Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

Perhaps it is not too risky to say that I would consider doing so, but I appreciate my hon. Friend highlighting that wonderful organisation in his constituency.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

6. What assessment she has made of the impact of the swimming pool support fund on local pools and leisure facilities.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

13. What assessment she has made of the impact of the swimming pool support fund on local pools and leisure facilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

Responding to concerns that we heard from the sector, in 2023-24, the Government have awarded more than £60 million to address cost pressures facing public swimming pools and improve energy efficiency in the long term.

[Rachel Maclean]

I put on record my thanks to the Minister’s Department for the considerable sum of funding—£382,000 —that has been made available to Redditch to level up swimming pool and leisure facilities in my constituency. That comes on the back of £16.5 million of town deal funding, as well as £5 million of culture funding. Does she agree that significant representations have resulted in a meaningful commitment to level up Redditch within this Parliament? Does she agree that mental health and wellbeing are a key part of that?

[Stuart Andrew]

My sex has obviously changed, but I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to her for the enormous campaigning she has done on behalf of her constituents in Redditch in securing that significant investment. I agree that getting people active is vital to improving their physical and mental health. That is exactly why we are investing this historic amount of money in grassroots facilities and have published the new “Get Active” strategy, which sets out our ambition to get 3.5 million more people active by 2030.

[Stuart Andrew]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on campaigning hard on behalf of his constituency and securing that £240,000 for a leisure centre that was feeling its age—I think I know how it feels. We know how important pools are for our communities, which is why we are providing this funding. At Aqua Vale, the installation of solar panels will improve energy efficiency and contribute to significant savings, ensuring that leisure centre for the people of Aylesbury to stay fit and healthy.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

T2. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)]

I reiterate my thanks to the Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and Lord Parkinson for the significant support they have given me throughout my time as Secretary of State. DCMS is a team and without their phenomenal work we would not have been able to achieve what we have over the past 18 months or so, so I just wanted to say thank you to them.

Over the past 14 years, the Conservative party in government has helped transform the creative industries. There have been 1 million new jobs since 2010 and the economic value of the creative industries has doubled, to over £124 billion in 2022, powered by investment and tax breaks that Opposition Members voted against every single time. Unlike the Labour party, we have set out a plan to go further, to grow the creative industries by an additional £50 billion and add another million extra jobs by 2030. That is the choice voters will face in July: a clear Conservative plan for growth or back to square one with Labour.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the Secretary of State for all her work with my team in Redditch. Can she confirm that, despite the tight timelines, we can ensure that the £5 million in funding, which is hugely valued, is able to be made use of by as many local groups as possible before we break for the general election?

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend is a huge campaigner. She was awarded £5 million at the spring Budget to support the development of cultural projects in her area. She will know that it is a matter for each council to identify the most suitable project to be funded in their area. I am sure she will work very closely with them to ensure that funding will be distributed appropriately.

Online Safety Bill

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), who made a very powerful speech, and I completely agree with her about the importance of treating eating disorders as being of the same scale of harm as other things in the Bill.

I was the media analyst for Merrill Lynch about 22 years ago, and I made a speech about the future of media in which I mentioned the landscape changing towards one of self-generated media. However, I never thought we would get to where it is now and what the effect is. I was in the Pizza Express on Gloucester Road the other day at birthday party time, and an 11-year-old boy standing in the queue was doomscrolling TikTok videos rather than talking to his friends, which I just thought was a really tragic indication of where we have got to.

Digital platforms are also critical sources of information and our public discourse. Across the country, people gather up to 80% of information from such sources, but we should not have trust in them. Their algorithms, which promote and depromote, and their interfaces, which engage, are designed, as we have heard, to make people addicted to the peer validation and augmentation of particular points of view. They are driving people down tribal rabbit holes to the point where they cannot talk to each other or even listen to another point of view. It is no wonder that 50% of young people are unhappy or anxious when they use social media, and these algorithmic models are the problem. Trust in these platforms is wrong: their promotion or depromotion of messages and ideas is opaque, often subjective and subject to inappropriate influence.

