Digital Economy Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 69A in this group. Before I discuss that I wish to address a few remarks to the other amendments in the group. I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, about enforcing fines on people who are not within the United Kingdom. However, I do not understand how his Amendment 58 would be any more effective if the payment service provider or the ancillary service provider is also outside the UK. Perhaps when he addresses the Committee shortly, he will also indicate to me, because I am a little confused, the difference between his provision in paragraph (a) of proposed new subsection (2) in his Amendment 65, where enforcement of the age verification regulator’s decision on the payment service provider or ancillary service provider is implemented by way of an injunction, and the proposals suggested for a similar process under Amendment 66.

On Amendment 69A, as I mentioned on an earlier group, there are increasing amounts of adult material available on the internet that is not commercial in any sense. Much of it is taken from commercial websites but there is no reference to which website the material has come from, and therefore no suggestion that it is intended as a lure or as providing a link to a commercial site.

To take up issues just raised by my noble friend Lady Benjamin, increasingly there is pornographic material that might be described as “home videos”, either those produced by what might be described as exhibitionists or others where innocent members of the public, including some celebrities in recent years, are deceived into performing sexual acts to their computer camera not knowing that they are being recorded for subsequent posting on to publicly available websites. There is also the issue that Liberal Democrats have been very strong in trying to tackle: those instances of “revenge porn” where disgruntled exes post compromising videos online. From what I can see, that type of material is not covered by the Bill, as there is no commercial aspect and no ancillary services involved. There is confusion about what “ancillary service providers” means. In his remarks on an earlier group of amendments, the Minister talked about pornographers to whom ancillary service providers provide their services. In the case of self-generated or home-grown obscene material, though, there is no pornographer that the website is providing a service to, at least in one sense. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, spoke about the fact that there are some social platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, which are very good at taking down inappropriate material: they have strict rules about obscene material posted on their platforms. However, there are particular difficulties here with platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. Although 99% of the content is innocent and of no harm to children, or anyone else, there are Twitter feeds and Tumblr pages that have adult material on them. Those are not simply links to porn sites, but actual videos on the actual pages or Twitter feeds. While most have a warning on the front page—NSFW, or not suitable for work, or 18+ only—that is usually also the page that has already got pornographic images on it. Even on Twitter, it may not be clear that the media content is pornographic until one has accessed those images. Clearly, there is difficulty in enforcing age verification on those platforms when the overwhelming majority of the material contained on them is not adult material.

What I believe needs to be explored is making a tool available to those who want to use social media for adult material, so that when the Tumblr page or Twitter feed is accessed, the user is diverted to a page that warns what lies behind and provides an option to divert away from the adult material. That alternative page could be a government-specified warning about the impact that pornography can have on young people, advising where support can be given and so on: the equivalent to the warning messages that are now printed on cigarette packets, for example. Alternatively, the Government could by regulation insist that such a tool was made available to ensure such a warning page is placed on accounts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, mentioned just now, so that people are alerted that such pages or Twitter feeds have adult content on them. It falls short of requiring age verification or blocking such accounts, which I am sure Twitter and Tumblr would resist, but it would still address an important issue.

In its useful briefings on this aspect of the Bill, the NSPCC says there is a particular problem with children who accidentally stumble across adult material. This would go some way to addressing that issue. The NSPCC says a particular problem is pop-up advertisements from commercial pornography sites, which regrettably this amendment does not address—nor is that addressed by any other part of the Bill. Will the Minister tell the Committee whether there is any move by the Government to address that issue?

It is one thing for the BBFC to block a porn site that does not have age verification; it is quite another to suggest—as the Minister said on an earlier group of amendments—that we block a platform such as Twitter, if it fails to do the same for a handful of feeds that contain adult material. I accept that the amendment as drafted is probably far too wide in the powers it gives to the Secretary of State, but it is important that we do not ignore non-commercial adult material, which in increasingly a problem on the internet.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, my amendment to Clause 17, which noble Lords have already discussed, raised the importance of knowing how the Government plan to enforce the Bill through the appointment of one or more age verification regulators. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raise similar questions about the mechanics and processes of enforcement and I am very glad to be able to speak in support of Amendments 63, 56, 58 and 65.

