Online Safety Bill

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Things are not going quite according to plan, so colleagues might perhaps like to gear more towards five minutes as we move forward.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak in favour of new clause 4, on minimum standards. In particular, I shall restrict my remarks to minimum standards in respect of incel culture.

Colleagues will know of the tragedy that took place in Plymouth in 2021. Indeed, the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), visited Plymouth to meet and have discussions with the people involved. I really want to rid the internet of the disgusting, festering incel culture that is capturing so many of our young people, especially young men. In particular, I want minimum standards to apply and to make sure that, on big and small platforms where there is a risk, those minimum standards include the recognition of incel content. At the moment, incel content is festering in the darkest corners of the internet, where young men are taught to channel their frustrations into an insidious hatred of women and to think of themselves as brothers in arms in a war against women. It is that serious.

In Parliament this morning I convened a group of expert stakeholders, including those from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, Tech Against Terrorism, Moonshot, Girlguiding, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Internet Watch Foundation, to discuss the dangers of incel culture. I believe that incel culture is a growing threat online, with real-world consequences. Incels are targeting young men, young people and children to swell their numbers. Andrew Tate may not necessarily be an incel, but his type of hate and division is growing and is very popular online. He is not the only one, and the model of social media distribution that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) spoke about incentivises hate to be viewed, shared and indulged in.

This Bill does not remove incel content online and therefore does not prevent future tragedies. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social media, I want to see minimum standards to raise the internet out of the sewer. Where is the compulsion for online giants such as Facebook and YouTube to remove incel content? Five of the most popular incel channels on YouTube have racked up 140,000 subscribers and 24 million views between them, and YouTube is still platforming four of those five. Why? How can these channels apparently pass YouTube’s current terms and conditions? The content is truly harrowing. In these YouTube videos, men who have murdered women are described as saints and lauded in incel culture.

We know that incels use mainstream platforms such as YouTube to reel in unsuspecting young men—so-called normies—before linking them to their own small, specialist websites that show incel content. This is called breadcrumbing: driving traffic and audiences from mainstream platforms to smaller platforms—which will be outside the scope of category 1 provisions and therefore any minimum standards—where individuals start their journey to incel radicalisation.

I think we need to talk less about freedom of speech and more about freedom of reach. We need to talk about enabling fewer and fewer people to see that content, and about down-ranking sites with appalling content like this to increase the friction to reduce audience reach. Incel content not only includes sexist and misogynist material; it also frequently includes anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and transphobic items layered on top of one another. However, without a “legal but harmful” provision, the Bill does nothing to force search engines to downrate harmful content. If it is to be online, it needs to be harder and harder to find.

I do not believe that a toggle will be enough to deal with this. I agree with amendment 43—if we are to have a toggle, the default should be the norm—but I do not think a toggle will work because it will be possible to evade it with a simple Google Chrome extension that will auto-toggle and therefore make it almost redundant immediately. It will be a minor inconvenience, not a game changer. Some young men spent 10 hours a day looking at violent incel content online. Do we really think that a simple button, a General Data Protection Regulation annoyance button, will stop them from doing so? It will not, and it will not prevent future tragedies.

However, this is not just about the effect on other people; it is also about the increase in the number of suicides. One of the four largest incel forums is dedicated to suicide and self-harm. Suicide is normalised in the forum, and is often referred to as “catching the bus.” People get together to share practical advice on how they can take their own lives. That is not content to which we should be exposing our young people, but it is currently legal. It is harmful, but it will remain legal under the Bill because the terms and conditions of those sites are written by incels to promote incel content. Even if the sites were moved from category 2 to category 1, they would still pass the tests in the Bill, because the incels have written the terms and conditions to allow that content.

Why are smaller platforms not included in the Bill? Ofcom should have the power to bring category 2 sites into scope on the basis of risk. Analysis conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that on the largest incel website, rape is mentioned in posts every 29 minutes, with 89% of those posts referring to it in a positive sense. Moreover, 50% of users’ posts about child abuse on the same site are supportive of paedophilia. Indeed, the largest incel forum has recently changed its terms and conditions to allow mention of the sexualisation of pubescent minors—unlike pre-pubescent minors; it makes that distinction. This is disgusting and wrong, so why is it not covered in the Bill? I think there is a real opportunity to look at incel content, and I would be grateful if the Minister met the cross-party group again to discuss how we can ensure that it is harder and harder to find online and is ultimately removed, so that we can protect all our young people from going down this path.

[Damian Collins]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) made an excellent speech about new clause 2, a clause with which I had some sympathy. Indeed, the Joint Committee that I chaired proposed that there should be criminal liability for failure to meet the safety duties set out in the Bill, and that that should apply not just to child safety measures, but to any such failure.