It is right that we tackle illegal activity and that harms to children and the vulnerable are addressed, and I support the attempt to do that in the Bill. Those responsible for the big platforms must be held to account for how they operate them, but trusting in those platforms is wrong, and I worry that compliance with their terms of service might become a tick-box absolution of their responsibility for unhappiness, anxiety and harm.

What about harm to our public sphere, our discourse, and our processes of debate, policymaking and science? To trust the platforms in all that would be wrong. We know they have enabled censorship. Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter files has shown incontrovertibly that the big digital platforms actively censor people and ideas, and not always according to reasonable moderation. They censor people according to their company biases, by political request, or with and on behalf of the three-letter Government agencies. They censor them at the behest of private companies, or to control information on their products and the public policy debate around them. Censorship itself creates mistrust in our discourse. To trust the big platforms always to do the right thing is wrong. It is not right that they should be able to hide behind their terms of service, bury issues in the Ofcom processes in the Bill, or potentially pay lip service to a tick-box exercise of merely “having regard” to the importance of freedom of expression. They might think they can just write a report, hire a few overseers, and then get away scot-free with their cynical accumulation, and the sale of the data of their addicted users and the manipulation of their views.

The Government have rightly acknowledged that addressing such issues of online safety is a work in progress, but we must not think that the big platforms are that interested in helping. They and their misery models are the problem. I hope that the Government, and those in the other place, will include in the Bill stronger duties to stop things that are harmful, to promote freedom of expression properly, to ensure that people have ready and full access to the full range of ideas and opinions, and to be fully transparent in public and real time about the way that content is promoted or depromoted on their platforms. Just to trust in them is insufficient. I am afraid the precedent has been set that digital platforms can be used to censor ideas. That is not the future; that is happening right now, and when artificial intelligence comes, it will get even worse. I trust that my colleagues on the Front Bench and in the other place will work hard to improve the Bill as I know it can be improved.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I strongly support the Bill. This landmark piece of legislation promises to put the UK at the front of the pack, and I am proud to see it there. We must tackle online abuse while protecting free speech, and I believe the Bill gets that balance right. I was pleased to serve on the Bill Committee in the last Session, and I am delighted to see it returning to the Chamber. The quicker it can get on to the statute book, the more children we can protect from devastating harm.

I particularly welcome the strengthened protections for children, which require platforms to clearly articulate in their terms of service what they are doing to enforce age requirements on their site. That will go some way to reassuring parents that their children’s developing brains will not be harmed by early exposure to toxic, degrading, and demeaning extreme forms of pornography. Evidence is clear that early exposure over time warps young girls’ views of what is normal in a relationship, with the result that they struggle to form healthy equal relationships. For boys, that type of sexual activity is how they learn about sex, and it normalises abusive, non-consensual and violent acts. Boys grow up into men whose neural circuits become habituated to that type of imagery. They actually require it, regardless of the boundaries of consent that they learn about in their sex education classes—I know this is a difficult and troubling subject, but we must not be afraid to tackle it, which is what we are doing with the Bill. It is well established that the rise of that type of pornography on the internet over time has driven the troubling and pernicious rise in violence against women and girls, perpetrated by men, as well as peer-on-peer child sexual abuse and exploitation.

During Committee we had a good debate about the need for greater criminal sanctions to hold directors individually to account and drive a more effective safety culture in the boardroom. I am proud to serve in the Chamber with my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). I have heard about all their work on new clause 2 and commend them heartily for it. I listened carefully to the Minister’s remarks in Committee and thank him and the Secretary of State for their detailed engagement.

ONLINE SAFETY BILL (Third sitting)

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Committee stage (re-committed clauses and schedules)
Thursday 15th December 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I rise to recognise the spirit and principle behind new clause 9, while, of course, listening carefully to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe. He is right to raise those concerns, but my question is: is there an industry-specific way in which the same responsibility and liability could be delivered?

