Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Browne of Belmont Excerpts

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, once again, on raising the important issue of online safety.

In March 2014, the Authority for Television on Demand report, For Adults Only? Underage Access to Online Pornography, showed that at least 44,000 primary school children had accessed an adult website in the space of a single month, as well as 200,000 under-16s. These figures are staggering.

Access to this kind of material, not surprisingly, can have adverse effects. Take, for example, the story of the 12 year-old boy who raped his seven year-old sister after watching hardcore pornography on his Xbox. The Telegraph explained the details of the case, which was heard in Blackburn youth court. The boy had watched pornography at a friend’s house and this had resulted in the boy wanting to try out what he had seen. The consequences of the boy watching this material were no doubt immense, not only for him but for his entire family. The Government should certainly be congratulated on taking some action in this area but it falls short of what is required.

I know that they are proud of the agreement between the big four ISPs but the flaws associated with this arrangement are significant. First, there is the 14% of the market that is not covered and the many children affected. I am aware that although some of the smaller providers are not party to the agreement between the big four, they none the less offer good filtering options. Phoning around the smaller providers, however, suggests that while four out of 14 provide age verification that is nearly comparable with that provided by the big four, in other cases it is weaker and in one case non-existent. This is simply not good enough.

The Government cannot have it both ways, saying, on the one hand, that the protection provided by the big four is important but, on the other, that they want to settle for a solution that means a group of children will have less chance of protection when they could apply the approach agreed by the big four across the board by adopting the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. If the Government believe that what they have persuaded the big four to do is important for child protection—as I certainly do—to settle for not applying it to all households will create two classes of children. I hope that when the Minister responds she will acknowledge that the Government cannot have it both ways and that all children are worthy of the same level of respect, and thus the same chance of protection.

The fact that Conservative MEPs are saying that new European telecoms legislation means that the Government will now have to legislate for filters in any event makes the Howe Bill even more timely.

Secondly, the thing that bothers me about the filtering that is being provided by the big four is the lack of robust age verification in relation to disabling filters. I am delighted that the Conservative Party manifesto made a clear commitment to introduce age verification for all websites with pornographic content. That is very welcome indeed.

However, there is another context where age verification is badly needed. What happens if parents put filters in place but their children subsequently seek to lift them? I have been advised that this point was raised with the big four ISPs but they declined to provide age verification before processing requests for filters to be lifted. Instead, they offered to send an email to the account holder, who must by definition be an adult, telling them that the filter settings have been changed. The fact that 34% of people polled admit they would not open an email from their ISP for quite some time—and may, indeed, never open it—demonstrates, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, has explained, how completely inadequate this arrangement is. How can this possibly be defended? I am delighted that Clauses 1 and 2 include age-verification requirements prior to raising filters and for the whole market, not only the four ISPs. Again, I hope that the Government will adopt this important provision.

Turning now to adult-content websites, there is no doubt that the ATVOD report, For Adults Only?, was a real wake-up call. I welcome the fact that the Government responded positively to the proposal in the report that the UK law regarding those offering R18 and unrated on-demand programme services should be tightened up. The introduction of the Audiovisual Media Service Regulations last year was very welcome.

However, serious problems remain. ATVOD was clear that the vast majority of the R18 material accessed in the UK comes from sites based outside the country. Some 23 of the 25 sites most accessed are located outside the UK. If we seek merely to regulate those seeking to access the UK market from the UK, we will engage with only the tip of the iceberg. Consider the Experian Hitwise statistics for UK visits to just six “tube” sites—again the figures are staggering. I understand that there are a total of 240 million hits from the UK in a single month to adult sites without any form of on-site child protection. None of these sites is based in the UK. Clauses 7 to 11 of the Online Safety Bill adopt the model that was introduced in the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, and I believe that the same can be applied to these sites.

I assume that the Conservative manifesto commitment to introduce age verification for all sites showing pornography stands, given that most of the sites used by people in the UK to access pornography are not based in this country. I hope that the Government will support this Bill. Finally, I believe that the key to online safety is in education.