Lord Swinfen
Main Page: Lord Swinfen (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Online Safety Bill [HL]
Lord Swinfen Excerpts
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on introducing this Online Safety Bill. I believe that it is an extremely important piece of legislation that if made law—and I hope it is—would greatly enhance the provision of child safety online.
Some 30 years ago, I chaired an examination of video violence and its effect on children that had been set up my late noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford. The conclusion of the inquiry was that it did affect children adversely. The report of course was immediately panned by various academics working with the video industry. However, some two or three years later, a number of other reports came out that confirmed our findings. I suspect that similar things will happen with examinations of online pornography.
As has already been said, access to the internet is more readily available. At first it could only be accessed from bulky computers. Now, iPads, mobile phones and various portable devices mean that access can happen almost anywhere. This brings great benefits, some of which I use in relation to health service provision in the developing world. However, it also brings significant risks as children gain increasing media independence, such that their parents have little or no opportunity to monitor or control. To plagiarise the wonderful subtitle of Reg Bailey’s review of the sexualisation of children last year—Letting Children be Children—I welcome this Bill as it seeks a way of letting parents be parents, by giving them the means to protect their children.
In the time available, I wish particularly to address the concern, which some may have, that this Bill represents a form of censorship. I hope noble Lords will agree with me that this argument does not stand up to scrutiny. The bottom line is that the opt-in system proposed by this Bill does not prevent any adult from accessing pornography. Any adult can opt in to access pornography, subject to age verification confirming that they are indeed an adult over the age of 18. That being the case, it seems to me that there are only two possible bases for objection.
The first is that the online world should not be subject to any order, regulation or proscription. For these people, for some reason, keeping the web in a Hobbesian state of nature is more important than putting in place provision to ensure that children do not accidentally stumble on pornography; possibly quite extreme pornography. For them the state of nature ethic is more important than caring for children. I do not know whether the same people would feel the same way if there were no procedures to prevent online credit card fraud or prevent misuse of personal data.
Of course, the offline world makes no claims to constituting a state of nature, let alone of making this into some ethical good. Responsible supervision of what is available to children and young people is something that we accept as necessary and appropriate in respect of books, magazines, DVDs and television. It seems to me that if one were so minded this could be construed as censorship, but I doubt that many in this House would deem it as such; rather, it would be recognised for what it is—responsible care for those who are not equipped to protect themselves and discern what is harmful. Clearly, supervision in this regard is for the good of the child and society as a whole. It would be irresponsible and foolhardy to allow the development of internet media in a way that made it impossible for responsible supervision to be provided. However, that is what is now happening.
The second argument is that we should encourage awareness of filtering but not intervene in any other way to help parents: the ball should be left in their court and the state should not intervene, as anything else would be hopelessly patronising and paternalistic and take away parents’ responsibility for their children. That is an interesting point of view, but we do not expect this argument to be accepted when it comes to the classification of DVDs and films at the cinema. We are committed to signposting to all consumers, including parents, what type of material the person is considering viewing.
Parents are a child's first line of defence and, of course, must engage with the challenge of how to protect their children offline and online. Although some parents will be switched on to the dangers as well as the opportunities of the online world, sadly, this is often not the case. Less than half of parents of five to 15 year-olds have online controls installed on computers at home. However, home computers are arguably secondary, given that, as I have already mentioned, the ubiquitous nature of internet access today means that a child or young person has only to step out of their front door with their smartphone to access potentially unfiltered online content. We know that the use of mobile internet is growing rapidly. There were 6 million more users between 2010 and 2011, with the most significant growth being among younger age groups. I am told that 62% of 12 to 15 year-olds own a smartphone and just over half of these smartphone users say that, of all regularly used media, they would miss using their mobile phone the most.
Crucially, take-up of filtering or restricting access to content on mobile phones is very low. Only 31% of parents said that they had limited their child's access to the internet in this way, according to a 2011 Ofcom study. Do we really think that it is appropriate to refuse to provide parents the assistance of an opt-in system and instead let them sort out their own filtering? How much better and simpler for them to do so in the context of an empowering opt-in system, where the choice is still 100% theirs, rather than in an environment, the unhelpfulness of which is a result of the belief that not making things simpler for parents is more important than protecting children online.
I believe that, rather than the provision of an opt-in system constituting a patronising arrangement for parents and other adults, it is actually about empowering them and extending choice; about giving them the option of an easily accessible pornography-free internet alongside the option of a pornography-filled internet.
The empowerment at work here makes perfect sense for those of us who have not forgotten our political theory. The likes of Hobbes argued that people in a state of nature would give up their state of nature freedoms, as they did not have much positive consequence, trading them in instead for more limited but, crucially, more meaningful civic rights. In other words, it was in sacrificing extreme expressions of freedom that people found meaningful freedom in the law and order and civility of a civil society subject to law and regulation.
We accept limits to our freedom at all times in our society. This is a good thing. I fear that those pointing toward the Bill as an example of censorship seem to have either misremembered that this is the case, or have a rather strict interpretation of freedom which is simply incompatible with the society in which we live. In much the same way that fences are put up at the edge of cliff-side coastal paths, so must we accept that it is nothing less than good sense to take steps which seek to stop children stumbling across inappropriate content online.
