Consumer Rights Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raises once again the really important issue of the protection of our children from the dangers of the internet, and specifically the pornography and violence that can be accessed too easily.

However, there are problems with opting in to internet content filters, which remain crude, even though there has been some improvement in recent years. The problems of the opt-in system proposed by the noble Baroness are twofold. The first is that it is possible for too much to be filtered out. Imagine a young person who is not sure about their sexuality. The words “homosexual”, “lesbian” and “transgender” would be filtered out, and organisations such as Stonewall, which does excellent work with confused young people, will find that their websites are banned by these filters. More sophisticated versions can filter out skin. Here there is an attempt to filter out pornographic images, but these filters have also banned the Daily Mail, which had a photograph of a woman in a bikini on the front page. The second problem is that internet-knowledgeable young people find mechanisms to work their way round filters, through murky rings round the usual internet. Most parents do not understand or know about these and will assume that their child is protected, whereas the reality is that they are not.

I am also concerned about the proposals in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause, which say that Ofcom has a duty to filter content,

“by age or subject category by providers of internet access services and mobile phone operators”;

and, in subsection (9), that,

“OFCOM may designate any body corporate to carry out its duties under this section”.

Is Ofcom now going to start classifying content? Even if it designates the British Board of Film Classification, that is fine for the areas that the BBFC covers—film, video, video games, mobile phone content that you can buy—but it does not cover other material, especially private, and we know from the revenge porn debate in your Lordships’ House recently that this is one of the first areas of porn that young people see. It will always be impossible to cover private material, so there will always be a way in.

There is also a further issue about young people who work their way round filters, usually in a ridiculously short time. Would that young person, often under 18, be committing a crime, or would their parents be committing one for not supervising their internet use? The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre website for parents, children and teachers, called “Thinkuknow”, advocates the best way forward. It talks about parental involvement with their children, and for parents, teachers and friends to alert young people to the dangers of the web. Sex and relationship education in schools is increasingly including teaching about the dangers and problems with porn. The website states:

“Parental controls will never make the internet 100% ‘safe’. They should not be used as a substitute for communicating safety messages to your child. Make sure that you talk to your child about their behaviour online and remember, your home is not the only place they will be accessing the internet!”.

An opt-out, rather than an opt-in, system leaves the control with the parents. They cannot relax and assume their children are safe—nor should they—and they are more likely to have sensible conversations with their children than parents who believe they are covered by an opt-in system.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, has just made one of the most extraordinary series of arguments against the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. He seems to suggest that because filtering systems are imperfect it would be better not to require filtering systems to be in place in the first instance. We all recognise—the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, made this clear when she introduced her amendment—that this was just one of a number of things that need to be done. However, the concept that because there is not perfection in the art of filtering out pornographic, violent or dangerous images, therefore you should not attempt to do it, seems a particularly bizarre position to take.

The noble Lord also suggested—and I have read carefully the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—that if we were not careful we would criminalise children who found their way past these filters and their parents for not adequately protecting them. However, there is nothing in the amendment which creates a criminal offence for a child to try to get past a filter.

The amendment is about creating a sensible framework so that the internet service providers have an obligation to put the filters on as a default—that is essentially what this means—and that there should then be a series of hurdles that have to be passed before that default filter is removed. It also requires Ofcom to promote best practice, to set standards in the way in which the filter operates and to develop an age verification policy. This is long overdue not only in this area but also in other areas where children need to be protected or adults need to be prevented from accessing material which is only for children, which is the other side of the same coin. All of this is eminently sensible material.

The Government think that this is not necessary because self-regulation operates so wonderfully. The problem with self-regulation in this instance is that although the three or four most responsible internet service providers may take these steps and do what is necessary, the others will not. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, cited the example of the internet service provider that, in its promotion material, makes a positive virtue of the fact that it does none of these things. It is essentially saying, “Come to us because there are no safeguards whatever”.

I hope the Minister will either accept the amendment or agree to have urgent discussions with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and those who are advising her on this issue to see whether it is possible to develop something that meets these requirements. It is quite clear that we are not taking seriously the fact that children are accessing extremely nasty and dangerous material. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, gave some sad, tragic and awful examples of where children have acted on such material. We know that children and teenagers act impulsively. The brain development has not yet occurred which enables them to give proper consideration to and have understanding of the consequences of their actions and what that means.

Under those circumstances, not trying to create the safest possible environment for them, and not trying to create a situation in which the default starting position is that filtering systems are in place, even if some of them are not as good as they might be, is completely irresponsible. I hope the Minister will tell us either that the Government are prepared to accept this principle or, if they have some difficulties with the way in which this is presented, agree to have urgent discussions with the noble Baroness to try to put this matter on track.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 50D because I am concerned about the easy accessibility of adult material to children online. It is that simple. Recently, a parent contacted me to inform me about their eight year-old son who was, quite innocently, led into accessing many pornographic images, unknown to them. They have now activated a block which bars such material, but, like so many other parents in this country, they wish it had been on by default. Their son now has unwanted memories of what he saw popping into his mind. Childhood lasts a lifetime and those early memories will lay the foundation that stays with that child for ever. They cannot be erased. How can we sit back and let that happen?

