Digital Economy Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, the Bill before us today takes significant steps towards a more digitally inclusive future, and I welcome it. I particularly welcome measures relating to pornography, fraud, copyright and disability issues. I pay particular tribute to the work undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, on many of these matters. It was good to hear her speak today about them. However, I have some reservations about whether the Bill resolves areas of concern expressed to me by various stakeholders and by constituents of Plaid Cymru’s three MPs on specific matters of this Bill.

I intend to mention four main areas of concern communicated to us, three during the House of Commons stages of the Bill and one thereafter. I will briefly outline them today and return to them in Committee. The first relates to the disproportionate neglect faced by people in rural Wales when it comes to mobile coverage. The second refers to the inability of the Bill to respond to technologically important developments relating to online abuse. The third addresses the limited bilingual services available on government websites. The fourth relates to public sector broadcasting’s prominence rules, which have already been mentioned.

In recent years, demand for voice and data services has grown exponentially. Mobile data traffic across western Europe is predicted to grow sixfold by 2020. Mobile devices are a vital part of modern life, wherever one lives and works. The 2014 deal with mobile companies, trading national roaming for a commitment to 90% coverage by 2017, has served rural businesses and communities particularly badly. Not-spot localities in rural Wales remain at chronic levels, with 4% of homes in Wales without any services from any mobile network operator. Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2015 report identified Wales as the country in the UK with the least 3G signal. Outdoor voice 2G and 3G coverage on A and B roads by all four operators is around just 50%, with only one operator reaching 76%. Rural Wales is hit disproportionately by this not-spot phenomenon, with north Wales in particular continuing to lag behind the rest of the UK. The percentage of premises getting basic voice calls coverage from all the big four networks in 2015 was just 65%, compared with 85% for the rest of the UK. The industry’s requirement to deliver near universal voice and mobile internet coverage underlines the need for new ideas. Clearly, the way in which mobile coverage is failing rural businesses and communities needs to be addressed. The issue of fast broadband availability in rural areas is a parallel concern and is a major consideration in the economic well-being of rural areas. I declare a personal interest as we are so challenged by that matter. My colleagues in the other place tabled amendments that sought to include practical ways of improving coverage in Wales, but they were not debated. I will table amendments along those lines in attempts to rectify this problem, and I hope to engage in a thorough and comprehensive debate in Committee.

The second area of my concern is abusive behaviour on social media platforms. The way in which we communicate with each other and with the world has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, with 37 million social media users in the UK. Last year, the then Education Secretary reported that,

“convictions for crimes under a law to prosecute internet trolls increased eightfold in the last decade, with 155 people jailed”.

Twitter’s top lawyer has himself admitted that the company has been “inexcusably slow” in fighting off vicious online crime. There is no incentive for social media platforms to implement robust processes to deal with criminal online abuse. We must therefore ensure that a statutory requirement is placed on social media providers to do all they can with regard to dealing with criminal online abuse. Plaid Cymru MPs tabled amendments in the other place to give this Bill the ability to hold social media platforms to account for their vital role in tackling the surge of online abuse, much of which is of a criminal nature. The amendments were not given very much attention in the Commons, certainly not as much as they deserved, and I hope to pursue this issue further.

The third matter I want to raise is the lack of bilingual services from English to Welsh on UK websites. Despite gradual gains in language equality and despite a statutory framework being in place following the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, bilingual services being provided by the UK Government are not advancing in line with technology. Often, services and content are available in Welsh only by specific request for translation, which inevitably deters users and limits access by Welsh speakers. Since the UK Government’s website was centralised into GOV.UK, the situation has substantially deteriorated. This concern has been expressed by Meri Huws, the Welsh Language Commissioner. She has criticised the UK Government for weakening their Welsh language services on the GOV.UK website since its 2012 launch. Following a review of GOV.UK websites and online services, she concluded that access to forms and information in Welsh is deficient and is affecting people’s experience when using the UK Government’s online services. Why should the 700,000 Welsh speakers in the UK be prevented from accessing the content available to English speakers in their preferred language? I intend to table an amendment that will help to ensure that essential communications in Welsh are made as accessible as possible in the Government’s own services as they move online. I will take a reasonable and practical approach to this matter, and will do so building on the concerns of the Language Commissioner, to which I have referred.

There is one final matter that has been raised with me by friends in the BBC and which I want to flag up today and address in detail in Committee. This Bill presents a rare opportunity to modernise public sector broadcasting prominence rules so that they are appropriate for the digital age in which we now live. Currently, there is a requirement for PSBs to have only what is called “appropriate prominence”. While this has generally ensured that that the main PSB channels are high on the listings, BBC1 being at the very top, for example, channels like CBeebies and CBBC do not have such high prominence. This is a particular issue for S4C and BBC Alba, of which I was very much aware when I was a member of the S4C Authority. I also believe that we need to modernise the current system to ensure that it covers on-demand services such as catch-up TV as well as connected TV on-demand menus. This is the way the public, particularly young people, increasingly access public service content. It would add services like BBC iPlayer to the list of those given prominence, as a number of speakers have mentioned in the debate. The BBC’s on-demand services provide a platform for S4C and BBC Alba as well as TV channels such as BBC1 and BBC2. Here I warmly identify with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, in opening the debate.

I shall address all of these matters in greater detail in Committee, but I certainly recognise the merits of the Bill and very much hope that, in an amended form, it will proceed to the statute book.