I recognise too that the Bill is hugely important. It is a good Bill that has child protection at its heart. It also contains far more significant financial penalties than we have previously seen—as I understand it, 10% of qualifying revenue up to £18 million. This will drive some change, but it comes against the backdrop of multi-billion-pound technology companies.

I would be interested to understand whether a double lock around the board-level responsibility might further protect children from some of the harrowing and harmful content we see online. What we need is nothing short of transformation and significant culture change. Even today, The Guardian published an article about TikTok and a study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which found that teenagers who demonstrated an interest in self-harm and eating disorders were having algorithms pushing that content on to them within minutes. That is most troubling.

We need significant, serious and sustained culture change. There is precedent in other sectors, as has been mentioned, and there was a previous recommendation, so clearly there is merit in this. My understanding is that there is strong public support, because the public recognise that this new responsibility cannot be strengthened by anything other than liability. If there is board-level liability, that will drive priorities and resources, which will broker the kind of change we are looking for. I look forward to what the Minister might share today, as this has been a good opportunity to bring these issues into further consideration, and they might then be carried over into subsequent stages of this excellent Bill.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I would like to build on the excellent comments from my colleagues and to speak about child sexual abuse material. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and for Stone for tabling the amendment. I am very interested in how we can use the excellent provisions in the Bill to keep children safe from child sexual abuse material online. I am sure the Committee is aware of the devastating impact of such material.

Sexual abuse imagery—of girls in particular—is increasingly prevalent. We know that 97% of this material in 2021 showed female children. The Internet Watch Foundation took down a record-breaking 252,000 URLs that had images of children being raped, and seven in 10 of those images were of children aged 11 to 13. Unfortunately, the National Crime Agency estimates that between 550,000 and 850,000 people in the UK are searching for such material on the internet. They are actively looking for it, and at the moment they are able to find it.

My concern is with how we use what is in the Bill already to instil a top-down culture in companies, because this is about culture change in the boardroom, so that safety is considered with every decision. I have read the proceedings from previous sittings, and I recognise that the Government and Ministers have said that we have sufficient provisions to protect children, but I think there is a little bit of a grey area with tech companies.

I want to mention Apple and the update it was planning for quite a few years. There was an update that would have automatically scanned for child sex abuse material. Apple withdrew it following a backlash from encryption and privacy experts, who claimed it would undermine the privacy and security of iCloud users and make people less safe on the internet. Having previously said that it would pause it to improve it, Apple now says that it has stopped it altogether and that it is vastly expanding its end-to-end encryption, even though law enforcement agencies around the world, including our own UK law enforcement agencies, have expressed serious concerns because it makes investigations and prosecution more challenging. All of us are not technical experts. I do not believe that we are in a position to judge how legitimate it is for Apple to have this pause. What we do know is that while there is this pause, the risks for children are still there, proliferating online.

We understand completely that countering this material involves a complicated balance and that the tech giants need to walk a fine line between keeping users safe and keeping their data safe. But the question is this: if Apple and others continue to delay or backtrack, will merely failing to comply with an information request, which is what is in the Bill now, be enough to protect children from harm? Could they delay indefinitely and still be compliant with the Bill? That is what I am keen to hear from the Minister. I would be grateful if he could set out why he thinks that individuals who have the power to prevent the harmful content that has torn apart the lives of so many young people and their families should not face criminal consequences if they fail to do so. Can he reassure us as to how he thinks that the Bill can protect so many children—it is far too many children—from this material online?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Labour supports new clause 9, as liability is an issue that we have repeatedly raised throughout the passage of the Bill—most recently, on Report. As colleagues will be aware, the new clause would introduce criminal liabilities for directors who failed to comply with their duties. This would be an appropriate first step in ensuring a direct relationship between senior management of platforms and companies, and their responsibilities to protect children from significant harm. As we have heard, this measure would drive a more effective culture of awareness and accountability in relation to online safety at the top of and within the entire regulated firm. It would go some way towards ensuring that online safety was at the heart of the governance structures internally. The Bill must go further to actively promote cultural change and put online safety at the forefront of business models; it must ensure that these people are aware that it is about keeping people safe and that that must be at the forefront, over any profit. A robust corporate and senior management liability scheme is needed, and it needs to be one that imposes personal liability on directors when they put children at risk.