This year, the Authority for Television on Demand published a report entitled For Adults Only? which revealed that, in the space of just one month, at least 44,000 primary school children and more than 200,000 under-16s accessed adult content, including hardcore pornography. If we are serious about caring for our children, we must do far more to protect them online before more tragic, heartbreaking, life-damaging sexual, mental and emotional abuse takes place. There is a series of problems with the current voluntary approach deployed to keep children safe online. These are all addressed by Amendment 50D.

I congratulate the Government on all the progress they have made on this issue but, as has been said before, more needs to be done. In terms of internet service providers, the current voluntary approach to default adult content filters is inadequate and does not constitute a credible, long-term solution, for several reasons. It leaves 10% of the market uncovered. This represents several thousand children. It fails to provide any form of age verification before someone seeks to opt in to access adult content. You have to do this before you access gambling and other online activities, why not for accessing online pornography? It involves different companies applying different standards about what does and does not constitute adult content, so there is no consistency. Children like consistency. It helps with their development. There is no central mechanism for efficiently addressing the problem of overblocking. No one wants to block unnecessarily.

There have been two high-profile cases, as we have heard, of mobile phone operators not abiding by their code: BlackBerry and Tesco Mobile. The operator Three does not even claim to be compliant with the code. This is what self regulation allows. All these problems are addressed by Amendment 50D. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will give careful consideration to this amendment and I look forward to her response, in the hope that it will show that the Government truly care about our children’s holistic, long-term well-being.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for the opportunity to talk about this issue on Report in the Chamber—it is something that we will not forget in a hurry. I reassure noble Lords that we share a common goal to ensure that our children are safe online. Given the huge importance of the interest in children’s safety—and the complexity of the issue, because it is very multi-faceted; it is not straightforward or cut-and-dried—I ask for the indulgence of the House to speak at some length.

The 21st century has thrown many dilemmas at families, schools, and indeed government, about how to bring up and educate our children. Over the past 20 years, the landscape has changed enormously. Whereas in the 1990s children’s entertainment came from TV, comics, books and video games, with a few families having a computer in the corner, the turn of the century saw wholesale change. Homes became connected to the internet, and now four in five children have mobile phones, most of which are internet-enabled, which act as their main means of contact with the world at large.

For many parents and grandparents this is difficult new territory. The power shift of competence has changed, while our care instinct remains. How do we best protect our children both from the dangers of the known world and that of the unknown and byzantine internet? Ensuring children’s safety online is a complex—

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness when she is in full flood and what is obviously going to be a lengthy speech. If the balance of competence has shifted to the child, could she explain why we are taking away, or not prepared to support, protections to make it more difficult—in effect, holding back the shift in the balance of competence—by requiring default protection?

[Baroness Jolly]

I ask noble Lords to be patient; I am just painting a scene and intend to explain about the 90% and the 10% and the issues that have been raised by the noble Baroness opposite.

The safety of our children is our collective responsibility. The Government are not being laissez-faire about this. Recognition of our collective responsibility lies at the core of the UK’s world-renowned collaborative self-regulatory approach. According to the Family Online Safety Institute, the UK is a global net exporter of internet safety. It states:

“Since the emergence of the Internet in the mid-1990s the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of online safety and best practice”.

Under the auspices of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, every three months, key players from industry, the third sector—including parents—and government bodies meet and work in partnership to help keep children and young people safe. This model serves us extremely well, and has driven recent progress.

Technical tools that we have discussed, such as filters, play an important part in enabling parents to protect children from inappropriate content. I outlined in Committee the tremendous progress made on this by Government and industry, which I will summarise now.

The vast majority of mobile phones sold are done so with filters automatically set to default on—including pay-as-you-go handsets. For contract customers, three of the UK’s four major mobile network operators also have their filters on by default, with the remaining provider, Three, committed to doing so by July 2015. I am quite happy to take away Tesco and have a look at Tesco online.

Responding to the Prime Minister’s request, the four major providers of home broadband—BT, Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk—now provide customers with family-friendly filtering solutions. Parents can easily block a range of content categories, such as adult content, gambling and violence. Nine in 10 UK broadband connections are provided by these four companies. In Committee, noble Lords expressed concerns about families not covered by filters. It is correct that smaller, more niche companies, many focused on the SME market, provide one in 10 UK broadband connections. They also have acted. The largest of these, including EE, covering 3% of the market, and Kcom, already offer family-friendly filters to customers free of charge, and Plusnet, the sixth-largest ISP, is trialling its filtering tool next month with a launch plan for March 2015. I think it is worth mentioning that in Committee, I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, to let me know which one was flouting the Prime Minister’s request openly, and I do not think I heard from her, so if she would like to get back to me with that one, I am quite happy to take action on that as well.

