Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Friday 11th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

This amendment is quite logical, if the provisions are going to work. It is obvious that, if people can switch off filters, the whole thing is bypassed. I want to speak on the next amendment, about age checking, but this is a logical amendment to have if you want to get this Bill to work. As I said at Second Reading, filters are not quite good enough, because you can block only at the point when you access the page. Filters are quite crude—that is the problem; they tend to block entire websites, or they overblock and then people lift them. So there are a lot of problems around the amendment but it is hugely well intentioned, and I do not have a problem with people using filters. It is a good starter lock and will block a lot of simple things, but we need to go slightly further to block those who are technically savvy from getting round them—or those who persuade their parents that, because they could not get to a particular page on a website, they should override the filter for that website and unblock the whole thing. The convenience of the parent will probably win. How you get this to work is always the problem but that is not to say that we should not try.

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

As a non-lawyer, may I intervene with a query? The phrase “adult” services is a colloquial euphemism. In my understanding, or non-understanding of the law, it is interpreted as to the literal use of the language. Would not it be unambiguous and better if it was just to say “pornographic”?

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, on her amendment, which put the whole theme very effectively. We can all only do our best to re-emphasise all these points, because they are so vital.

We have heard a good deal about age verification in relation to pornographic websites since the publication of the Conservative manifesto, and rightly so. The commitment is of seminal importance, and I very much welcome it. However, we should not lose sight of an entirely different application of age verification in the online world, which the noble Baroness has raised in this debate. Filtering as a child protection mechanism is only really credible if filters are lifted in response to requests from adults. To avoid confusion, let me be clear about what I mean when I talk in terms of lifting filters, and what I do not mean. Having a robust filtering system does not mean guaranteeing that no one with special expertise will be able to bypass the filters. That is beginning to be made clear—I hope so—because many people have mentioned it to the Minister.

I fully recognise, as do most of us, that quite a number of young people will work out how to do bypass filters. My point has never been that a robust filtering system makes the internet safe—only that it makes the internet safer. What I am talking about here is the facility that an adult, regardless of whether or not they are a computer expert, should be able to access to lift adult content filters if they decide they do not want them anymore. While a robust filtering system cannot be expected to guard against those young people with real computer expertise who can work out how to bypass filters, it must ensure that the mechanism that ISPs make available to their customers to switch off the filters is subject to age verification.

To have filters in place that anyone can lift without age verification is a bit like saying that we are doing our best to promote security by providing doors, even though all the doors are unlocked. In this context, a so-called closed loop system whereby an ISP will send an email to an account holder informing him that the filter settings have been changed is completely unacceptable. As other noble Lords have pointed out, age verification takes place before an age-restricted activity occurs, not after it. As the polling demonstrates, a significant number of people would never open an email from their ISP. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, made that point, and I could not agree with him more. I very much hope that the Government will start taking note of this aspect of the age verification challenge as well as in relation to web crime.

The Bill, which requires users to decide whether they want to access adult content, subject to age verification checks, would help them rise to this challenge. Clause 1(4)(b) requires that a provider of a service has to have age verification that meets the standards set out in Clause 2. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for moving her amendment, which makes explicit this very sensible requirement. I hope that on this occasion the Minister will have taken in what has been said and will do something about it.