The Minister knows as well as I do that the benefits of doing so would be strong. We have only to turn to the coroner’s comments in the tragic case of Molly Russell’s death—which I know we are all mindful of as we debate this Bill—to fully understand the damaging impact of viewing harmful content online. I therefore urge the Minister to accept new clause 9, which we wholeheartedly support.

ONLINE SAFETY BILL (First sitting)

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Committee stage (re-committed clauses and schedules)
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Kirsty Blackman]

Thank you, Sir Roger. It was helpful to hear the Minister’s clarification of age assurance and age verification, and it was useful for him to put on the record the difference between the two.

I have a couple of points. In respect of Ofcom keeping up to date with the types of age verification and the processes, new ones will come through and excellent new methods will appear in coming years. I welcome the Minister’s suggestion that Ofcom will keep up to date with that, because it is incredibly important that we do not rely on, say, the one provider that there is currently, when really good methods could come out. We need the legislation to ensure that we get the best possible service and the best possible verification to keep children away from content that is inappropriate for them.

This is one of the most important parts of the Bill for ensuring that we can continue to have adult sections of the internet—places where there is content that would be disturbing for children, as well as for some adults—and that an age-verification system is in place to ensure that that content can continue to be there. Websites that require a subscription, such as OnlyFans, need to continue to have in place the age-verification systems that they currently have. By writing into legislation the requirement for them to continue to have such systems in place, we can ensure that children cannot access such services but adults can continue to do so. This is not about what is banned online or about trying to make sure that this content does not exist anywhere; it is specifically about gatekeeping to ensure that no child, as far as we can possibly manage, can access content that is inappropriate for kids.

There was a briefing recently on children’s access to pornography, and we heard horrendous stories. It is horrendous that a significant number of children have seen inappropriate content online, and the damage that that has caused to so many young people cannot be overstated. Blocking access to adult parts of the internet is so important for the next generation, not just so that children are not disturbed by the content they see, but so that they learn that it is not okay and normal and understand that the depictions of relationships in pornography are not the way reality works, not the way reality should work and not how women should be treated. Having a situation in which Ofcom or anybody else is better able to take action to ensure that adult content is specifically accessed only by adults is really important for the protection of children and for protecting the next generation and their attitudes, particularly towards sex and relationships.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I wish to add some brief words in support of the Government’s proposals and to build on the comments from Members of all parties.

We know that access to extreme and abusive pornography is a direct factor in violence against women and girls. We see that play out in the court system every day. People claim to have watched and become addicted to this type of pornography; they are put on trial because they seek to play that out in their relationships, which has resulted in the deaths of women. The platforms already have technology that allows them to figure out the age of people on their platforms. The Bill seeks to ensure that they use that for a good end, so I thoroughly support it. I thank the Minister.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

There are two very important and distinct issues here. One is age verification. The platforms ask adults who have identification to verify their age; if they cannot verify their age, they cannot access the service. Platforms have a choice within that. They can design their service so that it does not have adult content, in which case they may not need to build in verification systems—the platform polices itself. However, a platform such as Twitter, which allows adult content on an app that is open to children, has to build in those systems. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned, people will also have to verify their identity to access a service such as OnlyFans, which is an adult-only service.

Online Safety Bill

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Exactly that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I come back to the point about drafting this legislation, which is not straightforward and easy because of the definitions. It is not just about what is in scope of the Bill but about the implications of the definitions and how they could be applied in law.