We should note that seven in 10 households do not have children, so we can surmise that few family homes are served by the smallest providers, who might not provide filters, and every family in the UK has the ability easily to choose a provider with strong child-safety credentials. Children also access the internet outside the home, often through public wi-fi, and we have therefore taken action here too. The six major providers, covering more than 90% of the market, provide family-friendly public wi-fi wherever children are likely to be. Taking into account progress on mobiles, on home broadband internet access and public wi-fi, we can be confident that families now have the technical tools available to enable them to filter inappropriate content.

Filters are an incredibly important part of the solution, but they cannot protect children from the aspect of online life which evidence shows us causes most distress—cyberbullying. Nor can they give parents a cast-iron guarantee that children will be protected from inappropriate content, and at some point, at a certain age, filters may be turned off.

It is an unwelcome truth that there is no silver bullet to child safety online. Alongside technical solutions and through education, which I will come to, we must therefore support parents to adopt other forms of mediation, such as having conversations with children and monitoring internet use. Parents do not always feel aware of the risks their children face when online. Indeed, many feel overwhelmed by technology and certainly less savvy. This leads to reluctance among some parents to engage in issues surrounding their children’s online activity. The need for us to guard against parental complacency is an incredibly strong reason for preserving the unavoidable parent choice on filters. The systems that providers have put in place act as a useful catalyst, forcing parents to take decisions, and prompting them to enter into discussions with their children. Default-on filters would eliminate that route to engagement.

As we do in relation to road safety, unsafe sex, alcohol consumption and other risks children face, we must raise awareness. Earlier this year, the internet service providers made a significant addition to the online resources already available to parents in the UK from education, charity, industry and law enforcement sectors. Internet Matters was launched in May and provides parents with advice on how to keep their children safe online. I commend it to noble Lords.

As well as government, parents and industry, schools have a critical role to play here. Through schools we are teaching our children the skills they need to navigate the online world safely. As part of our reforms to the national curriculum, we have adapted computing programmes of study to incorporate internet safety. Since the start of the school year in September, the curriculum has included internet safety for five to 16 year-olds, key stages 1 to 5.

The promise of a software or hardware gizmo to protect our children is seductive. Yet even with filters on, in possession of excellent digital skills and with a sensible head on their shoulders, children will still have worrying experiences in this area, whether through exposure to inappropriate content via a text message, or witnessing abusive comments online or in other situations. As well as informing and supporting parents and working with industry, we must empower children and foster their confidence online so that they are resilient when the time comes.

In childhood, we learn about the world and develop the skills to make good choices. We must avoid over-cosseting our children to the extent that they do not acquire the skills required to cope with offline and online challenges when they face them. When a child encounters a problem online it is critical that they are able to find help and support. This might be through accessing online or offline information and advice, or by speaking to a friend or trusted adult, or to a teacher, carer, parent or other family member. We all share the responsibility to be there for them when needed.

It is right that the Government take steps to regulate where necessary. However, progress on filters has been remarkable. We should for a moment consider the real impact of the amendment. If it became law, while all providers would be required to provide a filtered service parents would still be able to opt for a filter-free service if they chose to do so. In doing so, they would need to verify their age, but account holders already need to be over 18. What difference would this amendment make? Arguably, the difference would be that parents would make the choice at the point of sale, rather than being able, as they can currently, to choose to customise their settings according to family circumstance and context.

In addition, this amendment would place significant burdens on and potentially sound the death knell for the very smallest ISPs, which are in any case business focused—and this at a time when government is seeking to reduce regulation. Furthermore, parents have told the Government that they want the freedom to make this choice, which is why at present they are faced with an unavoidable choice. If we take this choice away from them, we risk their disengagement and apathy. Many may reject filters completely, leaving children less protected than they are now.

The internet can be an outlet for children’s creativity and a tool for social engagement. However, we are all aware that it brings risks. We share a responsibility to ensure that children make use of digital opportunities in a safe and supported way. I believe strongly that self-regulation and partnership have got us further than regulation in this area would have done, given the pace and complexity of change. Filters are an important part of our approach to online safety. I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, introduced her internet safety Private Member’s Bill in 2012, before the current parental control filters and the unavoidable choice had been introduced. I pay tribute to her and others who have engaged with this important debate. It has reaped results already, but we are not complacent and the debate is now moving on.

I have painted a broad picture of the issues concerning online safety and I thank the House for its tolerance. I have done so to highlight the range of challenges that we face and the collective approach needed to address them. Through work with industry, we are improving the tools available to families, who now have the resources that they need to keep their children safe online. Through schools, we are equipping children with digital skills and the understanding that they need. Through awareness-raising, we are supporting parents to engage in these matters.

While I know that all noble Lords here wholeheartedly agree that children should be protected from harmful digital content, which is the intention behind the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, I hope that they are reassured that the Government’s current approach is the right one. Therefore, I ask that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.