However, I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that, as drafted, the new clause is too wide. If it is saying that the liability exists when the failure to meet the duties has occurred, who will be the determinant of that factor? Will it be determined when Ofcom has issued a notice, or when it has issued a fine? Will it be determined when guidance has been given and has not been followed? What we do not want to see is a parallel judicial system in which decisions are made that are different from those of the regulator in respect of when the safety duties had not been met.

I think it is when there are persistent breaches of the safety duties, when companies have probably already been fined and issued with guidance, and when it has been demonstrated that they are clearly in breach of the codes of practice and are refusing to abide by them, that the criminal liability should come in. Similar provisions already exist in the GDPR legislation for companies that are in persistent breach of their duties and obligations. The Joint Committee recommended that this should be included in the Bill, and throughout the journey of this legislation the inclusion of criminal liability has been consistently strengthened. When the draft Bill was published there was no immediate commencement of any criminal liability, even for not complying with the information notices given by Ofcom, but that was included when the Bill was presented for Second Reading. I am pleased that the Government are now going to consider how we can correctly define what a failure to meet the safety duties would be and therefore what the committal sanction that goes with it would be. That would be an important measure for companies that are in serial breach of their duties and obligations and have no desire to comply.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that. Of course, this is a cross-party issue. We want to see these horrific crimes brought to justice. We will do everything we can to support the Ukrainians in that effort, and we are working across the international community to do that. We have put money into mobile justice teams and training judges for the Ukrainians. We are doing everything we can and will continue to do more.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

3. What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to improve prosecution rates of rape and sexual assault cases in the south-west.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to increase the rate of prosecution for rape cases.

[The Solicitor General (Michael Tomlinson)]

His Majesty’s Government are committed to improving rape prosecutions and are investing across the justice system. Through Operation Soteria, prosecutors across the south-west have helped to lead the way with a focus on joint working with the police and on early advice, and an enhanced service to victims.

[Luke Pollard]

Last week, Devon and Cornwall police were placed into special measures because of their failure to record crime and manage sexual offenders. Fewer than 20 people were convicted of rape in Devon and Cornwall out of 1,500 recorded offences last year. People are losing faith in the CPS and the police. Does the Minister agree that now is the time to extend the sexual offences backlog pilot from London and the north to include the south-west, with a clear focus on reducing the 1,000-day wait for rape victims to get justice in court?

[The Solicitor General]

Not least because I am a south-west MP, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue. Work is already under way: I mentioned Operation Soteria in the south-west. Specifically in his Plymouth constituency, I know that work is going on with the violence against women and girls commission; I have seen that work and I commend the commissioners for it. There is also a conference happening in the next few weeks and I ask him to keep me updated.

More broadly, on the hon. Gentleman’s substantive question, referrals from the police to the CPS are up for offences of rape, charges are up and prosecutions are up. I am determined that that positive work and positive trend must continue.

Online Safety Bill

Luke Pollard Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Bill. It is an important step forward, and it is because I welcome it that I want to see it strengthened. It seems to be an opportunity for us to get this right and in particular to learn lessons from where we have got it wrong in the past. I want to raise two different types of culture. The first is incel culture, and I would like to relate that to the experience that we had in Keyham, with the massing shooting in Plymouth last year, and the second is the consequences of being Instafamous.

It is just over six months since the tragic shooting in Keyham in which we lost five members of our community. The community feels incredibly strongly that we want to learn the lessons, no matter how painful or difficult they are, to ensure that something like this never happens again. We are making progress, working with the Home Office on gun law changes, in particular on linking medical records and gun certificates. One part is incredibly difficult, and that is addressing incel culture, which has been mentioned from the Front Bench by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) and by the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). It sits in the toxic underbelly of our internet and in many cases, it sits on those smaller platforms to which this Bill will not extend the full obligations. I mention that because it results in real-world experiences.

I cannot allocate responsibility for what happened in the Keyham shooting because the inquest is still under way and the police investigations are ongoing, but it is clear that online radicalisation contributed to it, and many of the sites that are referenced as smaller sites that will not be covered by the legislation contributed perhaps in part to the online radicalisation.

When incel culture leads to violence it is not domestic terrorism; it falls between the stools. It must not fall between the stools of this legislation, so I would be grateful if the Minister agreed to meet me and members of the Keyham community to understand how his proposals relate to the learnings that we are coming out with in Keyham to make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again. With the online radicalisation of our young men in particular, it is really important that we understand where the rescue routes are. This is not just about the legislation; it needs to be about how we rescue people from the routes that they are going down. I would like to understand from the Minister how we can ensure that there are rescue routes; that schools, social services and mental health providers can understand how to rescue people from incel culture and the online radicalisation of incel culture as well as US gun culture—the glorification of guns and the misogynistic culture that exists in this space.