The Minister touched on the criminal side of things; interpretation in the criminal courts and how that would be applied in case law are the points that need to be fleshed out. This is where our work on CT is so important, because across the world with Five Eyes we have been consistent. Again, there are good models out there that can be built upon. We will not fix all this through one Bill—we know that. This Bill is foundational, which is why we must move forward.

On new clause 11, I seek clarity—in this respect, I need reassurance not from the Minister but from other parts of government—on how victims and survivors, whether of terrorist activity, domestic abuse or violence against women and girls, will be supported and protected by the new safeguards in the Bill, and by the work of the Victims’ Commissioner.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for sharing her remarks with the House. She is making an excellent speech based on her considerable experience. On the specific issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation, many organisations, such as the Internet Watch Foundation, are instrumental in removing reports and web pages containing that vile and disgusting material. In the April 2020 White Paper, the Government committed to look at how the Internet Watch Foundation could use its technical expertise in that field. Does she agree that it would be good to hear from the Minister about how the Internet Watch Foundation could work with Ofcom to assist victims?

Online Pornography: Age Verification

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right that the concerns of the NSPCC are those that I know he and I, and, I am sure, Members across the House, would share. We will work with such charities to make sure that we deliver, as I quoted earlier, the “robust and effective”—and comprehensive—regime that they and I think we would all want to protect children online.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

The tech companies and social media companies have incredibly powerful and sophisticated tools at their own disposal. Does the Minister not agree that they have a moral responsibility to do more themselves, and what will his Department be doing to urge them to do that to keep our children safe?

[Matt Warman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the technology companies can do more. For too long, a voluntary approach has not delivered the results that we would all like to see. As I have said, the “Online Harms” White Paper is the legislative method that will put a far greater duty on them not just to invest in safety, but to make it a genuine and meaningful top priority.

Online Harms White Paper

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I certainly hope the hon. Gentleman will not have to wait months. He raises fair concerns, and I have indicated that the Government are not blind to them. This particular White Paper does not deal with that subject, but the Government will produce very shortly a document that does.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Of course, it is not just the tech giants that are active in the digital space; it is also our local papers. The Redditch Standard and the Redditch Advertiser, for example, do a fantastic job of holding us local politicians to account. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the welcome measures in the White Paper will not affect the ability of our small local papers, which do not have a massive resource base, to do their job?

[Jeremy Wright]

I can confirm that. We are concerned here with user-generated content, not with the activities of journalists or their editors. I would go further and say that it seems to me that the press—both local and national—and recognised journalists who do a good job of producing authoritative, sourced work are part of the solution, not part of the problem, particularly to the disinformation that has been identified across the House as one of the fundamental harms we are concerned about.

Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

It is not entirely clear. The debates on the 2009 legislation did not seem to indicate a great problem of instability. I can only assume that there was concern that the legislation might have a destabilising effect on the collections in our national museums, but although a number of cases have been determined as a result of the operation of the 2009 Act, the reality has been that such cases have been relatively small in number. If there were fears about uncertainty, instability and provoking claims, they have not materialised in practice.

I commend the Commission for Looted Art for its excellent efforts in trying to secure fair outcomes in cases of this nature. The commission shared with me comments and thoughts from a number of families involved, some of which I read out in my speech on Second Reading. I found those comments deeply moving, and what came across clearly from them was the emotional value of being reunited with an object treasured by a loved one who died in the Holocaust, and that a lost relative had held in their hands and valued—for example, books owned by a much-loved grandmother; a painting given by a claimant’s grandparents to his parents; or a favourite painting that used to hang on the dining room wall of a family home. The Nazi regime engaged in systematic confiscation, looting and theft from Jewish people.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I am fascinated to hear my right hon. Friend’s argument and wonder what her response is to some of the opponents of this Bill who claim that the routes available are available only to the rich and that, sometimes, when objects are returned from museums, that deprives the general public of an opportunity to see these priceless works of art. I would be fascinated to hear her thoughts on that.

