reading, there were some concerns raised that it would be inappropriate to mandate a particular solution and that these amendments might go against the tech-neutral approach of the overall Bill. If that were the case then I would share those concerns, but I reassure noble Lords, who will see this from the text, that those concerns are based on a misunderstanding of both the intent and substance of these amendments. The provisions would apply only to tier 1 services that choose to use age ratings as part of their overall audience protection duties. No service would be forced to use age ratings against its will and the requirements would not apply to any service that finds a different or better audience protection measure, whether that is tomorrow or in 50 years’ time. Nor would it mandate a specific age-ratings system, such as the BBFC’s. In fact, my amendment provides a clear choice of three different approaches, one including a bespoke service to them, provided it meets the minimum standards.

That is what my amendments are really about. They aim to ensure that, in the same way parents know what PG and 12A mean when they go to the cinema or buy a DVD, they can trust the age ratings that pop up on their TV at home or on the basis of their parental controls. For that reason, I hope very much indeed that my noble friend the Minister will embrace this set of amendments.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 67 and 69 are in my name on the Marshalled List. Amendment 67 would add signposting measures to the audience protection measures which Ofcom must review under new Section 368OB of the Communications Act 2003. Amendment 69, in common with the amendments that have already been spoken to, would require Ofcom to consider whether age-rating systems used by a tier 1 service meet a set of minimum standards.

My amendments are very similar to those tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. The key to our amendments and those of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, is the need for us to be consistent in the way that we deal with children and age rating, so that systems are easily understood by parents and fulfil the standards that we have in this country about child protection, wherever it is. The Minister will be aware of all this, since he lived through the Bill that is now on the statute book as the Online Safety Act.

I was slightly surprised when I received a briefing which was signed by many of the stakeholders in this area—a number of companies, but it also included the PSBs. It made an argument against the three sets of amendments that have been put down. I was rather struck by this—I think they were a bit naughty in this briefing, in my view. For example, they included the public service broadcasters, which are not affected by this; this is absolutely not relevant to them. I would like the Minister to confirm that that is absolutely the case: this is not about their content at all.

The briefing also makes various statements about the commitment that many of the companies have to collaborating with Ofcom during the passage of the Bill, but that they want to take into consideration “audience research Ofcom conducts”. If it is the case that these companies are all committed to this then I can think of no reason why they would object to the minimum standards that we have put in our amendments being in the Bill. We are not saying that they should necessarily adopt the BBFC standards; what we are saying is that they need to show that their age ratings are comprehensive, understandable and sensible.

Some of these big beasts, if I might call them that, which have objected to this are doing it because they are big beasts. Frankly, I am unimpressed by that. We know, for example, that the same thing happened when New Zealand was dealing with this issue. But guess what? They are all complying with minimum standards there and it does not seem to have been a problem. If they can do it in New Zealand, I cannot see any reason why we would not be able to do it in this country.