Online Safety Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I commend the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) on her work in this important area. I would like to focus my remarks on legal but harmful content and its relationship to knife crime, and to mention a very harrowing and difficult constituency case of mine. As we have heard, legal but harmful content can have a truly dreadful effect. I pay tribute to the families of the children who have been lost, who have attended the debate, a number of whom are still in the Public Gallery.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Just to be clear, the hon. Gentleman’s speech must relate to the amendments before us today.

[Matt Rodda]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. A boy called Olly Stephens in my constituency was just 13 years old when he was stabbed and brutally murdered in an attack linked to online bullying. He died, sadly, very near his home. His parents had little idea of the social media activity in his life. It is impossible to imagine what they have been through. Our hearts go out to them.

Harmful but legal content had a terrible effect on the attack on Olly. The two boys who attacked and stabbed him had been sharing enormous numbers of pictures and videos of knives, repeatedly, over a long period of time. There were often videos of teenagers playing with knives, waving them or holding them. They circulated them on 11 different social media platforms over a long period of time. None of those platforms took any action to take the content down. We all need to learn more about such cases to fully understand the impact of legal but harmful content. Even at this late stage, I hope that the Government will think again about the changes they have made to the Bill and include this area again in the Bill.

There is a second aspect of this very difficult case that I want to mention: the fact that Olly’s murder was discussed on social media and was planned to some extent beforehand. The wider issues here underline the need for far greater regulation and moderation of social media, in particular teenagers’ use of these powerful sites. I am finding it difficult to talk about some of these matters, but I hope that the Government will take my points on board and address the issue of legal but harmful content, and that the Minister will think again about these important matters. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to discuss it in the Bill’s later stages.

[Adam Afriyie]

I am pleased to follow my fairly close neighbour from Berkshire, the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). He raised the issue of legal but harmful content, which I will come to, as I address some of the amendments before us.

I very much welcome the new shape and focus of the Bill. Our primary duty in this place has to be to protect children, above almost all else. The refocusing of the Bill certainly does that, and it is now in a position where hon. Members from all political parties recognise that it is so close to fulfilling its function that we want it to get through this place as quickly as possible with today’s amendments and those that are forthcoming in the Lords and elsewhere in future weeks.

The emerging piece of legislation is better and more streamlined. I will come on to further points about legal but harmful, but I am pleased to see that removed from the Bill for adults and I will explain why, given the sensitive case that the hon. Member for Reading East mentioned. The information that he talked about being published online should be illegal, so it would be covered by the Bill. Illegal information should not be published and, within the framework of the Bill, would be taken down quickly. We in this place should not shirk our responsibilities; we should make illegal the things that we and our constituents believe to be deeply harmful. If we are not prepared to do that, we cannot say that some other third party has a responsibility to do it on our behalf and we are not going to have anything to do with it, and they can begin to make the rules, whether they are a commercial company or a regulator without those specific powers.

I welcome the shape of the Bill, but some great new clauses have been tabled. New clause 16 suggests that we should make it an offence to encourage self-harm, which is fantastic. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has indicated that he will not press it to a vote, because the Government and all of us acknowledge that that needs to be dealt with at some point, so hopefully an amendment will be forthcoming in the near future.

On new clause 23, it is clear that if a commercial company is perpetrating an illegal act or is causing harm, it should pay for it, and a proportion of that payment must certainly support the payments to victims of that crime or breach of the regulations. New clauses 45 to 50 have been articulately discussed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). The technology around revenge pornography and deepfakes is moving forward every day. With some of the fakes online today, it is not possible to tell that they are fakes, even if they are looked at under a microscope. Those areas need to be dealt with, but it is welcome that she will not necessarily press the new clauses to a vote, because those matters must be picked up and defined in primary legislation as criminal acts. There will then be no lack of clarity and we will not need the legal but harmful concept—that will not need to exist. Something will either be illegal, because it is harmful, or not.

The Bill is great because it provides a framework that enables everything else that hon. Members in the House and people across the country may want to be enacted at a future date. It also enables the power to make those judgments to remain with this House—the democratically elected representatives of the people—rather than some grey bureaucratic body or commercial company whose primary interest is rightly to make vast sums of money for its shareholders. It is not for them to decide; it is for us to decide what is legal and what should be allowed to be viewed in public.

