Internet Safety

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I completely agree that it is important that UKCIS helps to contribute to online safety. That is why we expanded its role from concentrating just on child internet safety to include, as the noble Baroness mentioned, hate crime, serious violence and extremism. As far as resources are concerned, the previous body—the United Kingdom Council for Child Internet Safety—has demonstrated that getting together a mix of tech companies, public bodies and government achieves good results. That is not the only thing we are doing. The online harms White Paper, which is coming by the end of the winter, will address some of the other issues, one of which will have to be funding.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister said, the body we are speaking about has developed from being concerned specifically with children to having a more generic nature. It has a complex set of relationships with various departments of government, including health, the Home Office and education, especially the part dealing with young people’s mental health. It is a complicated structure. In the consultation, a lack of direction in the previous body was bemoaned. Can the Minister assure us that there is a sense of direction and purpose, appropriately monitored, in this voluntary body? Given that we have extended the remit from just children to a generic range of interests—and given that in the past month or so in this House, children and obesity, knife crime, bullying, gambling, image and performance-enhancing drugs and the internet have all been discussed—can the Minister assure me that the needs of children are not being diminished as a result of being wrapped up into a more generic body?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

On the noble Lord’s first question, there has just been a board meeting and the council has reaffirmed the areas of focus: first, online harms experienced by children; secondly, radicalisation and extremism; thirdly, violence against women and girls; fourthly, serious violence; and fifthly, hate crime and hate speech. So there is a definite desire to address these very important matters. As I said in my previous Answer to the noble Baroness, we will look at other areas in the online harms White Paper.

There is absolutely no doubt that children are still a prime concern, as the composition of the board shows. The director of BBC Children’s, the CEO of Childnet, the Children’s Commissioner, the CEOs of Internet Matters and the Internet Watch Foundation, the lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the head of child safety online for the NSPCC and the deputy director of child protection for the Scottish Government are all members of the board and they will certainly make sure that children’s issues are at the forefront of their work.