Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Paul Scully Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th July 2023 Public Bill Committees

In the economic impact assessment for this Bill, we do not see how the Government intend to deliver on promises made by the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, who promised to write last Tuesday about the resources that will be allocated to Citizens Advice, but he did not. The Government are saying that in order to get redress from this legislation, Citizens Advice will be able to provide consumer advocacy. There is no resource attached to supporting Citizens Advice to do that, although Citizens Advice has said that it is under the biggest pressure it has experienced in its 80-year history. It simply does not have the capacity to take on an additional task that the Government say it can and will do without resourcing any impact assessment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Paul Scully)]

I can confirm that the letter went out yesterday morning.

[Neil Coyle]

Maybe it is still in the internal post. I thank the Minister for the letter; it would be nice to know what it says. The point is that the Bill does not make clear how customers will secure redress. It presents a convoluted route of multiple agencies and potential court action that people simply will not want to take.

My amendment does not go as far as some have suggested. It is a moderate suggestion. There have been suggestions that there is full and shared liability for platforms for any product sold and that some of the measures should be retrospectively implemented so that there should be penalties on those who have sold goods that they know to be counterfeit or dangerous going back for years. I hope that amendment 121 in particular, but also other amendments in this group, are useful to the Government in delivering their aims and defending customers and businesses.

The wording of amendment 124 is crucial; I hope that the Minister will come back to this when he responds to the debate. It would “require the removal”. It is not a request to remove a product; it is a requirement to remove a product. It could be put in the hands of all the bodies in clause 143, with penalties and timely action to prevent a fatality if this is not done quickly enough. The use of the word “require” is deliberate, because the power to request is in other legislation. For example, the police can request the removal of video footage from YouTube that is incitement to violence or hatred, is homophobic or is incitement to violence between gangs. One meeting I had with the Met revealed that more than 300 requests to take down videos had been ignored by YouTube. They included calling for revenge and the murder of specific individuals in revenge attacks between gangs in London. The police should have a stronger power than that, but as with this legislation, the power to request that something is removed is insufficient; it must be the power to compel the removal, similar to—for those familiar with local authority powers—a cease and desist order by a planning body. That would be a comparable power if the Government are keen to have something stronger than that offered in the current legislation.

I hope that amendment 124 helps British businesses, jobs, standards and customers and helps the Government —that is why I am here today. Ministers claim that they want to make the UK the “safest” place in the world to be online, and here are the means to deliver that laudable aim.