On amendment 152, which interacts with new clause 11, I was in the IT industry for about 15 to 20 years before coming to this place, albeit with a previous generation of technology. When it comes to end-to-end encryption, I am reminded of King Canute, who said, “I’m going to pass a law so that the tide doesn’t come in.” Frankly, we cannot pass a law that bans mathematics, which is effectively what we would be trying to do if we tried to ban encryption. The nefarious types or evildoers who want to hide their criminal activity will simply use mathematics to do that, whether in mainstream social media companies or through a nefarious route. We have to be careful about getting rid of all the benefits of secure end-to-end encryption for democracy, safety and protection from domestic abuse—all the good things that we want in society—on the basis of a tiny minority of very bad people who need to be caught. We should not be seeking to ban encryption; we should be seeking to catch those criminals, and there are ways of doing so.

I welcome the Bill; I am pleased with the new approach and I think it can pass through this House swiftly if we stick together and make the amendments that we need. I have had conversations with the Minister about what I am asking for today: I am looking for an assurance that the Government will enable further debate and table the amendments that they have suggested. I also hope that they will be humble, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) said, and open to some minor adjustments, even to the current thinking, to make the Bill pass smoothly through the Commons and the Lords.

I would like the Government to confirm that it is part of their vision that it will be this place, not a Minister of State, that decides every year—or perhaps every few months, because technology moves quickly—what new offences need to be identified in law. That will mean that Ofcom and the criminal justice system can get on to that quickly to ensure that the online world is a safer place for our children and a more pleasant place for all of us.

Online Safety Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I will come on to some of those issues. My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

I fear the Government’s current solution to the balance between free speech and regulation will please no one and takes us down an unhelpful rabbit hole. Some believe the Bill will stifle free speech, with platforms over-zealously taking down legitimate political and other views. In response, the Government have put in what they consider to be protections for freedom of speech and have committed to setting out an exhaustive list of “legal but harmful” content, thus relying almost entirely on a “take down content” approach, which many will still see as Government overreach.

On the other hand, those who want harmful outcomes addressed through stronger regulation are left arguing over a yet-to-be-published list of Government-determined harmful content. This content-driven approach moves us in the wrong direction away from the “duty of care” principles the Bill is supposed to enshrine. The real solution is a systems approach based on outcomes, which would not only solve the free speech question, but make the Bill overall much stronger.

What does that mean in practice? Essentially, rather than going after individual content, go after the business models, systems and policies that drive the impact of such harms—[Interruption.] The Minister for Security and Borders, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), says from a sedentary position that that is what the Bill does, but none of the leading experts in the field think the same. He should talk to some of them before shouting at me.

The business models of most social media companies are currently based on engagement, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) outlined. The more engagement, the more money they make, which rewards controversy, sensationalism and fake news. A post containing a racist slur or anti-vax comment that nobody notices, shares or reads is significantly less harmful than a post that is quickly able to go viral. A collective pile-on can have a profoundly harmful effect on the young person on the receiving end, even though most of the individual posts would not meet the threshold of harmful.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lucy Powell]

I will not, sorry. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who I had the privilege of meeting, cited many examples to the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill of Facebook’s models and algorithms making things much worse. Had the Government chosen to follow the Joint Committee recommendations for a systems-based approach rather than a content-driven one, the Bill would be stronger and concerns about free speech would be reduced.

Draft Online Safety Bill Report

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I support the Joint Committee’s work, and I am grateful to the Chair, the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), and the members of the Committee for their efforts in this important area.

I would like to raise the case of a young boy from Reading, Olly Stephens, who was killed in a most brutal attack, a knifing, in a park where he was lured through social media. I hope to set out some of the concerns of his family and our local community about this dreadful crime.

I pay tribute to Olly. He was just 13 when he died, and he had his whole life ahead of him. He was a livewire at school and a likable boy. It is simply impossible to imagine what his parents and his family are going through. It is now a year since he passed away, and they had a memorial service at the beginning of January that was incredibly moving and very difficult. My heart and the hearts of people in the local community go out to the Stephens family at this incredibly difficult time.

I thank Stuart and Amanda Stephens and, indeed, the community as a whole for their campaigning work to try to raise awareness of knife crime—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you. And to raise awareness of the connection between knife crime and social media.

