Lord Mackay of Clashfern
Main Page: Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing this Bill forward. This is an extremely important subject. Indeed, the fact that it is important is demonstrated by the extent to which the Prime Minister and the Government have become involved in seeking to bring forward effective measures. I believe that if the Bill were enacted, it would greatly enhance the provision of child safety online.
Ultimately, the Bill is designed to empower parents to protect their children in a way that is effective. It is sometimes suggested, as it was recently in an article in the Times, that pornography may not be dangerous. However, in a letter to the same newspaper on 2 December, Dr Elly Farmer, a clinical psychologist and researcher, pointed out that there are very authoritative studies showing the various dangers of pornography. There are two principal components to the Bill to help parents to rise to this challenge and both are very important.
The first component establishes the opt-in system based on robust, statutory age verification, as set out in Clauses 1 and 2. I support this fully. It has two key benefits: first, it helps parents to protect children from accidentally stumbling upon, or deliberately searching for, adult material while not preventing adults doing so; and, secondly, it ensures that all internet service providers and mobile phone operators who provide an internet service comply with the same rules and standards as a matter of law. In other words, it will ensure that no household and no child in Great Britain is left unaccounted for. All children will be protected.
The Prime Minister has succeeded in getting an agreement with the internet service providers on this matter—at least, to some extent. As I have said, that shows how important he regards the matter as being. However, the trouble with an agreement is that it is not absolutely universal and certainly not a permanent legal obligation. The illustration that the noble Baroness gave in relation to telephones shows that. We may think that everything is covered and then suddenly discover that it is not. Therefore, it is better to have an all-embracing statutory provision, such as is provided for here, with very clear workable definitions. In my view, the provisions are very straightforward and easy to read. In contradistinction to some statutes that we have the pleasure of looking at from time to time, this one is extremely straightforward.
The second aspect, which is also very important, is providing an effective method of dealing with the content of material which is not adult material in the sense of this Bill, and that is what the later provisions are intended to do. Earlier this year, the Nominet Trust produced research on the extent of cyberbullying in the United Kingdom. Its report, entitled Virtual Violence II: Progress and Challenges in the Fight against Cyberbullying, makes many significant points. It states that,
“28% of 11-to-16-year-olds have been deliberately targeted, threatened or humiliated by an individual or group through the use of mobile phones or the internet. For over a quarter of these, this experience was ongoing, meaning that the individual was continuously targeted … by the same person or group over a sustained period of time. This suggests that one-in-13 secondary-aged school children have experienced persistent and intentional cyberbullying. Given that there are approximately 4,377,780 secondary-aged children in the UK … these figures can be projected to suggest that 350,222 children may have suffered persistent and insidious bullying inflicted via technology”.
The report goes on to note:
“Purposeful recurring attacks can easily overwhelm a young person being cyberbullied, leaving them feeling anxious, tormented and increasingly marginalised”.
We know that, sadly, in some cases this has had quite serious consequences.
It is important that this matter is addressed. In that situation, the system requires some way of coping with the content. It is a content matter. Therefore, the very valuable suggestion put forward in this Bill is that it has to be tackled by education. The first part of that education is under Clause 4, which, as the noble Baroness has said, puts a duty on:
“Internet service providers and mobile telephone … operators”,
who provide internet access to,
“provide prominent, easily accessible and clear information about online safety to customers”,
many of whom will be parents,
“at the time the internet”,
or mobile “service is purchased”. Furthermore, it puts a duty on providers to,
“make such information available for the duration of the service”.
That seems to be a very simple, practical provision.
By implementing Clause 4, the importance of online safety would be made plain to people when they subscribe to an internet or mobile phone service. It will provide parents with information that will empower them to help keep their children safe online; for instance, by enabling them to talk to their children about key online behavioural challenges, such as cyberbullying, sexting and how to stay safe while using social networks.
Clause 5 places a duty on the Secretary of State to provide a means of educating parents of children under the age of 18 about online safety. This is an important aspect because many parents find it hard to keep up with the rapid development of technology in this area. I understand that such education is made in some schools already. Therefore, a reasonable extension of that is for the Secretary of State to have a duty to make these provisions so that it will happen in all schools. It is very important to realise the need for a mechanism of that kind.
A recent study by Sonia Livingstone, the European Union expert on online safety, found that a considerable number of parents are incredibly unaware of the dangers of online adult content. The fact that something has to be done to bring this to the notice of parents and to help them to deal with it is a very important development. It should be made in law. This Bill provides a simple, straightforward and intelligible method of doing so.