On Amendment 63, I agree completely with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has said. If we are not to have real clarity about the identity of ancillary service providers in the Bill, the idea that we can make do with optional guidance is unsustainable. It must be made mandatory. On Amendment 56, I support the call from the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, to hear a full explanation from the Minister of the mechanisms for enforcing the fining provisions in Clause 22 in other jurisdictions, which were alluded to by the Minister in another place.

In the time available today, however, I would like to focus particularly on Amendments 58 and 65. Any noble Lords who were in your Lordships’ House when we debated the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 will know that I had a major reservation about the Government’s plans to rely on payment providers to enforce the licensing provisions applying to foreign websites. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, has demonstrated that my reservations were well founded. In response to written Parliamentary Questions I tabled last year, the Government said that, since the law came into effect in 2014, the Gambling Commission has written to approximately 60 gambling websites reminding them of the law, and payment providers have been asked to block payments 11 times. Given the size of the global online gambling market that can access the UK, that surely seems tiny. If we are supposed to be reassured, I suggest that the Government should think again.

The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, also raised questions about why the Government think that ancillary service providers will act to withdraw their services. I recognise that the Government want to disrupt the business models of pornographic websites, but for some companies, to withdraw their services would be disrupting their own business models. They may be small businesses, not major international organisations such as Visa and Mastercard. In such cases, it would not be in the interests of the business to act. They cannot be expected to do so unless it is made an explicit legal requirement with a clear sanction. My concerns about the absence of any sanction or requirement to act are readily acknowledged by the Government’s own publications, in a manner that I find rather unnerving. In the press release the Government issued when they announced their plans for IP blocking, they said they were,

“also seeking co-operation from other supporting services like servers to crack down on wrongdoers”,

and in the notes to the release said:

“Websites need servers to host them, advertisers to support them, and infrastructure to connect them. With the international and unregulated manner in which the Internet operates we cannot compel supporting services to be denied but the regulator will seek to gain cooperation from the industry”.


They seem to be hoping that, although they have inserted this age verification requirement into statute, it is acceptable to back it up with what is effectively a non-statutory, half-hearted good will enforcement mechanism. Lest anyone doubts this, they should review the Government’s evidence to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee about the delegated powers in the Bill. The Government reported on the guidance to be issued under Clause 22(7) about who will be given a notice about non-compliance of pornographic websites. Importantly, the Government said:

“The recipients of those notices can decide whether or not to take action. Accordingly it is considered that no Parliamentary procedure is necessary”.


It seems that the Government hope that by placing the obligation for age verification in statute, we will congratulate them on fulfilling their election manifesto commitment, without—at least as far as Clause 22 is concerned—any credible commitment to enforcement.

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Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

68: After Clause 23, insert the following new Clause—
“Anonymity
(1) Age-verification providers must be approved by the Age-Verification Regulator.(2) In this section an “age-verification provider” means a person who appears to the Age-Verification Regulator to provide, in the course of a business, a service used by a person to ensure that pornographic material is not normally accessible by persons under the age of 18.(3) The Age-Verification Regulator must publish a code of practice to be approved by the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament.(4) The Code must include provisions to ensure that Age-Verification Providers— (a) perform a Data Protection Impact Assessment and make this publicly available,(b) take full and appropriate measures to ensure the accuracy, security and confidentiality of the data of their users,(c) minimise the processing of personal information to that which is necessary for the purposes of age verification,(d) do not disclose the identity of individuals verifying their age to persons making pornography available on the internet,(e) take full and appropriate measures to ensure that their services do not enable persons making pornography available on the internet to identify users of their sites or services across differing sites or services,(f) do not create security risks for third parties or adversely impact security systems or cyber security,(g) comply with a set standard of accuracy in verifying the age of users.(5) The code must include provisions to ensure that publishers of pornographic material take full and appropriate measures to allow their users to choose the Age-Verification Provider of their preference.(6) Age-Verification Providers and publishers of pornographic material must comply with the code of practice.(7) To the extent that a term of a contract purports to prevent or restrict the doing of any act required to comply with the code, that term is unenforceable.”