The second point about culture is an important one about how we learn from young people. Plymouth is a brilliant place. It is home to both GOD TV—a global evangelical broadcaster—and to many porn production companies. It is quite an eclectic, creative setting. We need to look at how we can learn from the culture of being Instafamous. Instafamous is something that many of our young people look at from an early age. They look at Body Beautifuls, Perfect Smiles—an existence that is out of reach for many people. In many cases they are viewing the creation of online pornography via sites such as OnlyFans as a natural and logical extension to being Instafamous. It is something that, sadly, can attract a huge amount of income. So young people taking their kit off at an early age, especially in their teenage years, can produce high earnings. I want to see those big companies challenged not to serve links on Instagram profiles to OnlyFans content for under-18s. That sits in a grey area of the Bill. I would be grateful if the Minister looked at how we can have that as a serious setting so that we can challenge that culture and help build understanding about how Instafamous must mean consent and protection.

Ultrafast Broadband: Devon and Somerset

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for introducing the debate so well and so thoroughly. Let me reassure her and other Members that there is cross-party support for the introduction of high-speed, decent, accessible and affordable broadband internet right across Devon and Somerset.

North Devon and Plymouth have very different geographies and communities, but we all need the entire south-west region to be better connected not only by transport but by internet. The pandemic has changed the context—it is important to mention that. More people are moving to the far south-west, not only because we live in a beautiful, wonderful part of the world with a generous quality of life but because the high cost of living in big cities does not need to apply when working from home is increasingly the norm.

But many people who move to the south-west find that our slow internet speed is an inhibitor to their delivering the job they were hoping to do from the west country. That sets us back as a region. It also reinforces the stereotype that the west country is somehow slow, or slower than the rest of the country. That could not be further from the truth. We want to deliver growth, more jobs and a zero carbon economy. Faster internet is a foundation stone for all those things.

I echo the calls from the hon. Lady for greater political priority for this issue. The Government’s entire majority is built out of MPs in the south-west of England. I would like that voice to speak louder and clearer to Ministers, to tell them that we deserve our fair share as a region. Levelling up is not just something that should affect the north and the midlands. The south-west needs levelling up. Rural communities need levelling up. For the past two years I have been in the fortunate position of serving in the shadow Cabinet, speaking on rural affairs. As a west country lad, it is personal to me—my sister is a farmer in north Cornwall, where we have internet problems as well, although Cornwall enjoys faster connections than Devon, thanks to a lot of European Union cash in the past.

We need to ensure that the divide between urban and rural communities is closed. Otherwise, rural communities will not be able to achieve their potential. Young people will be priced out of not only jobs but housing and opportunities. Increasingly, people who want to get online will move out of those communities, creating a drain of the talent we need to prosper. Rural Britain really does deserve better, including better internet.

There are three aspects I want to touch on: first, there is no point having high-speed internet, be it superfast or gigabit-capable, if the families living in the properties that the pipes run alongside cannot afford to access them. That is an especially acute problem in the south-west, where we have high levels of poverty and deprivation. It is often presumed that rural communities are affluent, but you cannot eat a view.

In our rural and urban communities there is a real problem with people being able to afford devices. It is estimated that 9% of families in the UK do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet at home. In Plymouth, especially in some of our poorer communities such as around Stonehouse or parts of Devonport, access to data as well as to devices is holding people back. During the pandemic, young people were unable to access Google Classroom online because they did not have a laptop in the family. An entire family of children sharing a single laptop to learn is one problem, but the family may be unable to afford the data that goes along with it.

Data poverty is something that worries me. The cost of rolling out broadband in the south-west would be, to a certain extent, passed on to the consumer—through not only public subsidy, but the prices that we will pay in our bills. I worry that high costs and the difficulty of connecting rural economies will eventually fall on the bill payer. That will force low-income families out of the opportunities that gigabit-capable internet provides. Plymouth City Council estimated that someone without access to high-speed internet during the pandemic would achieve one grade lower than they otherwise would have. That is a stark view of the potential for our children, and we need to address it.

My next point is, I realise, not quite within the scope of the Minister’s Department, so I hope she will forgive me. Not only should we look at laying more superfast and gigabit-capable pipes for properties and businesses; we should also consider our transport network. The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and myself have been pushing the Department for Transport to look at using the GSM-R masts that run alongside our trainline. The trainline in the west country is very beautiful, and there is plenty of time to enjoy the beauty, because it is very slow.

The GSM-R masts are a safety feature that accompany the entirety of the UK rail network. GSM-R is basically 1G. The proposal we have been arguing for, on a cross-party basis, is that there should be work with Network Rail and its western route to upgrade the GSM-R masts to be either 4G or 5G capable. The signal would be targeted alongside the trainline. It would not be, as with a normal mobile phone mast, providing a full 360° coverage. For many communities in the west country, the railway is their connectivity. There are many communities alongside the railway, especially on the mainline, which connects Exeter to Plymouth. The GSM-R mast upgrade would provide not only high-speed internet for people travelling on the trains, but access to the internet for communities living alongside the railway.

