Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Stoneham of Droxford

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.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Stoneham of Droxford

Monday 27th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I think we are straying into unnecessary territory here—very philosophical points which are no doubt extremely interesting. I will not rehearse at length the argument I made when this Committee last discussed this matter. However, there is an obligation on government as far as this is concerned because government do not enable us to have some simple system of verifying who we are. When we need to verify our identity, we are required to turn up with a paper copy, sent to us via the post, of a utility bill. All my utilities are trying to move over to sending everything electronically but an electronic copy does not suffice for those purposes. Until such time as we have a system of identify verification, people will rely on receiving paper utility bills.

I have one other point why paper utility bills are important. We are encouraged by government to switch suppliers. This is part of the philosophy of improving competition. You switch suppliers. You move to another supplier. You have a new website to go into and a new password. All these passwords, I am sure, we do our best to remember and not write down somewhere. Of course, you can no longer access the website of your previous supplier because you are no longer their customer. If you need to check back on whether the prices are indeed comparable, that data are no longer available unless you, the customer, spend money on printing them out and keep a paper copy. Surely that is the wrong way round.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I am slightly reluctant to speak against the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, and indeed that of my noble friend Lady Maddock, but, going against the grain of the debate, I think that I ought to do so. We have to say that the digital economy has provided huge savings and efficiencies in payment, booking and ticket systems, and the consumer should be allowed to benefit from that. We have to encourage these changes and simply to say that we are not going to do so is basically saying that the future is the past. I do not think we can ignore them.

I take the example of easyJet, an independent company away from the utilities. Are we saying that the equivalent of easyJet, which started competing against British Airways, would not have been allowed to discount its prices and reward customers who book online? I just do not think that that is the way forward. By all means say that we do not want extra charges put on people who are paying by cheque during the transition, but do not say, as it does in this amendment, that we should not offer a discount to those who are actually giving up their money more quickly by paying with a card or by direct debit. They are allowing the banks to release the money four days ahead, so why should they not get the benefit of that? It is a cheaper way of paying. It is wrong to say that this form of progress should be held up.

The other thing I would say is that I find it slightly patronising of older people. I chair a housing association for retired people. I was staggered when we did a survey for our annual conference, where the average age was the late 70s. We asked people whether they used IT to do a certain number of things. Some 80% said that they used the internet as a phone because they were using Skype, which is cheaper. Some 80% said that they bought tickets and booked their holidays on the internet because it is cheaper. What really shocked me as someone who worked in the newspaper industry and who thought that newspapers would always have a future because retired people would always want to read a newspaper was that 80% of them get their news from the internet. We cannot ignore these changes. What we should be concentrating on here is what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, was talking about in the debate last week. We want regular paper records to be sent to customers who are using the internet process as well as to people who pay by cheque. But please do not let us say that we are going to go back to the past by letting the banks hold on to our money for four days when we can pay directly and get a cheaper price by doing so. Retired people can get that benefit as well. We must not end that progress.