[Lord Paddick]

The amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I have to say that it is only because we were quicker on the draw that I am leading on this amendment rather than the noble Baroness.

As I have previously alluded to, we believe that age verification is not sufficient protection for children on the internet. It can easily be circumvented, and it would be very difficult to place age verification on such platforms as Twitter and Tumblr. In relying on this mechanism, there is a danger of diverting attention away from other important and effective methods of addressing the issue of children accessing adult material online. Despite our misgivings, we believe that everything should be done to protect the privacy of those who have their age verified to enable them to access adult material on the internet. I am grateful to the Open Rights Group for its briefing and suggested amendment on this issue, which is the wording we have used for our amendment.

Age verification systems almost inevitably involve creating databases of those who are accessing adult material. It is completely lawful for those who wish to look at adult material to access these websites, but it is a sensitive area and many will be wary about or even deterred from accessing completely legal websites as a result. Security experts agree that unauthorised hacking of databases is almost inevitable, and the advice to organisations is to prepare contingency plans for when rather than if their databases are accessed by those without authority to do so. The consequences of breaching databases containing sensitive personal data can perhaps be most starkly illustrated by the public exposé of the personal details of those who were members of Ashley Madison, which reportedly resulted in two suicides. The risk to privacy can be reduced if the age verification regulator approves minimum standards for age verification providers. These are set out in the amendment.

The amendment suggests that the age verification regulator publish a code of practice, approved by the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament. The code of practice should ensure that everything possible is done to protect the privacy of users and to allow them to choose which age verification system they trust with their sensitive personal information. For example, some websites provide a service that enables users to prove their identity online, including their age, for purposes unconnected with access to adult material but which could also be used for that purpose. The full extent of the provisions are set out in the amendment, and the evidence in support of the amendment is set out in the Open Rights Group’s updated briefing on the Bill.

The Constitution Committee addressed this issue in its 7th report of 2016-17:

“We are concerned that the extent to which the Bill leaves the details of the age-verification regime to guidance and guidelines to be published by the as yet-to-be-designated regulator adversely affects the ability of the House effectively to scrutinise this legislation. Our concern is exacerbated by the fact that, as the Bill currently stands, the guidance and guidelines will come into effect without any parliamentary scrutiny at all. The House may wish to consider whether it would be appropriate for a greater degree of detail to be included on the face of the bill”.


That is exactly what this amendment attempts to do. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I want to say a few words because I have been working on the issue of age verification for a long time. I became interested in it when it became apparent a couple of years ago that it was going to come to the top of the agenda. For the last year or so, the Digital Policy Alliance, which I chair, has been working with the British Standards Institution to produce a publicly available specification—PAS 1296—exactly on this issue. Its whole point is to enable anonymised verification of the attribute of your age. People have said that you would have to give the information to the adult content site, the porn site, but you do not necessarily need to.

There are two stages: when the child, or the adult, first arrives at the site; and, if they are allowed into the site, what they then do. At the point when they come to the front page of the site, where they should be asked to prove their age, there should be an option—and this is the point about anonymity—that allows them to bounce off, with a token, to an age verifier. I have on my smartphone, for instance, one from Yoti. I can identify myself to Yoti; it knows about me and can send an encrypted token back to the website, which does not contain any identity information at all—purely the fact that I am over 18. If the regulator later needs to unravel the token because it appears that rules have been breached, it is possible to present the token and start unravelling it—but only with proper powers. The point is that a hacker cannot find out who presented that token. So it is possible now to do what is necessary.

That answers the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. The problem with an identity card is that it will identify you. If you gave your identity to one of these websites and it happened to be hacked, like Ashley Madison, and if you were a Cabinet Minister—or even like most of us here, actually—your career would probably be in ruins. So I think it is essential that people be permitted anonymity. That is why, I am afraid, I am not in favour of the identity card method. There are other similar ways of doing the same thing—

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[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords again, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for the teach-in.