We were hoping that the Department for Transport would approve that project. Network Rail wanted to run a £5 million demonstrator project to show that it would work. It had chosen Dawlish, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newton Abbot—a place that became famous when part of it fell into the sea during the storms of 2013—to demonstrate that the different topographies and technologies on that route would show it working.

Sadly, even though the money is within Network Rail’s budget, and even though the project was supported by Network Rail, the Department chose not to allow it to spend that money. That was disappointing. It would cost around £100 million to update all of our GSM-R masts in the west country, but we first have to demonstrate that it works. Could the Minister speak to her colleagues in the Department for Transport to understand why this project—which is non-partisan, would make a big difference and would speak to the Government’s levelling-up ambitions for the south-west—could not be explored further, especially when Network Rail and Network Rail Telecom themselves are keen to deliver it? It would be an opportunity worth exploring.

I would like to encourage the new shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), to be equally ambitious with the roll-out of rural broadband. There is always a temptation to believe that it is the norm for urban to come first and rural to come second. It should not be so. I hope that, in putting forward an ambitious manifesto at the next election, he will be as confident and bold with the connectivity ambitions for the south-west as he would be for any urban area.

[Selaine Saxby]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should be following an outside-in, rather than inside-out, approach? We are almost approaching the whole broadband issue back to front in order to get everyone connected.

[Luke Pollard]

The hon. Member for North Devon has made a powerful case since being elected, and I hope she remains a thorn in the side of every Minister that holds this post to ensure that we get there. We do need to start with the ambition of every home and every business being able to access high-speed internet—be it superfast or gigabit capable. If we do not have that ambition, as a region we will be accepting a poorer deal, and we must never accept that. The south-west deserves the very best in the country, and we should not be afraid to call for it.

There is an objective here that can be met. The hon. Member for North Devon made clear in her remarks that the contractual relationship, especially for our rural areas, is not delivering—nor will it deliver next year, the year after, nor, potentially, the year after that. As we get further behind those deadlines, we are further behind other economies in the UK that could be outperforming us, simply because of access to the internet. That would put south-west businesses at a disadvantage.

To conclude my remarks, there is strong support in the west country for better internet. We are an ambitious region that wants to deliver the benefits that greater connectivity can bring, not only for business but for education and innovation. We have a strong case for it, and I hope the Minister will look kindly on the remarks that have been made, but also pick up with DFT colleagues on how we can get that train-line connectivity. If our train journeys are to be slow, let us at least make them productive.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this debate, and for her proactive engagement with my Department on behalf of her constituents and in her role as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on broadband and digital communication. She does tremendous work and I commend her for that. I am always grateful for these opportunities to speak to hon. Members because we have a shared goal of delivering fast and reliable internet to everybody in the UK. I genuinely welcome problems and challenges being highlighted along the way so that I can seek to address them with officials.

As many hon. Members have said, the pandemic has really highlighted the importance of digital connectivity in how we live and work, which, as technology advances, will only become more profound. Several hon. Members have highlighted that there is a risk of a digital divide emerging, and I agree. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) talked about the movement of people into the region and, therefore, the additional importance of productivity gains coming from digital connectivity. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) highlighted the issue of economic competitiveness for the region, which I am very alive to. I enjoyed his beautiful analogy of the beacons on the mounds—I hope that we have moved some way beyond that in the last few hundred years, but I am happy to look into any concerns that that is not the case. Other hon. Members highlighted the importance of levelling up and the work that they are doing as a group of MPs to highlight connectivity issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) made some interesting comments about needing to prioritise those who are hardest to reach, and I wish to assure her that that is what the Government are doing. I will come to some of the issues relating to her region, but one of the first procurements we are looking into, which has already launched, is for Cumbria—which, as I hope hon. Members will appreciate, is one of the hardest-to-reach areas. Learning lessons from the Cumbria procurement will help us to manage the roll-out in other similarly difficult-to-reach regions.

I wish to assure all hon. Members that the Government are not leaving the knobbly bits until last, but trying to deal with them early in the process. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot says, these people really matter. We want to make sure that everybody is connected, not least because this matter now affects people’s life chances in terms of education, the economy and so on.

I want to address some of the other interesting points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot about innovation and how we need to look at all kinds of technologies, not just fixed fibre. It might interest hon. Members to know that I conducted the UK’s first ever call on Open RAN technology earlier today. Hon. Members will be aware of some of the challenges we have had in removing some of the kit from higher-risk vendors following the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, which has left us with questions on the resilience of the technology we use. We are trying to increase the range of supplies in our network, and we see Open RAN as one of the solutions.