The background to the attack and the way in which it involved social media is very clear and quite shocking. First, Olly met the two boys who killed him online—that was the connection between them. Secondly, and most crucially of all, he was lured to the park where he was stabbed. A girl sent him a message online asking him to come to the park. She had separately messaged other young people asking someone to stab Olly. This was on a social media platform, and you can imagine how awful it is.

The third point that is important for us to consider today is that the boys who killed Olly—they were very young teenagers—were using 11 different social media platforms, and they were sharing images of knives. Imagine teenagers flicking and playing with knives in their bedroom, videoing it and putting that shocking content up on social media. None of those 11 platforms took down that content. That is the level we are talking about, which is why I urge the Minister particularly to address the connection between knife crime and social media. I am sure he will respond on that point.

Once again, and I hope the Minister will be able to reply in detail, I call for action from the Government on behalf of Olly’s parents and on behalf of the local community in Reading and Woodley. I know some of these points are in the report, but I would particularly like the Minister to address the importance of age restrictions, the importance of ending anonymity online and the importance of forcing companies to take down harmful content. How can it be right that powerful and very wealthy companies are allowed to put clearly dangerous content online, such as content featuring knives, and not take it down immediately?

Finally and crucially, because this was apparently also a factor in the case, we must ensure that companies co-operate with the police. I want to look into this further, but I understand it is possible that the social media company where the message was shared inciting this criminal act did not fully co-operate with the police. I want to hear more about it, but I understand that is a possibility. I therefore ask the Minister also to ensure that companies operating in the UK are regulated in the UK, so that we can protect our young people from this dreadful form of crime.

In conclusion, I am grateful to the Chair of the Joint Committee and his team for their work on this important matter, and I also thank the Minister and my colleague the shadow Minister for their work. I hope that we can now move forward together to tackle this awful abuse and other forms of crime.

Digital Infrastructure, Connectivity and Accessibility

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing this important debate.

During the course of the pandemic, three things have become apparent. First, relationships really matter. The inability to connect with family, friends and co-workers is what we all miss most in the restrictions that most of the country is living under. Digital connectivity has helped those who are able to access online connections to keep those relationships going, even if it is not in reality a perfect substitute.

Secondly, the health of our economy and the health of our people go hand in hand. They are completely inseparable. If we want a strong and healthy economy, we need to invest in our people. Thirdly, the Conservative manifesto has gone out of the window. We heard powerfully from the right hon. Member for Tatton about how the commitment made in the manifesto only last December has been watered down in this crucial area of public investment. The choices and priorities of the Government risk entrenching inequality between rich and poor, deepening division between north and south and, as a result, and perhaps most appallingly of all, costing us as a country far more in the long run.

Excellent points have been made about the need to invest in our infrastructure—in cables and connections—but I want to talk about people: the 9 million people aged over 15 who cannot use the internet independently; the 23% of children in the poorest families who do not have access to broadband and a laptop, desktop or tablet; and the four in 10 claiming benefits who lack the essential digital life skills they need for everyday life and, crucially, for finding the employment opportunity they desperately want. Challenges have been writ large during the pandemic, but they were there before. One of the great lessons of the pandemic is that our failure to invest has left people more exposed to it than they would otherwise have been.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a truly excellent speech highlighting a number of very important points, which, indeed, other hon. Members have also made. Does he agree that a crucial part of this is for there to be more enforcement and more action taken against poorly performing companies that fail to provide the high-quality service that customers now expect and demand in so many other walks of life?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree. Most of my speech this afternoon will be challenging the Government on the steps that they need to take to get the very best service and life opportunities for our people, but there are things that many of these companies can do. Let us be honest: for all the challenges we see in our high streets and communities and the plight of the millions of people who have been excluded from any support from Government, there are a number of companies that have done pretty well, none the less, during the pandemic and which have operated not just with business as usual, but have profited enormously because of the opportunities that have been presented to them as a result of other people’s misery. Those companies should not be criticised for turning a profit or providing services, or for doing well, but it is reasonable to ask those that have done particularly well to play an active role in supporting others in our society and to live up to their corporate social responsibility.