Amendment 68 calls for the regulator to approve age verification providers and to publish a code of practice with which those providers must comply. This was similar or identical to the amendment that was rejected in the other place in Committee and on Report. I am afraid that the Government do not consider this clause necessary. However, I can assure noble Lords that we approach this issue with the utmost seriousness.

Clause 15(3) already requires the regulator to publish guidance about the types of arrangements it will treat as being in compliance. As the noble Earl explained, the technology is with us and the providers of age verification controls will be subject to data protection laws. The BBFC is already in discussion with the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure that best practice is observed. It has indicated that it will give the highest priority to ensuring that the guidance it issues reflects data protection standards. The Government and the BBFC are also in discussion with the Information Commissioner’s Office on privacy and data requirements to ensure that the appropriate guidance is issued, as they are experts in this field.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has additionally made a recommendation on the approach to the types of arrangements for making pornographic material available that the regulator will treat as complying with Clause 15(1). We are considering whether we can address those concerns and, as I said, will respond as soon as possible.

As the noble Earl explained, innovative age verification solutions are coming to market, and we want to ensure that the regulator is enabled to make a determination as to the sufficiency of different and new controls. As noble Lords know, there are existing privacy and data security protections provided by the Data Protection Act 1998, administered by the Information Commissioner’s Office. The Act established a framework for the protection of personal data, balancing the privacy rights of individuals with the legitimate needs of organisations to make use of such data. It ensures respect for individuals’ rights to privacy and keeps their personal information secure from abuse. The Act ensures that data are handled safely and securely. It is right therefore that we do not seek here to duplicate this legislative and regulatory framework. However, we agree that we must ensure that it is built into the age verification process in a meaningful way and, as I have said, we will provide a response to the DPRRC recommendation on this matter. In the meantime, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am very grateful for noble Lords’ contributions to this short debate, particularly to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for illustrating how a system as set out in our amendment already exists. I join my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones in thanking the noble Earl for his work with the industry. I thank my noble friend Lady Benjamin for driving him on, apparently. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for her support for the amendment.

The Minister said that the amendment was not necessary despite the Constitution Select Committee believing that such an amendment is necessary. On that basis, I cannot give an undertaking that we will not return to this issue on Report. However, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 68 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, since the Bill introduces age verification, it follows that children must be informed users. Not only does that make it more likely that they observe it but it would give teachers the necessary opportunity to discuss what they might find a difficult subject. Like others, I believe that this is a tiny part of a broader picture.

As some noble Lords know, I regularly speak in schools about pornography but more broadly about young people and their relationship to the internet. I have to report to the Committee that they have a palpable appetite for better digital education, not only SRE but a much broader digital education. By that, they mean a comprehensive understanding of the purposes and methods by which platforms and businesses interact with them, their rights as consumers and citizens and their urgent desire for some code of conduct. Interestingly, they want a code of conduct that covers their behaviour to each other. They also want a code of conduct that would determine the behaviour of businesses and platforms towards them. Above all else, you find what they want is a single moral landscape that recognises that the distinction between online and offline is completely immaterial to them.

Part 3 of the Bill deals with a single issue and this amendment deals with a narrow piece of learning. But the young people I speak to yearn for more. They repeatedly complain that e-safety is narrow, repetitive, badly delivered, and comes in the wrong lessons and from the wrong teachers. Although they themselves have fast fingers, many if not most have little idea of the workings of the technology they are using, let alone the full gamut of risk, from fake news to fake friends. A young person who can spot spam without clicking, is one less likely to see the unwanted adult sexual content that is our subject today. A young person who is knowledgeable about the way their personal data are collected is less likely to make bad decisions about what, where and when to give them up.

Children are not simply the objects of our concern; they are participants in their own good outcomes. We must learn to listen to their stated needs, not relentlessly pursue an adult agenda. I direct the Minister to the recent report of the Children’s Commissioner, Growing up Digital; to the report published this week, The Internet on our Own Terms, which captures the policy recommendations of young people; and to the evidence collected by the Communication Committee’s inquiry “Children and the Internet”, all of which has a great deal to say about the value, nature and scope of the education that children need.

