Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
Main Page: Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Independent Ulster Unionist - Life peer)
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I warmly welcome this Bill. It meets the challenges of online safety that parents are facing. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for all her hard work on this very important subject, and for reintroducing her Bill, with some amendments, in this Session.
Once, material on the internet could be accessed only on computers. Now, iPads, mobile phones and various portable devices mean that access can happen almost anywhere in a range of different ways. Everyday technology is becoming more mobile, more personal and more connected. It is always on—an always accessible backdrop to our lives. With this, children are becoming increasingly exposed to the full realities of the internet. Of course, a lot of material is enriching and can have a positive impact on the attitudes and daily lives of children, but a lot of it can have hugely damaging, conditioning and perverting effects.
Last year, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, Sue Berelowitz, suggested that the scale of access to adult pornography among children is now so widespread that it should trigger “moral panic” among parents, schools and the Government about what should be done. I speak not only as a father and a grandfather but as an erstwhile school principal.
Sue Berelowitz revealed in a radio interview that then unpublished evidence revealed that children as young as 11 were actively “seeking out pornography” and that some boys think there are no boundaries for sex. She noted how some boys now believed they had an,
“absolute entitlement to have sex with girls, any time, any place, anywhere, with whomsoever they wished”.
That is quite terrifying. Miss Berelowitz disclosed research that showed, in one large local authority area, 100% of boys in year 9—that is, 14 year-olds—were accessing pornography. She said:
“We came across one study where they were looking at the whole cohort of year nine pupils within a large local authority in England. The findings were that 100 per cent—that is every single year nine boy—14 year olds—is accessing pornography. And about 50 per cent of the girls. The girls did not want to look at the porn—they were being made to by the boys”.
Last year’s parliamentary inquiry into online safety said that,
“the whole history of human sexual perversion is only a few clicks away. Unfortunately, our children, with their natural curiosity and superior technological skills, are finding and viewing these images”.
However, the problem is not just pornography. We also need to protect children from websites that promote violence, self-harm, suicide, anorexia and all sorts of abuse. There is such a huge supply of shocking and degrading material that is easily available to children online.
What should be done? As legislators, I firmly believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that children and young people are protected from adult content, including pornography. Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it plain that every child has the right to live free from harm. It states:
“States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child”.
Given that we very properly use the law to protect children from accessing inappropriate material in the offline world, it is quite wrong that we have not also used the law to provide equal protection to children in the online world. Children do not change when they go online, such that they require less protection. They remain exactly the same, requiring exactly the same level of protection.
It is precisely for this reason that the noble Baroness’s Bill is so important. Clause 1 places a duty on internet service providers and mobile phone operators to provide internet access free from adult content at the set-up stage, but with the option of accessing such content, subject to age verification. There are a number of points to make about this important clause.
First, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on broadening the scope of the clause so that it covers but is not limited to pornography. It is absolutely right that this opt-in arrangement should cover websites featuring violence, self-harm, suicide and other abuses.
Secondly, as other speakers have said, I welcome the news that progress is being made on a self-regulatory basis but, given the importance of the issue, I do not think this subject should be left to self-regulation. The welfare of our children is just too important. Self-regulation may bring progress but how secure will that progress be?
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, rightly asked what will happen if we have a different Prime Minister in 10 or 20 years. The sad thing that I must draw to your Lordships’ attention is that, today, the Prime Minister has been made to look rather foolish because of his own policy of self-regulation. On 22 July, he said in his NSPCC speech that all mobile phones without exception had default filters in place. Today, we discover that that is not true, and it makes the Prime Minister look foolish. Indeed, his position is particularly awkward because the Government have seen fit to have Tesco, of all people, on the board of their UK Council for Child Internet Safety, but Tesco does not itself meet the standards that are required. If default was a matter of law, Tesco would have had to have behaved responsibly and this would never have happened. We would have had greater security if we had placed the arrangements on a statutory foundation.
Thirdly, Clause 1(3) makes provision for robust statutory age verification. The truth is that one can use any number of online safety mechanisms, but if they are not age-verified they are pretty useless. I am extremely disturbed to hear about the industry’s proposal of a so-called “closed loop system”. I do not know what that is except that it does not age-verify at the point of electing to reject filters. That will not do. This is no time to seek to take short cuts. We are talking about child protection. If no other part of this Bill becomes law, I hope that, at the very least, the Government will embrace statutory age verification, especially since we already make provision for statutory age verification in relation to online gambling.
Fourthly and finally, we have to remember that internet service providers making up 5% of the market have not signed up to the Prime Minister’s self-regulatory solutions. That may not sound like a huge number, but let us think about the households that will not be covered. Five per cent of the market is a huge 1 million households. I am reliably informed that this will almost certainly mean that 1 million children will be unprotected, and possibly more. If that is the case and we take but 0.1% of that 1 million, that is 1,000 children each year who are in danger of being conditioned and perverted permanently—just 0.1%.
The statutory solution proposed in Clause 1 by the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will address this problem by ensuring that all internet service providers are treated equally. Moreover, these proposals will put mobile phone operators on the same footing. They will all be under a duty to provide internet access without adult content—no ifs or buts; no exceptions—but with the option of accessing that content subject to age verification. Tesco, which should hang its head in shame, will not be able to ignore the law. Implementing a statutory solution is the only robust way in which every internet service provider and mobile phone operator can be accounted for. Only in that way will every household and therefore every child be protected. This is a Bill whose time has come. I hope that the Government will respond positively.