Figures may vary about the degree to which there is unwanted exposure to pornographic content—a study from 2012 suggests that such exposure is as high as 50%—but it seems to me that to consign inappropriate content to an online top shelf is necessary, sensible and a mere replication of offline best practice. Unfettered definitions of freedom result in a system wherein some freedoms remain in place which cause harm to others—the very opposite of what we strive to do in this House and in a civilised society.
Far from constituting something that is patronising, it seems to me that providing an opt-in system is entirely consistent with respect for freedom in civil society in that it actually empowers people, giving them meaningful options. It is no surprise that parents themselves seem very keen on the opt-in, as witnessed by the Safetynet campaign petition which secured more than 100,000 signatures earlier this year.
There are few perfect laws, but we must not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This Bill should be an Act of Parliament already. It is an eminently sensible set of measures which seek to bring online protection into line with protection provided offline and ensure that children are protected in a way which the developments of modern technology demand.
Baroness Thornton
I am sorry but the Minister needs to address the issue—and I hope he will do so—of parents who do not know how to take action, who cannot do so or do not speak English, and the issue of children in care. Millions of children are accessing the internet in many different ways, often not with their parents present. The Government have to take this on board. How serious does this have to get before they realise that parents need some assistance?
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, all people in cars, including children, have to be strapped in with a seat belt. The Government have made it illegal not to do so. We are asking the Government to provide a safety belt to protect children on the internet.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I understand the points that have been made. I have also made it clear that I understand the importance of keeping children safe online. However, I think we differ in terms of the way in which we go forward. Perhaps noble Lords will allow me to continue because I have some issues to point out concerning the controls.
Industry partners in UKCCIS are committed to putting in place filters which will see adult content blocked on more than 96% of public wi-fi. All UK mobile operators block adult content. Leading laptop and PC manufacturers, including Toshiba, Samsung, Lenovo, Dell, and Tesco, and also high street retailers Argos, John Lewis and Dixons Group are delivering solutions, which prompt the set up of parental controls on start-up or at point of sale, with Argos offering free filtering software. Industry-led solutions, designed with customers in mind, will, I believe, achieve a better outcome for parents and children than legislation could. However, we are not complacent. There is more that can be done and is being done.
I now want to focus on education, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others. In education, 96% of primary schools and 73% of secondary schools teach e-safety, either as separate lessons or embedded in others. It is part of the statutory ICT curriculum and it also forms part of tutor sessions and personal social and health education—PSHE—lessons. Ofcom’s research shows that 87% of parents agree that their children have been taught to use the internet safely. In upskilling children and parents in partnership with Childnet and the Safer Internet Centre, all ISPs have developed video tutorials, demonstrating how to install and set up parental controls, available on the Safer Internet Centre website from December 2012. Many initiatives are in place. For example, TalkTalk has developed an internet safety badge for the Girl Guides; BT operates internet safety workshops for parents; Sky has built a social networking and cyber-bullying module for school children where they can create their own Sky News reports; and Facebook works with CEOP, the Samaritans, the UK Safer Internet Centre and the Internet Watch Foundation to deliver training and provide support for users, teachers and parents. I was also interested to hear from my noble friend Lady Benjamin her considered views on the importance of education of children and parents in managing online sites, which is the approach that we are taking.
I should also like to focus on the issue of vulnerable children, to which I know the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, alluded in one, if not two, of her questions to me. There is always more to be done. Several noble Lords have raised the issue of vulnerable children and this is an area of concern. Regardless of the options available to them, there are some chaotic homes where parents may be absent, uncaring or simply incapable of taking steps to protect their children online. In those circumstances, children may also be at risk of other forms of neglect or abuse and we must ensure that such children are first protected from these more serious threats through the existing safeguarding mechanisms that schools, health workers and social services so crucially provide.
The specific online risk to children in vulnerable circumstances is an area that UKCCIS is exploring, which the board will need to consider how to take forward. I do not think a blanket regulatory approach to protect a minority of children is the way forward. Ofcom’s research shows that almost 80% of parents of children aged five to 15 have rules in place about their children’s internet usage and almost half—that is 46%—have parental controls installed in the home. Clearly, we need targeted solutions for vulnerable children.
I now turn to some of the issues raised in the debate. In terms of an overarching comment, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that the Bill was not 100% perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. I have noted that. The work that UKCCIS has been doing goes much further than the Bill. It takes a holistic approach to protecting children, working to implement parental controls at device level as well as at ISP level. It is working to educate children and parents and working with service providers, manufacturers and high street retailers such as Tesco, Argos and John Lewis.
I should like to address some of the issues from the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who has done so much work on the subject of online violence, focusing on pornography and the importance of protecting the young. I was alarmed to hear her comments about BT and Starbucks, which we will certainly be following up to find out what can be done to resolve that.
The UKCCIS work on increasing the awareness and availability of parental controls has been focused on preventing access to all types of harmful content, not just pornography. It includes violence, drug misuse, cyber bullying, extremism and the promotion of criminal skills, suicide and eating disorders.
I realise that many questions have come out of this interesting debate. If I have not been able to answer any, particularly on age verification, I will certainly make it a point to reply to noble Lords.