Our failure to invest before the pandemic has left people more exposed than they would otherwise be. We have seen that with the situation in our care homes and the failure to grasp the nettle of social care reforms, which have left many people more dangerously exposed than they would otherwise have been. In this particular area, the failure to invest in the digital skills of our people has meant that disconnection and the digital divide have made some people’s experience of this pandemic even more miserable and hopeless than that of others. I really deplore the fact that education has been an afterthought during this recession, that it took so long for the Department for Education to pull its finger out and get laptops to pupils who need them, and that many schools and pupils are still waiting for laptops and had to go off before receiving any device. No thought has been given to their parents and the fact that many of them lack the digital skills to support their children. Adult education and adult skills barely get a mention from this Government, and we are scrapping really great programmes such as Unionlearn that provide basic skills to workers who desperately need them.

This is not just an issue of general fairness. Class inequality is built into this, in terms of the poorest households, as is the north-south divide. If the Government are serious about levelling up, they have to invest not just in infrastructure and places, but in people. I strongly endorse what the Good Things Foundation has said. A great digital catch-up is desperately needed, but I hope that the Minister will have something better to say than what the Chancellor said barely a week or two ago.

Gambling Advertising in Sport

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on that point. I appreciate the point he is making about gambling being a legal activity. One thing that struck me in the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), which was so eloquent and detailed, was the sheer, overwhelming presence of gambling advertising, particularly when it comes to young and vulnerable people. My son, who is now at university, used to play FIFA20, or its predecessors. Many children do, and the fact that this advertising is accessible to children is deeply worrying. It is also worrying that it is so ubiquitous at sports grounds, where young people are bombarded by it. Will the Minister say something about the way in which the Government could scale back the level of advertising?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments. He may be tempting me to pre-empt the conclusions of the gambling review that we will be conducting, and I will say more about it later. However, that review will be forthcoming—it was in the manifesto—and we will all have plenty of opportunity to look further into these issues. I cannot say too much more on the specifics at the moment, but I understand the point he is making.

It is true that operators are spending far more on advertising. Research has indicated that operators have increased their spend on advertising and marketing significantly in recent years. It would be easy to assume that that has led to increased rates of gambling or of problem gambling, but, according to the Gambling Commission, the percentage of those who gambled in the last year was 47%, which was 1% less than the percentage who gambled in 2016, and rates of problem gambling have remained relatively steady, at below 1% for the past 20 years. Before the hon. Member for Swansea East intervenes, as I know she will on that point, let me say that that is too high—that is one thing we agree on. We continue to keep a careful eye on the evidence, but more advertising does not seem to lead to more people gambling or more people suffering from gambling problems.

However, there are clearly legitimate concerns about problem gambling. I am pleased that the industry has listened to concerns, such as those raised by the hon. Lady, and has acted to some extent: it has extended existing restrictions on pre-watershed advertising to include live sport—the so-called “whistle-to-whistle ban” that she mentioned.

Protecting children and other vulnerable people from gambling harms is a priority for the Government. Gambling advertising, like alcohol, is already governed by strict rules to ensure that it is not targeted at children and is not of particular appeal to them. Where advertising breaches these rules, the commission can and does take action.

We know that millions of people gamble each year and that nearly 7% of the population bet on sport last year. Most of those people will suffer no harm, but gambling does carry risks. That is why, as part of the last gambling review that took place between 2016 and 2018, we secured a commitment from industry to fund a multimillion-pound safer gambling advertising campaign to highlight the risks and encourage safer gambling behaviours.

Of course, advertising is not the whole story; sponsorship is an important source of income for sporting teams and bodies, as the hon. Member for Swansea East mentioned. The Gambling Commission has been clear that operators must undertake their sponsorship activities in a socially responsible way. The FA has strict rules about the size and placement of operator logos and has taken action when those have been breached. Logos cannot feature on shirts worn by youth team players and on merchandising, including shirts in children’s sizes. Paddy Power’s stunt with Huddersfield led to the FA fining the club.

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Lady is making a fair point and, as I said, I am sure that all these things will be considered in the gambling review. The remit of the review has not yet been scoped, but she will have strong opinions on it—of that I have no doubt.

[Matt Rodda]

The Minister is being extremely gracious to other Members in giving way. Perhaps the review might consider the family nature of watching sport in Britain because, in many cases, families are going to football or to other sport together, and the adults and children are wearing replica shirts together. They are watching the team together, so the presence of the gambling logo is ubiquitous—it is everywhere. I hope that he can address that issue in his review and take it very seriously, because it is easy for children to inadvertently be exposed to logos or attractive advertising, which can affect their perception of gambling very seriously.