I am keen to work closely with partners such as Vodafone and small and medium-sized enterprises to roll out that technology so that our networks are not only wide reaching but resilient. That ties in with some of the work that we are doing on the shared rural network. We hope those things will tally, because the Open RAN technology is being tested in some of those rural areas first. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend.

The roll-out of gigabit broadband and the work we are doing on 5G is for me, as Minister for Digital Infrastructure, as much about future-proofing our economy and society as it is about delivering faster internet speeds, as important as that is. We will achieve that primarily through Project Gigabit, with several billion pounds of investment to support nationwide gigabit-capable broadband. The commercial aspect to that gigabit roll-out is the key part of the programme. We want to support commercial activity to go as far as it possibly can, and only then use taxpayers’ money to intervene where it is necessary.

We want to use as much capacity from the market as possible, and maximise that pace of delivery. Our interventions include local, regional and cross-regional procurement. We are looking at Cumbria as one of the first of those. We are looking at gigabit vouchers, which have been pretty successful, and giga-hubs, where we invest in public buildings, such as schools, and gigabit delivery via the remaining projects under the superfast broadband programme.

All suppliers have the opportunity to bid for procurements at all levels, and to get involved, working with communities to use gigabit vouchers in areas where no other delivery is currently planned. In the spirit of the cross-party working in which we all wish to engage, and the fact that this is a collective endeavour, I encourage all hon. Members to highlight the voucher programme to constituents who might not be aware of it, and to encourage suppliers to get involved in those critical procurements.

At a local level, communities from across the UK have seen massive increases in gigabit broadband coverage, spurred by commercial investment. Through listening to industry and working closely with Ofcom, we have made a made a number of policy and regulatory changes to stimulate the market, including Ofcom creating a new pro-investment, pro-competition regulatory system for telecoms in the UK that was introduced early last year. Our 130% super-deduction on qualifying plant and machinery investment means that we expect more homes to receive coverage by 2025 without a Government subsidy, which is critical if we are going to make best use of taxpayer cash.

We have also changed the law to make it easier to connect premises in blocks of flats. We are piloting innovative approaches to street works, which we think can speed up build by between 10% and 40%. We are also working with industry to set up a gigabit take-up advisory group to review how to increase consumer demand for gigabit, and incentivise further investment from the private sector in gigabit roll-out. Although many homes are able to get connected to gigabit, they do not always do so. We need to make households aware of the importance of gigabit connectivity.

[Luke Pollard]

On connecting buildings, does the Minister have a view on the progress made on allowing new operators—such as CityFibre, which is rolling out the fibre network in Plymouth—to use historic wayleaves, so that they do not have to negotiate afresh with landowners where there is an historic wayleave that would allow access and speed up the roll-out, especially in buildings where there is a lower speed but an established connection?

[Julia Lopez]

I assure the hon. Member that we have just introduced legislation that we hope will deal with some of those issues. We are in close contact with some of the operators, asking what they need to speed up the roll-out. Factors such as wayleaves, as he highlighted, are among them. I encourage him to support the legislation on Second Reading.

There has been an unfair amount of gloom about the progress we are making in this area. Although I welcome the Opposition’s commitment to cross-party work on this, I push away some of the more partisan points made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). As a result of the measures we have taken, the UK has seen more than £30 billion of private sector investment committed, and one of the fastest gigabit broadband roll-outs on the continent. Today, more than 65% of premises can now access gigabit-capable networks, which is up from one in 10 in November 2019. I hope the hon. Member will acknowledge the good progress we are making.

On concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon about rural areas missing out again, I emphasise that it is not just towns and cities that have seen increases in coverage. Since 2018, we have provided gigabit coverage to more than 600,000 rural premises, which has made a huge difference to the work and home lives of local people. In Devon and Somerset, 66,000 further premises now have gigabit-capable coverage being delivered, as part of our superfast broadband programme, which is managed by Connecting Devon and Somerset. On the broader picture, some of the tricky areas are among our first procurements.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon stated that the south-west had 92% superfast capability and that her constituency had 87%. I am pleased to report increases in both, with the latest thinkbroadband statistics estimating a figure of 94% in both Devon and Somerset and nearly 92% in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That regional statistic will also increase to more than 96% once the current contracted delivery is completed. Even though those improvements are coming, I recognise it can be a long wait for many and that is a frustration for all of us, and some premises will still not be included in those plans.

BDUK is working in partnership with local bodies on the ground. We are working to make sure those relationships are functioning well, and we have a good amount of shared data on where coverage is happening. Nevertheless, most hon. Members are aware that delivery in Devon and Somerset has been slower than we would have liked because of the challenges faced by Connecting Devon and Somerset, which is the joint team resourced by a number of hon. Members’ councils. I do not think those challenges are typical, notwithstanding that other rural areas also share issues regarding the complexity of some builds.

