Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Friday 11th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on getting to this stage. The fact that it has taken her five years demonstrates why the amendments and the clause are so important. If it takes five years—of course, the Bill still has some way to go before it becomes legislation—that gives us some indication of how long it will take to change subsequently. Therefore, it is important that whatever legislation is passed on technology matters, not just on this important issue of online safety of children but in any area, is future proofed. As a Parliament, we are very good at reacting to a crisis which is occurring now or occurred a year or 18 months ago. Our parliamentary processes necessarily take time. On something like this, where it has been necessary for a Private Member to act, it clearly takes even longer.

Unless we future-proof to recognise the rapidly changing nature of technology, all the provisions that I hope we will agree to here today will be of no value. Technology changes much too rapidly, and that is why we need to future-proof legislation. When the Minister gives what I trust will be a positive response to the Bill, she must encourage her colleagues in government departments, when they draft legislation that relates to technology, to include future-proofing provisions.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. First, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on her efforts: she has been amazingly courageous and tenacious to get the Bill as far as this. The noble Lord said that it has taken five years. How many young children have had their lives really altered for the worse in those five years simply because we in both Houses of Parliament have not managed to give them the protection they deserve?

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[Baroness Shields]

I thank all noble Lords for their comments. I start by addressing the conflation of some issues and the confusion that has been raised. On the confusion regarding the filters regime and its legality in terms of Europe, we must legislate to make our filters regime legal according to the new net neutrality regulations. The date for that is by December 2016. To be clear: we need to do something to keep our existing regime viable and functional under the law. That is the first thing. As the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, so aptly presented in his comments, the Prime Minister said that we would legislate to make sure that our filters regime is legal under European law.

It is not fair to insinuate that by challenging the vehicle we are somehow not supporting or speaking up for children. That is so far from the truth. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said that filters are not a silver bullet and explained to us how technically they work. The work being done by the British Standards Institution and the Digital Policy Alliance to define a standard for things such as age verification is vital to staying ahead of this problem. If the result of this work is something that the ISPs can then adopt, we will have an evidence-based technological solution that will support us going forward. That is much better than trying to tell the ISPs how to do it. We are looking to experts and developing an evidence base so that we can do this properly and voluntarily. The ISPs have said that they are willing to take that on board.

When the Digital Policy Alliance reports back to tell us how this can be done effectively, it will take time for these companies to go back to their engineering teams and develop solutions that enable them to implement those recommendations. That all takes time. You cannot legislate for that today. We are not talking about whether we are committed to it or the industry is committed to it.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I do not think anyone is denying that it will take time to implement things. Clearly, the time taken will be the same whether it is a voluntary scheme or written in legislation. But if you have legislation, those timetables become much firmer and the opportunities for prevarication and delay start to disappear. No Member of this House is ignoring the fact that it will take time. It is a question of what degree of urgency is being put on this and the extent to which you are guaranteeing that these things happen.

[Baroness Shields]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. The commitment to this is voluntary and clear. Of course it will take time, but it is evolving. The action of the industry is voluntary and the process has to be consultative. The UK Council for Child Internet Safety meets and provides an evidence base to the ISPs and the industry about what we know and how they should act—it is doing that. We are just talking about the vehicle to get us there, and we think we have a better approach. We will consult on age verification and bring something forward, enshrined in law or in whatever way we think is best, to ensure that the filters regime stays in place.

We have re-opened the conversation about many issues today. This particular amendment was on whether we should specify that Ofcom’s reports on filtering content and age-verification policies are set out as a duty. We are way beyond that at this stage. Ofcom is about to produce a report later this month that does just that. Therefore, the Government’s perspective is that this is already being done by Ofcom and there is no need to enshrine it in law.

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[Baroness Shields]

I thank my noble friend for giving me the opportunity to clarify this point. The consultation that will begin just after new year is about age verification for pornographic sites and how we will accomplish the manifesto commitment to stop young people accessing this harmful material. The other matter relates to the legality of our filters regime after the EU directive on net neutrality. The two are separate and distinct in the sense that the second, on filters, has to be acted on as a matter of urgency to keep the filters regime legal. The other is acted on as a matter of urgency to prevent children accessing this material. They are separate matters.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that clarification. However, will she confirm that the legislation she is talking about is essentially minimalist and will simply deal with the issue that has arisen around the current voluntary age verification scheme, in the light of what has happened in the EU? The hopes which some noble Lords have expressed, that that piece of legislation might be a vehicle for something much broader, are therefore not valid. A minimalist change is being envisaged, rather than something which will address all the issues that noble Lords have raised.

[Baroness Shields]

I confirm that we have to react to what has happened in Europe. The European net neutrality directive has set us back, so we are getting ourselves back on a stable footing and enshrining in law the fact that we can protect our filters regime. That is not an intentionally minimalist approach; we have to react to the legal situation that the directive has created.