Audiovisual Media Services (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Friday 27th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is hard to do justice in an hour, with a three-minute time limit, to something that, on the face of it, looks like a technical adjustment to take account of our departure from the European Union at the beginning of this year and the end of the transition period. I congratulate the Minister on making it sound as though it is just a very boring technical change—but it is not. This is far more fundamental than it appears at face value. While the Minister rightly says that we are seeking to maintain some authority for Ofcom, that authority was integral to the authority that other member states of the European Union had as the key regulators for those platforms with a prime base in those countries. The Minister has admirably spelled this out in a way that made it sound totally benign.

In this instrument we have a recognition that, without the online harms legislation promised by the former Prime Minister Theresa May, we have a major gap not just in maintaining what Ofcom may or may not have been able to do to date but in terms of any control over these video-sharing platforms.

We are talking about Netflix, Facebook and TikTok—and it is indeed “tick-tock”, because time is passing but the fingers have fallen off the face of the clock. Between now and when, at some point, the online harms legislation comes in, we are at the mercy of these big international tech companies in avoiding child abuse and the dangers that go with it, and we are at their behest regarding their co-operation in ensuring that these platforms are not used for counterterrorism purposes and whether they agree to continue complying with regulation.

Given the time available to me, I simply ask the Minister to spell out to the House when she replies just which of these platforms have a prime base in the United Kingdom. Which of their group systems is at such a level that it is counted as having a prime base here? If it is not here, we are entirely reliant on those areas where that prime base is located, and which therefore have the regulatory power to intervene and take action. This is of course one consequence of coming out of a group of 28 countries that can act decisively and with authority in dealing with large, multinational tech giants based elsewhere, primarily in the United States and, for TikTok, in China.

To pretend that this is a technical way of ensuring continuity is, I believe, to mislead the British public. That is alongside the panel that has been set up by DCMS on the future of public service broadcasting, which is packed with people who are not in favour of retaining the security and safeguards of the public service broadcasting regulation that we have at the moment.

We are in a dire position in how we deal with these platforms as opposed to how we deal with normal, traditional broadcasters. While we will not be voting against this particular order, it does flag the dangers of a future without the forthcoming legislation—at some unspecified date—that will provide us with at least some power to deal with the potential harms.