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. One of the great joys of sport is that it can be a family activity, and we want to minimise any dangers that can be the unintended consequences of participating or observing those activities.

The gambling industry has committed to developing and adopting a new code of conduct for sponsorship activities by the end of 2020. We and the Gambling Commission will be reviewing its efforts closely to ensure that they go far enough. As I have mentioned, we have committed to reviewing the Gambling Act 2005 to make sure that it is fit for the digital age. We will announce further details in due course, but I assure the hon. Member for Swansea East that the Government and the Gambling Commission will not put our work to minimise harm on hold while the review takes place. We will always act on the evidence to prevent harm.

We have already delivered on our manifesto commitment to ban credit card gambling, and we have made it mandatory for operators to be part of GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson]

I support amendment 1. I think that the Secretary of State took eight or nine interventions, and I was interested in his language. As a journalist, I know that when politicians talk about “moving towards”, it means that there is no end in sight, and that “like to” means “perhaps, but I am not going to give any commitment of any kind”. We could sense the feeling of disappointment on the Conservative Benches.

The Secretary of State said that he would never compromise safety and security, and then went on to detail all the ways in which he was compromising the nation’s safety and security. Huawei is not a normal company. Huawei is an arm of the Chinese state., which is exactly why our fellow members of Five Eyes are so frustrated by the Government’s behaviour. We are also being told repeatedly that only a certain percentage of the nation’s infrastructure will be surrendered, but, as I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), that suggests a misunderstanding of the whole nature of 5G.

I apologise for my hoarseness, Madam Deputy Speaker. Please excuse me while I drink the water with which I have been provided. I always think it is terribly unfair that Labour Front Benchers are given glasses while we are forced to rely on plastic—that is yet another example of anti-Scottish discrimination in this place—but I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah).

The distinction in 5G between core and edge collapses. There is no distinction: that is the point. It is meaningless twaddle to keep talking as if 5G were no different from current technology. I recognise, of course, that the Government are between a rock and a hard place, facing a decision between spiralling costs and high security, but here in the UK we have spent, and continue to spend, billions of pounds on the development, maintenance and renewal of 20th-century defence systems that simply are not fit to face the security challenges of the modern era. Those who pose the biggest threats that we now face— terrorism, climate change and, of course, cyber-attacks—will not be deterred by multi-billion-pound nuclear missiles in the Firth of Forth.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I have listened attentively to the views that have been expressed during this important debate. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important for us to get the legislation right, and to think very carefully about this issue? Should we not also consider the importance of generating a supply chain within the UK, given that we have many excellent employers in both British-domiciled and overseas companies, which are adding a great deal to the country’s economy and which could be developed further?

[John Nicolson]

I certainly do agree with the hon. Gentleman: I think that he is absolutely right. One of the peculiarities of the Government’s position, from our perspective, is that they are prepared to invest billions in fighting 20th-century battles—renewing Trident, for instance—while opening their arms to 21st-century threats to cyber-security. As the hon. Gentleman suggests, countering those threats would require serious investment in and protection of native companies, which would involve a long, hard look at China’s enthusiasm for the acquisition of small engineering companies that have valuable intellectual property in this country.

I support the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and I will vote for it if there is a Division. I think that I should now cut my time short, as I am beginning to sound like a 1930s jazz singer. I know that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central is very keen on those.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I am very flattered by my right hon. Friend’s question, and he makes an important point. The interplay between schools and libraries is a long-lasting one. It enriches lives and we want to promote it at every possible opportunity. We do that by encouraging the wide use of libraries by all sections of society, and I am pleased to confirm that libraries are used by more people across all socioeconomic groups and parts of our society than any other cultural form. He is right to quote Proust, as of course he always is.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

7. What assessment he has made of the effect on the creative industries of the UK leaving the EU.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

8. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on the creative industries of the UK leaving the EU.

[The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)]

The effect of leaving the European Union on the UK creative industries will depend on the manner of our departure. We are engaging with businesses up and down the country, including small and medium-sized enterprises, to understand their concerns and to ensure that they are aware of Government advice, and we will continue that engagement. The UK’s creative and cultural industries are respected the world over. They are an economic powerhouse, exporting services that were worth £27 billion in 2016, and we are determined to continue our support for them.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank the Minister for her answer. Is she aware of the scale of the concern in the Thames Valley, which is an important centre for both the IT and creative industries? When will she be able to reassure local small businesses that are thinking of relocating to the EU that the Government have a realistic plan for Brexit?