In supporting this amendment I ask the Minister not only to recommend it to colleagues, but to listen very carefully to young people about the scope of the learning and the manner of teaching that they feel makes them secure and able users of the internet, which ultimately will help them to be contributors to the cultural shift that must accompany the legislation that is in front of us.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly, as my name is on this amendment, to support what other noble Lords have said and echo the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, in that we also tried to table a broader compulsory sex and relationship education amendment to the Bill but were told it was out of scope.

We have to address the fact that despite our best efforts young people, and indeed very young children, will be confronted with inappropriate images and inappropriate adult material on the internet, and they need to be taught how to respond. They need to be taught to turn it off immediately and to tell their parents about what is happening. Older children need to be told that the way in which actors in pornographic films treat each other is not the way that we expect our young people to treat each other.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I think we can all agree—and I certainly do—that this amendment has expressed very worthy concern about the safety of young people growing up in modern Britain today, and it is of great interest to many Members of this House and Members of the other place too.

As we have always said, age verification is not a panacea, and should certainly not be seen as the limit of child online protection activity in which the Government and key stakeholders are involved. Age verification controls are a part, but not all, of the approach to protecting children from potentially harmful content online. Education, awareness-raising with parents and carers, and equipping children with the resilience and tools to deal with their online experiences are critical. So I can agree with much of what the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, have said on this subject.

Keeping Children Safe in Education, the statutory guidance for schools and colleges on safeguarding children and safer recruitment, sets out that governing bodies and proprietors should ensure that children are taught about safeguarding, including online, through teaching and learning opportunities as part of providing a broad and balanced curriculum.

As my honourable friend the Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families, Edward Timpson, has said in previous debates during the passage of the Children and Social Work Bill, this Government heard the call for further action on improving the quality of PSHE provision in schools and we are fully committed to exploring all the options available. I understand that this will come up in the Report stage for that Bill in the other place, where the Government committed to providing an update to Parliament on the issue.

This Government are clear that to improve provision any change must be made in the right way with proper consideration of all the issues, including online safety. I assure the Committee that the Government are committed to handling this important matter well. We intend to work with stakeholders and listen to the voices of young people over the coming months. With that assurance, I hope the noble Baroness can withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, we spent a considerable amount of time earlier in Committee on the question of the powers that would be allocated to any regulators appointed under the Bill. We did not spend much time on who the regulators would be, although some concerns were raised. However, over the weeks and even today, we have increasingly gathered that the Government’s intention is that the British Board of Film Classification, the BBFC, should be given a major role in the work discussed in this particular part of the Bill.

I will start with the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which has already been extensively referred to in the debate. It raised questions about what the position would be of any regulator appointed under the powers being taken in the Bill. It said, for example, that the age verification regulator—without naming that regulator—will have powers including,

“to require the provision of information … impose substantial civil penalties … take steps to direct internet service providers to block access to material … and … publish guidance”.

Of course, there is a quite a lot in the report that we have already discussed about how and under what conditions a body such as the regulator that will be appointed should be able to publish guidance, particularly if it is on behalf of the Secretary of State and has not been subject to discussion within Parliament.

Without having any expert knowledge of the work of the committee, I think that, had they known directly who the regulator would be, they might also have raised the issue in my amendment: the status and constitution of the body that is likely to be appointed. I assume that the comments made by the Minister earlier in this Committee session that the BBFC is to be appointed will be carried forward in due course. If I am wrong, obviously the points I make are still valid—although they may apply to a different regulator of a different nature.

The issue I want to pick up comes in paragraph 15 of the DPRRC report, which talks about a memorandum exchanged between it and the department in relation to the powers that would be applied to the regulator. It starts by saying where those powers are found: in Clause 17. It explains that the department feels that it is important to retain flexibility as to who is to be appointed to ensure that the right person or persons are appointed as a regulator. Of course, that point has probably now been overcome by time. It also makes the point that the functions could be regulated. Indeed, we had earlier recommendations that suggested quite persuasive arguments for the regulatory burden to be carried by more than one body. I hope that we will be able to make progress on this as we move through the Bill.