[Theresa Villiers]

My response is that this legislation opens the way for all who have reason to believe that an object owned by their family member is in one of our national institutions. It is not confined to helping people from a particular family background. It really is important for people at all levels to have the chance—the opportunity—to retrieve an item of property that once belonged to one of their relatives. In response to those potential critics that my hon. Friend has mentioned, I think that I would continue to make the case that it is right and proper and fair that if an item was seized by the Nazis, it should be returned to its rightful owners or to their heirs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure and a privilege to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who has promoted this Bill. She has spoken movingly and with great authority and knowledge about this horrific act of barbarity that has affected her constituents, and, of course, the many people who suffered under the horrendous acts of the Nazis.

I fully support this Bill—this very simple Bill—and my right hon. Friend has outlined why it is needed. As she said, we can see that particularly on a day like today, when we have woken up to the awful news of what happened in Christchurch.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend talked about the Nazis, but we must also remember that a lot of stuff was taken from the national museum in Iraq and other places. This Bill, I hope, covers that sort of looting as well—I think that it does.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for his intervention. In fact, I was going to mention that as a theme in my speech, but I defer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet, because I do not believe that that is in the scope of this Bill. Perhaps there is scope for future legislation in this House.

I will confine my comments to the importance of the Bill’s achievements, as well as paying tribute to the work of the Spoliation Advisory Panel. I understand that the panel has managed to return 23 objects to their rightful owners. My right hon. Friend kindly took my intervention earlier, which I made because I wanted to clarify some of the criticism that I have come across while doing my research ahead of today’s debate. I certainly do not share the opinion that it is wrong to restitute these articles to families who have lost them or have been deprived of them, but I wanted to ensure that we had properly scrutinised this legislation, because that is our role as Members of Parliament.

My right hon. Friend explained very well that losing an article that is so precious to the memories of a family means losing an object that underpins the memories that are passed down through generations. It is therefore absolutely right that descendants with living memory of these articles and artefacts, who have been deprived of them, are able to go to the panel and have their claims examined in a proportionate way, resulting in the restitution of those items to their rightful owners. We live in a free society that is underpinned by the rule of law and justice. It is extremely important that we uphold those principles, because they are the basis of a free society in which people can get rightful restitution when they have been wrongfully deprived of their own property, even if that happened in the past.

It is right to address the question of what happens if an article is in a museum and has a wide audience, but these are difficult decisions that have to be weighed up carefully. I am reassured that the panel is an expert one, and that it would of course take such matters into account. At the end of the day, I think all reasonable people would agree that it is absolutely right to return stolen property to its rightful owner. I am proud that the UK, which has been supporting the panel, has been an international leader in responding to the challenges associated with these kinds of claims.

So why is it right to revoke the sunset clause? When the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 was introduced, I think that it was initially felt that 10 years would be enough time as the evidence may have deteriorated after a longer period, making it too difficult to address claims. I am sure that the Government have reviewed this issue during the consultation and decided that it is right to allow this important Act to continue its work, because there are still descendants for whom these artefacts are in living memory.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this law would simply remove a statutory time bar so that the whole system does not fall? There will still be the need to prove a case and provide evidence, which may be more difficult as the years go on, and it is less likely that relatives will be found. Without this Bill, a claim would fail purely because this law had fallen after reaching its sunset date.

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend makes the point that the Bill is, in a sense, a technicality. It is therefore right that we pass it today to allow this important work to continue.

It is important that we all take a little time today—when we have more time than normal, given the heated debates that we have in this place—to reflect on why it is so important again to raise the issue of the Holocaust. I am sure that many colleagues attended Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations just recently; I attend the event in Redditch. It was a fantastic day of commemoration not only of the holocaust, but of acts of hate that occur in all societies and cultures. In fact, my hon. Friend from—sorry, I forget his constituency.

[Bob Stewart]

Beckenham—the centre of the world. All roads lead to Beckenham.

