Internet Pornography

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The House will unite in describing me as a risen star. It would probably be accurate to say that I have risen as far as I am going to rise.

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that it should not be just jaw, jaw. I do not want to set any hares running, which is what I seem to do every time I talk about anything to do with the internet, but I think that the meeting with the rights holders and internet service providers was productive both because it was probably the first time they had sat around a table with an honest broker—me, representing the Government—sitting between them, and because we have the Digital Economy Act 2010 on the statute book, controversial though it is. If anyone ever wants to start a Twitter storm, they should write something about net neutrality or the Digital Economy Act. Especially if they write that they are in favour of that Act, they will then see what comes.

It is important that we impress upon ISPs that we take this issue very seriously. Trite though it may sound, it is also important for people to know that sitting around a table and exchanging views can be an effective means of getting across both the views of the ISPs and the huge concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes on behalf of her constituents and the country at large. She has made this an important issue and raised it in Parliament. It is perfectly legitimate for the ISPs to raise issues such as costs and regulation because although, as my hon. Friend pointed out, they make £3 billion in profit, it is important also to remember that we, as users of the internet, rely on them to make those profits so that they can invest in the broadband infrastructure and we can have the best superfast broadband in 2015.

[Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The debate is concentrating on the issue that matters most, which is extreme pornography. We are not concerned about nudity or ordinary sex. Most of us have a naked body, and very few of us inherited celibacy from our parents. The Minister mentioned the Royal Mail. Sending pornography through the mail is illegal. Can the Minister say whether the six ISPs who are currently providing the channels in question are the organisations who came to his meeting, and if they were not, will he have them in as well please?

[Mr Vaizey]

We had four of the main internet service providers, I think. I do not want to get too carried away and go to the other extreme. The ISPs in the UK do act to take down illegal content where it is pointed out to them, and they do hugely important work in taking down child abuse images. With the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend, who has inadvertently signed an early-day motion put forward by a Labour MP calling for an open internet—a slight distortion of my speech on net neutrality—we are, to a certain extent, talking about ordinary sex. We are talking about preventing children from having access to inappropriate content, and how we can work with ISPs to make it that little bit more difficult for them to do so.

My free-wheeling conclusion to this speech has probably not been helpful, so it might be helpful if I pull together a coherent final few remarks. We believe in an open lightly regulated internet. The internet is, by and large, a force for good. It is central to our lives and our economy, and a Government have to be wary about regulating or passing legislation. Nevertheless, the advent of the internet has brought a number of problems. One of them is the proliferation of images of child abuse, which I believe is being dealt with extremely effectively through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and UKCCIS, with the co-operation of ISPs. ISPs remain under an obligation to take down illegal pornographic content, which can extend beyond child abuse images, but there remain, from my position as a Minister, two issues. One of them is access to illegal content in terms of music, film and the creative industries, on which I am working with ISPs and rights holders. I take the second issue very seriously as a constituency MP alone: how we can work harder to ensure that it is more difficult for our children to come across inappropriate adult content? I firmly believe we can make progress, in co-operation with the ISPs, and that we can proceed on the basis of self-regulation. As I have said, I think it is important that we meet and sit around a table to exchange views, and I look forward to brokering such a meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes and a number of organisations she deems to be appropriate.

Question put and agreed to.