[Margot James]

I am very aware of the businesses in the sectors that the hon. Gentleman describes—and not just in his area—and their concerns. We are doing our best to reassure them about access to capital and talent post-Brexit, and we are well aware of their concerns.

Johnston Press: Administration

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

You will not forgive me, Mr Speaker, if I answer the second part of the question all over again, but in relation to the first part, the hon. Gentleman is right: we expect companies such as Facebook and Google to engage with this argument. They are not entirely separate from it. It is fair to say that both those companies have already taken some actions to support local journalism—quite right too—but we shall expect them to do more. We shall want, in the course of the broader review that we are conducting, to look not just at the effect of the prioritisation of news on digital platforms, but at the way in which online advertising is working. All that has an effect.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

As a former local newspaper journalist, I pay tribute to local newspapers, particularly the Reading Chronicle, the Henley Standard and The Wokingham Paper. When the Secretary of State’s review ends, will he commit himself to using all his powers to try to level the playing field between these very worthy but struggling local newspapers and the tech giants?

[Jeremy Wright]

As I have said, I think that we need to look carefully at the balance between the elements that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. It is undoubtedly part of the structural challenge that we have been discussing this afternoon, and I do not believe that we can come up with the appropriate structural answer unless we have considered those elements properly.

Centenary of the Armistice

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

Main Question again proposed.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in today’s debate and to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). I associate myself with the remarks of a number of hon. Members. I was particularly impressed by the speeches from the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and the right hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), as well as those from other colleagues.

Like many Members, I lost relatives in both world wars and I have found today’s debate deeply moving. I want to briefly mention one particular relative, my wife’s great uncle Albert Woodhead, who died at the Somme aged 19. He has no known grave. Our family visited the Thiepval memorial a few years ago. It was incredibly moving.

My constituency of Reading East, like the whole of the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth, was deeply affected. I pay tribute to all the men and women who served in our armed forces, as well as in other roles such as in the merchant navy and the munitions factories, and on the wider home front. Britain owes a huge debt of honour to the Commonwealth and to what was then the British empire. It is important to remember the bravery and sacrifice not only of British forces, but of all those who served from Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Africa and the West Indies, as well as Australia, Canada, South Africa and other dominions such as New Zealand. Indeed, 1.5 million men served in the Indian army alone. Commonwealth and British empire forces were engaged on a wide range of fronts across the globe.

I would like to turn to the effect of the great war on Reading and Woodley and to mention some outstanding local people. Thousands of people from Berkshire served in many capacities. In particular, I would like to mention the story of Trooper Potts, who is the only person from Reading to have won a Victoria Cross. Frederick Potts, who came from the Katesgrove area of Reading, which I used to represent as a councillor, was awarded a Victoria Cross for his outstanding bravery. He saved the life of an injured comrade by dragging him to safety from no-man’s land during extremely heavy fighting in the Gallipoli campaign. Although injured in the thigh himself, Trooper Potts dragged his severely wounded comrade 600 yards on a trenching shovel. Fred Potts ultimately survived the great war, dying at the age of 50 in 1943. Arthur Andrews, whom he saved, lived until he was 89. This moving story reminds us again of the service and self-sacrifice of the first world war generation. It is just one of many incidents we remember today.

In my own life many years later, my son used to play football with one of Trooper Potts’ descendants, and I got to know the family well, which was a huge privilege. In this strange way, our history is all around us. For me, it has been a personal privilege to take part in this debate and to commemorate a small part of that history with colleagues from across the whole House.

Before I finish, I would like to thank the many organisations involved in commemorating this important anniversary. In particular, I would like to mention Berkshire branches of the Royal British Legion and Wokingham and Reading Borough Councils. Woodley Town Council has put up an extremely moving display featuring some of the servicemen from what was then the village of Woodley. Woodley is now a large suburb of Reading, with thousands and thousands of residents. Sadly, many of the small number of soldiers from that once village never returned. I also thank the many clubs, charities, employers and other organisations who have helped to mark this important commemoration and the local historians who have taken part.