[Rachel Maclean]

I think they lead to Redditch; but from there to Beckenham. My hon. Friend reminded me that this problem is not just confined to the Nazi period. In fact, when one culture attacks another, it comes for the cultural artefacts first, because the most effective way of trying to wipe out a civilisation is to destroy memories and stories that people tell about a culture and its people. It is evil and barbarous, and we must turn our face against it.

The days of commemoration in our local communities are so important, because we have to continue to talk about the holocaust, including with young people. We may have seen off the Nazis, but we are now seeing how important it is to see off other forms of hate that target people because of their ethnicity, their race, who they worship, who they love and who they live with. We have to stand firm against that in our communities and schools. I am proud to pay tribute to a local school just over the border from my constituency that is attended by many young people. Studley High School is a beacon school for the Holocaust Educational Trust, and it was an absolute honour to be there and see the students performing a fantastic piece on Holocaust Memorial Day.

I am delighted to support this Bill and I very much hope to see it passed today. Thank you for allowing me to contribute to the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Digital Economy

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I welcome the intervention from the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Let me clarify here and now that the regulations are a very important step forward in preventing children from viewing pornography online. In particular, we are closing the loophole whereby children can stumble across such material inadvertently. However, my right hon. Friend is right that the regulations do not extend to social media platforms that contain pornographic content that is a relatively small minority of the content that they provide. This is not a foolproof guarantee that young people and children will not be exposed to pornography online. It is a significant step forward, but there is, as my right hon. Friend points out, the potential for people to access material on social media platforms, which do not fall within the scope of the regulations unless more than a third of their average content is pornographic.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

My hon. Friend raises some important points. We do have rising expectations of social media platforms; we expect at the very least that they enforce their own terms and conditions. Some enforce to a greater extent than others, especially in terms of this particular issue. Facebook takes down posts that include nudity, which is its way of enforcing its own terms and conditions, but what about the private groups that operate on that platform? There is much more to be done. We expect social media platforms to uphold their terms and conditions across their platforms, not just in the public-facing parts of it.

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech dealing with this critical issue that any of us who are responsible for young people will feel very strongly about. Does she agree that there is a rapid evolution in the technology sector? She talked specifically about pornographic sites that charge for access. Will she say a bit more about how she would deal with those sites that offer slightly different business models—for example, the premium model, where it is free to go on to the site and it then captures people’s details and makes them pay a subscription fee later? I am sure that she has considered that as part of her response, so I would be grateful if she could update us on it.

[Margot James]

These regulations will apply even to pornographic sites that make their initial offer free of charge. The rule is that, if a site offering a service where more than 30% of its content is pornographic does so on a commercial basis—which can be free of charge if it is backed up by advertising revenues—it comes within the scope of these regulations, whether or not it provides those services free of charge. These draft regulations will capture such sites as are of concern to my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that serious work is being undertaken as we speak, as we prepare the online harms White Paper. We are looking at encryption within the context of that White Paper. He will appreciate the difficulties of privacy versus the public need to reduce the exposure of young people to pornographic material. We are looking at this very seriously. We will be bringing forward the White Paper in the new year and will welcome his input on that.

We have set a threshold of 30% to ensure proportionality where material is made available free of charge. Thus there is an exemption for people making available pornographic content on a website where it makes up under one third of that content. This will ensure that websites that do not derive a significant proportion of their overall commercial benefit from pornography are not regarded in these regulations as commercial pornographic websites. Nevertheless, should a website or app be marketed as making available pornographic material, a person making such material available on that site will be considered to be making it available on a commercial basis even if it constitutes less than one third of the total. This is a proportionate way to introduce the new policy.

I am confident that these measures represent the most effective way to commence this important new policy, but our Department will of course keep it under review. Indeed, as I said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be reporting on the regulatory framework within 12 to 18 months of commencement of the regulations. In addition, as I just mentioned in response to the hon. Gentleman, the forthcoming online harms White Paper will provide us with another opportunity to review the wider context of this policy.

