Online Harms Consultation

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord needs to unmute himself. I am afraid that we still cannot hear him, so perhaps we should move on to my noble friend Lord Vaizey and see whether we can return to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, later.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, those are big shoes to fill. I begin by congratulating not only the Minister but her incredibly hard-working officials who have produced this exemplary template for online regulation. I make these points only for emphasis, as so many brilliant questions have already been asked. As we seize long-overdue control of our fish, can we at least reach out to our former European partners, who have just published the Digital Services Act, to ensure that we do some joined-up thinking on online regulation in the UK, Brussels, Ireland and, I gather, Canada? Can we also, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, pointed out, do joined-up thinking domestically between Ofcom, the ICO, the CMA, the age appropriate design code and any other acronym that I can quickly think of?