Queen’s Speech

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, noted when she spoke earlier, DCMS has six Bills in this Session for which it is the lead department, and one—the digital markets, competition and consumer Bill—for which it is joint lead with BEIS. This is a large and significant amount of activity, and it is good to see it coming from a department that has often not pulled its weight as much as its importance would suggest. I am sad that time limits mean that I cannot deal with much of what is to come, and I am going to restrict my remarks to the media Bill and the Online Safety Bill.

The appearance of the recent White Paper on broadcasting, Up Next, was a bit of surprise. We normally have to wait, sometimes for years, before getting insights into the Government’s thinking on big policy issues, particularly if, as in this case, they deal with controversial issues not covered in their manifesto. In truth, this is more of a Green Paper than a traditional White Paper—perhaps a smoky green. There are some welcome decisions on policy on the future of public service broadcasting and on prominence and standards in the digital world, but flagrant disregard of the evidence received about the proposed privatisation of Channel 4 and an almost universal rejection of the arguments from experts, commentators, Select Committees and Conservative Back-Benchers in the other place—and indeed here, on Tuesday, rather bravely, by the second supporter of the humble Address, the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. These suggest that the Government have got this wrong, so what on earth is it doing in the list of Bills?

Up Next gets right much of the history, thinking, careful policy development and past practice which has created our brilliant public service broadcasting system, which the Government admit is the envy of the world. Some of the changes proposed will build on that and can be supported. But the truth is that unless the Government radically change the carefully constructed remit for Channel 4, it will not sell, as no private sector owner could make the returns it will need to recoup its investment and then go on to make profits. That means that the distinctive public service remit and support of the creative industries that Channel 4 has delivered in recent years will be lost and with it will go the 100 years of public service broadcasting that the Government say they want to preserve. Up next? What next? If the Government proceed with this proposal, they will find that they have a battle on their hands. With Red Igor, as we must call him—sadly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, is not in his place—egging us on, who knows where we will go?

Like others, I welcome the changes the Government have made to the original draft of the Online Safety Bill, which has the potential to establish an effective framework for the regulation of social media companies operating in the UK. I suggest to the Government that they work with the considerable expertise that exists in your Lordships’ House, including among those of us who served on the excellent Joint Select Committee which undertook the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. This could get us to a much better place on a number of the key issues; we are not far apart.

There are issues that would be the subject of early meetings and I shall suggest an agenda for the Minister to consider once this debate is over. The drafting of the Bill is overly complex. For example, while the objectives of the legislation now appear in the Bill, they are in Schedule 4. Given that they underwrite the Bill’s safety duties, this seems a very bizarre choice that is likely to cause confusion. There needs to be a clearer separation of powers between Ministers and the regulator. The draft Bill takes far too many powers for the Secretary of State, particularly egregious being the Secretary of State’s power to direct Ofcom to modify codes of practice to bring them in line with government policy—so much for an independent regulator.

The Bill quickly loses the clarity and focus of its earlier parts and much of the detailed material should be left to the regulator to determine. In particular, the proposed rigid categorisation of companies and the strictures on remediation for legal but harmful content surely have to flow from the risk assessments carried out by the regulator. This attempt to micromanage the legislation has meant that the Bill does not properly address the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt: how to balance freedom of speech with the huge volumes of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, disinformation and misinformation that are not criminal but are oppressive and harmful.

The late, but welcome, decision to include scam adverts in the Bill raises the issue of how advertising is regulated more generally. The current ASA self-regulatory regime for the content of ads and the weakness of the penalties which can be applied need to be urgently reformed, but the whole system needs to be controlled by Ofcom. The regime described in the Bill could and should be employed by other regulators to make markets work better and offer more protection to the public. Surely this would be a good time to make sure that all regulators, including the Electoral Commission, have the statutory powers they need and ensure that joint action has full statutory backing.

Our Joint Committee felt strongly that there should be a continuing role for Parliament in this fast-moving and technically challenging area. A possible model here is the Joint Committee on Human Rights; perhaps the Minister could address this when he comes to respond. Finally, a glaring anomaly in the Bill is the complete absence of any systematic approach to ensure that consumer complaints and redress against social media publications are properly dealt with. Ofcom will have the power to ensure that there are systems in place, but despite the fact that there is already concern about this issue and the public expectation is that there will be action, nothing appears in the Bill. It is time for the Government to act.