I do not wish to go over old ground, but the previous contracts collapsed and that followed procurement by CDS in 2015, which failed to complete owing to an inability to agree terms with the supplier, which in that case was BT. Subsequent to the previous contracts being terminated in 2019, CDS will have had to undertake a new open market review and public review with suppliers to confirm which premises are not within any commercial plans and therefore require subsidy. That has been a lengthy process and it is important to minimise that risk of overbuild of other commercial networks, which has also been regularly highlighted by my hon. Friend and which was also a requirement under previous EU state aid rules. CDS then had to follow that with a compliant public sector procurement process, meaning that the new delivery contracts were agreed only at the end of 2020.

The same processes will also be required for contracts taken forward under our new gigabit programme, but rather than local authorities, BDUK will be in the lead for that process. BDUK brings together central resources and expertise and we hope that will mean we get a more consistent national approach to delivery while still working with councils to deal with local implementation issues. BDUK is currently part of the Department, but it will be spun out as a separate executive agency this year. That will give it greater autonomy and greater scrutiny from a new board. That is going to be an important step in focusing and giving greater priority to ensure a good gigabit roll-out from now on.

My hon. Friend talked to BDUK officials just yesterday. Other hon. Members have spoken about making the west country a priority area for connectivity and that connectivity-related issues are not just nice-to-have things to address. I assure them that I have had my own discussions with BDUK to see what more we can do for the region, because I appreciate that hon. Members have particular frustrations that need to be addressed. I want to work together to do that. We have officials in the room, so I wonder whether we can look at the GigaHubs programme as well to see if there is anything more we can do.

I also wish to address the point made by the hon. Member for Ogmore about Wales and his constituency. It is going to be important that we work closely with the devolved Administrations. I am meeting Kate Forbes MSP this week, and I will be holding similar meetings with counterparts in the Welsh Administration and will be happy to look into his constituency. The hon. Gentleman raised points about the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, which includes measures on the electronic communications code that regulates agreements between landowners and telecoms operators. We are looking to try and deal with some of the problems that came after the 2017 changes, trying to move to a position where we can have more arbitration rather than litigation and getting better relationships between landowners and mobile network operators so roll-outs can happen much faster. I hope the hon. Gentleman will support that legislation.

Returning to Project Gigabit, we only want to intervene when it is necessary. The same applies to delivery under the superfast broadband programme by CDS. That is why the open market review and the public review process I referred to earlier has to be followed, even though it can take a significant amount of time. As I say, I appreciate the frustrations. CDS has followed that process and is now only intervening in premises confirmed as eligible for public subsidy. However, we recognise that commercial plans will be changing and to maximise that value for local bodies, we should take reasonable steps to make way for new commercial investments.

That is easier said than done and CDS will be mindful of the risks to some premises of descoping to make way for a commercial build if that then leaves other neighbouring premises without viable coverage. Those are tricky issues that I know my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon will appreciate. I simply encourage all local bodies to be open and transparent in their dealings with commercial suppliers and to make way for new commercial builds if they can, and BDUK will continue to reinforce that point to local bodies.

Conversely, although I welcome new commercial build plans, I urge commercial providers to target investment at areas that are currently not in scope for any other coverage. BDUK is also making this point with suppliers. That will help increase the number of premises that have gigabit access from at least one operator, rather than having fewer premises with multiple providers.

Several hon. Members talked about the voucher scheme, which is one of the mechanisms that we have to incentivise and encourage suppliers to provide coverage to areas not covered by any other plans. I encourage all commercial suppliers to use that scheme as much as possible, and I encourage everybody in this Chamber to highlight the scheme to their constituents. The voucher scheme can be hard work for communities, and it runs the risk of delivering a patchwork of coverage. However, it is a relatively quick means of supporting delivery in particular communities and has been used successfully by many suppliers, including some of the largest, to provide gigabit coverage in communities across the country.

Many areas of Devon and Somerset are making good use of the voucher scheme. I am pleased to say that 5,466 premises in Devon and Somerset have gained a gigabit connection because of it, and a further 2,645 premises are awaiting connection. That is a combined total of over £12 million of investment. In the North Devon constituency, 299 premises have gained their gigabit connection as a result of that scheme, and another 208 premises are awaiting connection. That is nearly £1 million of investment by the voucher scheme in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.

We have deliberately designed Project Gigabit to ensure that coverage is delivered in every area of the country, and not to leave those harder areas until last. We think that that will add to the gigabit coverage currently being delivered through superfast contracts. We want to reach as far as possible beyond 85% gigabit coverage by 2025, and every area of the country will be under contract by that stage. However, it is not the case that rural areas will be left with no coverage once that has been completed. The latest stats from thinkbroadband show that North Devon currently has 32% full-fibre coverage. That is ahead of the UK average of 30%, so when it comes to gigabit there is a good story to tell, and a good start has already been made.