In conjunction, we have laid two pieces of British Board of Film Classification guidance—first, on age verification arrangements and, secondly, on ancillary service providers. The first piece of guidance sets out the criteria by which the BBFC will assess whether a person has met the requirements of section 14 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 to ensure that pornographic material is not normally accessible to those under 18. The criteria mandate four things: an effective control mechanism at the point of access to verify that a user is aged 18 or over; strict requirements on age verification data; a requirement to ensure that revisits to a site do not permit the bypassing of age verification controls; and the prevention of non-human operators—for example, bots—from exercising the age-verification regime.

[Rachel Maclean]

Does the Minister believe that the BBFC has sufficient resources and skills to do what the regulations require of it?

[Margot James]

I would like to reassure my hon. Friend that I certainly think it has the experience, expertise and resources to undertake this role. It has more than a century of experience in the control of film content. It has additional resources and moneys with which it can hold to account age-verification providers and, most importantly, the websites that are providing the pornographic content.

In addition to the criteria that the BBFC will use to verify the effective control of age-verification arrangements, it has provided typical examples of features that it would regard as non-compliant in the arena of age verification.

The second piece of guidance provides a non-exhaustive list of ancillary service providers that the BBFC will consider. That list is not exhaustive, to ensure that the policy remains flexible to future developments. The BBFC has published draft versions of both pieces of guidance and has run a public consultation for four weeks on their content. The draft guidance laid before the House takes account of comments received from affected companies, age-verification providers and other interested parties.

I have been clear that age verification is not a silver bullet, and we know that what we are doing is difficult. Indeed, we are the first country in the world to introduce such a measure. I am aware of the concerns expressed by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments about the drafting of the Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2018. I have considered its concerns carefully, and we are grateful for its work, but we do not believe that the variation in the legislation between the terms “met” and “applied” will be difficult for a court to interpret.

The Committee expressed concerns about the content threshold because it anticipates difficulty with the application and interpretation of the regulation. As I have said, the regulation will not apply in a case where it is reasonable for the age-verification regulator to assume that pornographic material makes up less than one third of the content of such a site. As stated in the BBFC guidance, the BBFC will seek to engage and work with a person or company who may be in contravention of the requirement in advance of commencing enforcement action.

I am aware that the Committee has also drawn the special attention of both Houses to these draft pieces of guidance because, in its view, they fail to contain the guidance required by section 25(1) of the 2017 Act and contain material that should not have been included. Section 3, paragraph 5, of the age-verification guidance sets out the criteria that the regulator will treat as complying with age verification. The guidance goes on in paragraph 6 to give examples of features that, in isolation, do not comply with the age-verification requirements. That approach ensures fairness and is product-neutral. Rather than recommending a particular solution, the guidance sets out principles that will encourage further innovation.

Loneliness Strategy

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

I cannot pay enough tribute to the hon. Lady’s work in taking forward the work that Jo started. Like me, the hon. Lady was rather daunted when she started on the journey to tackle this incredibly complex issue. There is no single cause of loneliness, and there is no single solution. The more we can talk about it in this place and beyond, the better. We are on loneliness where we were on mental health 10 years ago, and where we can reduce stigma by going out to support our constituents, our friends and our families, we will be all the better for it.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It would be interested to hear more from the Minister about what she thinks the role of social media is. Social media can often have a negative influence, particularly on young people, but does she think it could have a positive role to play in tackling loneliness?

[Tracey Crouch]

I said that there is no single cause of loneliness and therefore there is no single solution, and the same logic applies in respect of social media. We know that 16 to 24-year-olds are more lonely than other groups in society, and that is quite often attributed to the fact that they are much more digitally connected. At the same time, social media can also provide solutions for those who do find themselves lonely. A huge number of apps have been developed to support various groups in society, including Mush, which helps young mums. Technology has also been developed to keep older people connected to their families. As much as social media can be described as a cause, it can also be the solution.