Digital Economy Bill

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker. I am a great admirer of his UTCs and only hope that, in my native country, the Scottish Government might be persuaded to allow some of them to develop there. They are certainly much needed because Scotland, like the rest of the UK, has a huge skills shortage.

Given the time of year, I am tempted to describe this Bill as something like a Christmas tree, but it would have to be the size of giant redwood to have branches sturdy enough to bear the weight of all the legislation that has been heaped on the various branches. There are at least six Bills rolled into one, and the Minister has already promised some others. I am afraid that I shall be guilty—along with some other people, judging by what the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said—of adding another couple of ideas. The listed sporting events regulations need looking at and, unlike the question of the 95% perhaps being broken, we may need to look at the criteria and make sure that we are dealing with broadcasters that actually reach people, rather than just potentially reach them. The other issue is EPG prominence. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, has already referred to this. It is daft that CBeebies and CBBC are at 13 and 14 in the EPG, where public service broadcasters are normally given prominence.

On the positive side, while I agree that the Bill has shortcomings I am an overwhelming approver of making the provision of high-speed broadband a universal service obligation. In that, the Government have got more right than wrong. It is a rather unambitious target that could be improved, but the key thing is to get started. I would much rather have a country where everyone had at least 10 megabits than one where a few cities had high-speed and rural areas had nothing at all. I think we can do better than the Government’s target and I hope that they will give attention to that. I was on the Select Committee on Communications when it looked at this. We stopped short of saying that there should be a universal service obligation because we thought that that was rather overambitious. I therefore applaud the Government for taking that initiative. It is a great start and it will get us moving.

I do not quite know yet how the Government are going to reach everyone with even 10 megabits for everyone. It will require some pretty dictatorial powers on the part of government to ensure that the appropriate technology is used in each area. I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Macdonald of Tradeston for an idea that is only partly humorous: if we did a deal with the criminal classes whereby they would get a reduced sentence for stealing copper wire, provided that they put glass fibre back in its place, we would have a very fast uptake in glass fibre throughout the country.

The Electronic Communications Code requires updating and I approve entirely of what the Government are doing. However, they need to be rather clearer on the importance of independently operated digital infrastructures, which tend to offer better connectivity than masts simply owned by one mobile operator. My mind goes back to the early 1960s, when the BBC and ITV built separate masts. Then it struck them, “This is daft. Why don’t we have the one mast and put two different transmitters on it?”. I do not know why on earth the mobile companies have not got together before now. Instead of having five masts in some areas and none in others, they could agree to share masts. It is ridiculous, for example, that somebody coming from Europe with a mobile phone can roam but somebody in Britain cannot. We are stuck with our own individual provider.

The providers say that their business plans would not admit of that, but they should be forced to do it in new areas. If an area is totally uncovered, Ofcom should offer it to somebody on the basis that they cover it not just for themselves but for everybody else. Each company could be assigned a different area so that, by and large, we would get better coverage. We have to ensure that the investment incentives for companies that provide independent infrastructure are not inadvertently regulated as part of land. I would welcome clarification, because the Bill is not quite as clear as it should be on that.

Pornography has already been spoken about. I do not want to disagree with my Front Bench but I would guarantee that, in a way, everybody in the House is in favour of censorship. It is a question of disagreeing on which things should be censored. People who would take a very free, libertarian view of censorship in sexual matters would probably be quite extreme in demanding censorship against racial hatred or other such things. We all believe that some things should not be promulgated; we are just not united on which they should be.

I applaud the use of the BBFC on this issue. It has established a good reputation in the country for its age classification system. It is the best organisation to turn to, to ensure that age verification is robust. I also hope that this can eventually be done with the consent of the internet service providers. In a way, having a well-regulated system that people feel they can trust is in the long-term interest of the provider. I am a great believer in enlightened self-interest.

Likewise, I hope that enlightened self-interest will lead to peace being declared when Section 73 is abandoned and the cable companies finally start paying public service broadcasters for the material that they use without any acknowledgement or payment. They compound the iniquity by putting their own advertising around it—so the public service broadcasters are suffering a double whammy. One fight will be referred to Ofcom, and Ofcom will set a figure for what should be paid—after that, it will be over. Eventually, platform owners will realise that without content their platform is useless, just as in 1922 the British Broadcasting Company started radio because it realised that having the wonderful new medium called radio mattered not at all if there was nothing to listen to. Surely platform owners realise that if they end up strangling content providers and depriving them of resources, sooner or later content will wither and dry up and they will be left with nothing. However, there is no need for delay. This has been on the go since 2007 or 2008. There are some rumours that the Government may be thinking that we need a two-year transition period. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that is not the case.

I realise that there are risks with digital government. I have received briefings from organisations that are alarmed by the risk of data breaches. Of course, we are all concerned about that, but it is quite remarkable that we all surrender to our mobile phone data that we would be unwilling to give to the Government. There is a slight illogicality there. Big data—data that are aggregated and anonymised—can be a very useful research tool as well as providing useful information. When I was chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board, like everyone else we relied on figures from the international passenger survey, which was a year out of date and a very small sample. It would be possible nowadays to get data from Visa or Mastercard on how many people from Alabama spent money in Scotland last year. It could easily be done, and nobody’s data would be breached as a result. It is all anonymous.

It is significant that the BBC accepts Clause 76, which gives the power to Ofcom. It is what successive Select Committees on Communications have been saying in this House for years. It makes absolute sense. The BBC is in a better position now than it has been in before. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and others that the provision of free licences to over-75s is a nonsense and should not have been put on the BBC—but we are where we are and the BBC’s position is that, much as it did not seek it, it does not want to start trying to unscramble the licence settlement in case other bits come adrift as well. The best thing we can say of the Bill’s provisions for the BBC is that the charter for 11 years and the licence provisions it has put in place will ensure that nothing like the raids on the BBC in the last two charter renewals can ever happen again.