Racism in Football

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I am more than happy to speak to Kick It Out about its interpretation. Having spoken to the FA and having received its intelligence, I can say that it is the players’ call. It should be the players’ call. We must support what the players want. They are the ones who, along with the officials and the support staff, are receiving this abuse. They made the decision to stay on during step 2 for the last four or five minutes. The FA did have spotters in the crowd, and the intelligence indicated that the abuse was going on. That might not be the case, because we cannot fill a whole stadium with officers, so it was a call for the players, and I support that, but I am more than happy, as the hon. Lady suggests, to have a conversation with Kick It Out.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

As a very proud “out” football player in my youth—I was fabulous in defence and more fabulous than good at stopping surges down the right wing—I recognise that the people who gave me homophobic abuse were frequently the same as those who gave out racist and misogynistic abuse as well. May I ask the Minister what steps he can take to encourage clubs right across the country to show in our games this weekend that there is no place for racism or homophobia at the international or the grassroots level anywhere in our country?

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Gentleman represents the fine city of Plymouth, and I may surprise him by saying that I am going to out myself today as well—as having been probably the only Member of Parliament to have played for Plymouth Argyle Supporters Association London Branch, back in the ’90s. Not only that, but I scored two goals for PASALB in my prime, some years ago. [Laughter.] Not that long ago.

It is absolutely essential that we send a message loud and clear from this place to all football grounds and all sports grounds throughout our nation: racism will never ever to be tolerated, and we need to crack down on the perpetrators.

WhatsApp Data Breach

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I think that that is precisely the content of the discussion my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had with Facebook just this morning. I agree with the hon. Gentleman: WhatsApp and any other platform where there has been a serious breach of this kind should take responsibility for informing its entire user base immediately. I completely concur with that.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

There will be millions of people with a serious concern that their data—their conversations with loved ones and business contacts—has been stolen by this spyware, and they will want to know that someone is being held accountable. Does the Minister now agree that it is time to add Government pressure to the pressure from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to have Mark Zuckerberg come to Parliament to explain what has gone wrong with Facebook and WhatsApp, and to make sure we can restore some public trust in him and his company?

[Margot James]

It is vital that we hold platforms—in this case, WhatsApp—to account for breaches that have occurred. If these breaches have resulted in UK users’ data being compromised, the ICO has the powers to investigate them thoroughly. It also has a sanctions regime, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) pointed out includes a potential fine of up to 4% of global turnover. The ICO has proved itself to be a forceful regulator, and I am sure it will be watching this space with great interest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend and, indeed, to other colleagues who wrote to me. As he knows, my view is very simple: we must get to a place where rural coverage is better than it is. All of us and the mobile network operators have an obligation to achieve that. If it cannot be done any other way, I am perfectly prepared to entertain rural roaming as a way in which it might be done.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State look favourably at the opportunities presented by 5G connectivity on the train line in Devon and Cornwall? If our train journeys are to be long, can he at least help us to make them productive?

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, mobile coverage on train lines at the moment is based substantially on wi-fi coverage—about 85% of trains now have wi-fi coverage, including, I think, the GWR service from London to Penzance. However, 5G gives us the opportunity to do better. He will be aware of the technical challenges in providing the lineside equipment that we need to make the system work properly. We are investing time and effort with Network Rail to develop that technology in a test-track facility. I hope it will bear fruit.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s reference to ADHD. In my professional experience, that condition, connected with communication disorder, is often very prevalent among young offenders in the criminal justice system. As part of the consultation, work will be ongoing to ensure that prosecutors have a greater awareness of the condition when they consider the merits of prosecution.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Director of Public Prosecutions on ensuring more effective prosecutions of cases involving rape and other sexual offences.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

10. What recent discussions he has had with the Director of Public Prosecutions on ensuring more effective prosecutions of cases involving rape and other sexual offences.

[Luke Pollard]

Is there any guidance for the police or the CPS on access to victims’ data? It concerns me that victims of sexual abuse and rape are being subjected to trawls of their personal data—counselling, school and work data—before the CPS considers taking up their cases.

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. A natural and anxious debate is taking place about disclosure, but I can reassure the hon. Gentleman—and, indeed, all complainants and victims of crime—that “reasonable lines of inquiry” does not mean a reckless trawl through the private lives of entirely innocent individuals. That is not a good use of resources, and it is not what we are encouraging. We need a far more targeted line of inquiry, in accordance with both the law and the code of practice.

Town of Culture Award

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the only south-west Member of Parliament here, I am here to speak up for the west country and our fantastic array of towns. There is so much more competition than just the excellent towns we have heard about from the north and from Wales; there are those in the west country, too. We are about so much more than clotted cream and whether it should be jam first or cream first. We have fantastic towns right across our region. We have the world heritage site in Tavistock; the Tate at St Ives; our Cornish tin mining museum; amazing food in Dartmouth; Fowey and its sailing; and Plymouth, the creator of the pasty, Plymouth Gin and the Mayflower Steps. The Mayflower Steps and the Mayflower story are so powerful.