It is clear that if the regulator is to be the BBFC, the work of which is really the basis for the classification system that will be relied on in the legislation, it has a designation to do only part of its work under the Video Recordings Act 1984. It is important to pause here. The amendment that I am putting forward asks the Government to think hard about the correctness of a decision to appoint as a regulator a body that is only partially covered by statute at present. Does the Minister think it right that a private company over which the Secretary of State has limited powers in relation to who is appointed to that body should take on the sorts of responsibilities on civil penalties and the blocking of activity, as well as regulatory functions?

As the amendment suggests, does he not think that it might be more appropriate to look carefully at the body that takes on these responsibilities and to propose, as I do, that it should be either a body corporate or subject to more extensive powers of direction as to who is appointed and how any appointments are made? If that were the case, we could have more confidence in the ability of that body to make the right decisions in relation to all the functions that it has, which extend quite widely, and in particular to age verification, which is the subject of the Bill.

The British Board of Film Classification is a private company. Its number is 00117289. I checked today on the company’s register and, limited as the information is, it is quite revealing. It was first incorporated on 17 August 1911. So for nearly 107 years it has been a monopoly operator in a private capacity, acting in some senses on behalf of the Government in some of its functions. As I said, there are statutory functions in relation to video and now DVD, but none to any great extent in relation to film classification, which is the basis of the work that is being carried on in the Bill.

It is well known that, in its original form, the BBFC was called the Incorporated Association of Kinematograph Manufacturers Ltd. It was created by the then manufacturers of projection equipment to protect the investment that they made in cinemas up and down the country against the watch committees, which had sprung up before but were now displaying an active concern about the impact of films on the morals of the population. This still exists. Technically, films are licensed for exhibition in the United Kingdom only through the local authorities. They normally take the advice of the BBFC. That was a clever move by the manufacturers of the equipment, which was at risk, to ensure that they stepped in ahead of the possibility of moral outrage by creating a situation in which they said and alleged that people would not be shocked by the sorts of thing that might cause alarm and despondency around the country. At that stage they could not have anticipated that Life of Brian is still banned in Glasgow—I think that I am right in saying that. That may or may not be of interest to anybody in the Committee, though perhaps it woke your Lordships up a bit. That is the kind of thing that can come from this rather unfortunate arrangement.

I will recap slightly. This private company last year made a profit of approximately £1.5 million on a turnover of £5.4 million. It owns freehold property not a million miles from here worth quite a lot of money. It has a board appointed by itself and a membership that is not disclosed in the company’s records. It operates in an area of considerable complexity and certainly some moral concern—and it is about to be given additional statutory responsibilities. Those are the main points that I want to make in this amendment.

I do not know whether what I propose in this amendment is right. It is an issue that should be thought carefully about before we move further. For instance, within the BBFC structures at the moment there is no appeal system. The regulatory functions of the Secretary of State are limited; they are mainly related to video and not to film. The powers that are about to be referred to it are mentioned by the Delegated Powers Committee as being of concern, so we need to find a way through that. We have yet to see how that will happen because we have not yet had the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support the amendment but not necessarily for the reasons articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Our concern is that if the Government started to appoint members of the British Board of Film Classification and therefore it was not independent of government, we would have a situation in which the Government would potentially be involved in deciding which films or material should be censored or not, which is not a path we would like to go down, particularly in the current climate of populism and the historical issues that that raises.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has just given the speech that I was rather expecting the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to give. The amendment suggests that the Government should be completely out of the running of the BBFC, yet in his very interesting and important remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said that he was a bit concerned that the Government should think it right for this private company, over which the Government have very little power, to have such responsibilities.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was right to say that the current position is that the BBFC appoints itself. The council of management is chosen from leading figures in the film industry; that council chooses the president and the director, and then they do this important work. If we are to change that, we need some evidence that either there is a risk of the Government interfering in these decisions or that these decisions are being got wrong in some respect. I am not aware that these decisions are being badly taken. As far as I can tell, the BBFC is doing a pretty good job, and until we are clear what regime we want to go to, I would rather leave the law as it is.