Internet: Copycat Websites

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to discourage customers from using copycat websites that charge for services, such as European Health Insurance Cards, that are provided free of charge by government departments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, most users access digital government services via the major search engines. This user behaviour has been used to inform the design of gov.uk so that government services consistently come at the top of search results. Easy access to and education about the official source of digital government services is the main way the Government protect users from inadvertently using non-official sites. The Government will continue to take action against websites that misrepresent their relationship with government and misuse government logos.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply, but is he aware that if he googles “European Health Insurance Card”, the first two or three sites that he will come to will charge him something more than £20 for the card, whereas if he goes down to the National Health Service official site, he can get one for free? There are other examples of this, most notably passport applications where one can pay well over £40 for something that one can do oneself for nothing or go through the Post Office and pay just over £8 for help with filling in the form. Does my noble friend agree that some of these sites, to a non-legal eye anyway, come very close to passing themselves off as the official site? Would not the solution be for the Government to make sure that their site, even if it costs money with Google, always comes first on the list?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I spent some time on Tuesday afternoon looking at some of these sites. I confirm I had not realised—no doubt a number of noble Lords have not realised—that the first two or three sites to come up on the list are sponsored ads, which is indicated in very, very small print. In all cases, the top site of the non-sponsored ads was the gov.uk website. I also checked a number of the sponsored ads, which are extremely well designed. They all say that they are not an official website, but it is quite easy if you are in a hurry to miss that paragraph. Perhaps I should add that Transport for London also suffers from this if you are paying your congestion charge. I suspect that one or two noble Lords have paid more than they should for their congestion charge on one or two occasions.