We have the opportunity to tell stories that connect our towns right across the country, from Scrooby and Babworth in Bassetlaw to Gainsborough, Boston, Immingham, Harwich, Rotherhithe, Southampton, Dartmouth and Plymouth. We need not only to have a towns of culture competition, but to join up our towns, because telling the story of how our towns are connected will create more jobs and more passion. An awful lot of people are proud of their towns in the west country. This competition would be such a boost for that.

Historic Battlefields

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) for securing the debate. He was right to talk at the start about the need to preserve our historic battlefields not only on land, but at sea. I feel that I have strayed into a very polite tussle between two Conservative Members, so hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I wish to restrict my remarks to talking about protection of other historic battlefields, including those at sea and in particular shipwrecks, rather than taking a side in this most polite of fracas.

The area I represent has its own historic battlefield in Freedom fields, where Plymouth parliamentarians fought off the cavaliers in the Sabbath Day fight, ensuring that Plymouth remained on the side of the parliamentarians in the English civil war. We also have many memorials to those sailors who died at sea. In particular, I will talk about the wrecks from the first and second world wars as part of our historic battlefields theme, because it is important that those people who died far away from our shores are remembered with the same fondness and receive the same level of protection as those who died on UK soil.

The issue of historic wrecks was picked up by the Defence Secretary over the summer, and his intervention was very welcome. Since entering this place last June, I have been raising the issue of HMS Exeter in particular, a Devonport-based warship that was sunk with a number of other Royal Navy warships in an engagement with the Japanese in the Java sea during the second world war. When she sank, some of her crew were taken to a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and their experiences after that are well known, but there are many people who died on board HMS Exeter, in sealed compartments. She sank to the bottom of the sea and that was supposed to be where she would rest.

That has not been the case, however, because there has been illegal salvage of HMS Exeter. We no longer have an HMS Exeter in the Java sea, because she has been completely salvaged and completely removed, including the remains of the Royal Navy sailors who died on board. There have been many stories in the press over the past couple of years about the remains of those people who perished on board HMS Exeter, as well as her sister ships, HMS Encounter and HMS Electra, being thrown into mass graves or discarded overboard when she was lost. The same focus on protecting our historic battlefields must also apply to those that are far from our sight, particularly in areas where we previously had a presence but no longer do, in order to keep up the protection of those sites.

The Dutch Government have done much work on the protection of the flotilla that HMS Exeter was part of, because of the loss of a number of Dutch warships, and the Dutch Parliament in particular has been putting pressure on its Government to do that. We in this place can learn a lot from them about how we can keep pressure on Ministers, because I do not believe that the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign Office have been as thorough as their Dutch counterparts in protecting those wrecks. In particular, teams that went to investigate reports of British sailors being dumped in mass graves were sent by the Dutch Government, not the UK Government. We have a lot to thank our Dutch cousins for. I particularly thank Captain Smitt, the Dutch defence and naval attaché in London, for his correspondence and for keeping us informed of how those remains are being preserved.

The simple truth is that we do not know where the remains of the sailors who died on HMS Exeter are. They could be on the seabed around her previous site, or they could have been taken on land when the sealed compartments of HMS Exeter would hoisted on to salvage vessels—we simply do not know. My challenge to the Minister, as part of a discussion of how we protect our historic battlefields, is to make sure that we monitor those lost wrecks not only for oil pollution but for illegal salvage. That should be a cross-departmental joint endeavour between the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office.

Can we also start to create public awareness of historic battle sites, either on land or lost wrecks—both from the Royal Navy and, importantly, from the merchant navy, which lost many more ships at sea? Will the Minister think about creating an equivalent of UNESCO’s register of at-risk world heritage sites for wrecks abroad? Several UK bodies keep a list of our wrecks and those that are in danger, raising awareness of at-risk wrecks and, importantly, where the remains of Royal Navy sailors who died in service to our country on those ships may be disturbed or not treated with dignity or respect. That should be looked at, and I will be grateful if the Minister will cover that in his response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This issue of take-up—how many people take up the broadband that is available—is very important. As availability gets to more than 95%, we are increasingly looking at the levels of take-up that we need to get up to.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that Network Rail is piloting the use of its network of global systems for mobile communications-railway masts for public mobile and internet access in rural areas. What discussions has his Department had with the Department for Transport and Network Rail about rolling out more pilot areas, and does he agree that Devon and Cornwall would make an excellent second pilot area?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I do. I have had a whole load of conversations with the Transport Secretary, Transport Ministers and Network Rail to make sure that we drive out connectivity where people live, work and travel, and the rail network is critical for a third of those. This morning, I was delighted to see the plans from Network Rail of a digital railway, and we need to get on with that as quickly as possible.