Queen’s Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Fullbrook. Maiden speeches are never easy, and in these circumstances they are very difficult indeed.

As a number of people have said, the gracious Speech foreshadows the internet safety Bill, which is intended to address some of the real harms inflicted on society, particularly on the young and the vulnerable, by the abuses and misuses that have become apparent over the nearly two decades since the Communications Act 2003.

I welcome the promised pre-legislative scrutiny. The Bill is large, complex and comprehensive but far from oven-ready. I hope, for example, that we will take evidence from the NSPCC about its concerns that the draft online safety Bill leaves out of scope a large number of commercial pornography sites that have the potential to cause harm to children. My noble friend Lord Foster has referred to the absence of gambling reform; the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, drew attention in his report to the absence of any attempts to curtail harm to our democracy; and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, mentioned scams and fraud, so there is much for the Select Committee to consider.

Over the coming year, we will have the opportunity to produce legislation that is genuinely world-leading in bringing the internet within the rule of law, but much will depend on how Ofcom perceives its role. When Ofcom was first mooted as a regulator, I remember it being said that “Murdoch’s lawyers will eat them for breakfast.” That has not been the case, thanks in part to the amendment to its powers proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, during the passage of the 2003 Act, which gave Ofcom a hierarchy of responsibilities, the first of which was to protect the interests of citizens. It is that hierarchy of duties that gives Ofcom the power and flexibility to intervene where broader public interest issues are involved. It will be Parliament’s job to ensure that Ofcom retains those powers and that flexibility in the new regulatory landscape that we will be mapping out in the Bill.

Another success of the 2003 legislation was the carving out of the rights and responsibilities of our public service broadcasters. Among those responsibilities was to provide access to the work of the independent production companies. The result has been to see what was a cottage industry develop into a worldwide success story, employing some 75,000 people and attracting upwards of £3 billion a year in inward investment. There is a very real danger that the very successful ecology of our media industries could be irreparably damaged by financial interests and ideological vandalism. It is essential that the new broadcasting settlement recognises, as did the 2003 Act, the need to protect prominence and other benefits in return for the unique contribution to our culture, creative industries and regional and national identities which the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 provide.

As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, we are in a culture war between old values, which have helped shape our liberal democracies over the last 100 years, and the challenges to those values thrown up by the new technologies. It is the responsibility of Parliament now to make sure that we are in a good place to win that war.