Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rishi Sunak and Thangam Debbonaire

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The Government recognise the pressure on local councils and are determined to get them the resources they need, which is why there will be a real- terms funding increase for local authorities across the country this year, together with the flexibility to deliver more money for adult social care, in the hon. Gentleman’s council and elsewhere.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Will the Government please commit to reviewing the situation whereby street homeless people are crossing local authority boundaries, going from one where there is little support to others such as Bristol, where there is a great deal?

Digital Economy Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Rishi Sunak and Thangam Debbonaire

Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

New clause 3 is about protecting content owners from copyright infringement. Most of the discussion we have heard today has centred on online platforms and their particular abuse of music content. However, has the Minister considered the connected issue of the newspaper industry? Historically, newspapers used revenue from advertising to help support their news-gathering operation, and to provide a vital service, especially in regional and local communities—I am sure that Members on both sides of the Committee will have experienced that service in their constituencies. Today, there is a concern that some online platforms are benefiting from such news-gathering, but are not always paying for it in the most appropriate way. That raises questions about the sustainability of the newspaper industry and the vital service it provides. Has the Minister considered the connected issue of newspapers? Will he share any thoughts with the Committee?

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of these amendments and new clauses, and to add a bit of colour and flavour to some of the arguments that have already been made. We often talk about rights holders, but we need to be aware that behind those rights holders are individual artists, musicians and technical people. It is not just about my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West; it is about the technical people involved in any recording, film or e-book. Many people are involved in those processes, and every time we deny their right to be paid, we are denying them the right to continue working in the way that we would want them to work.

Which of us here has not skipped gaily around the Palace of Westminster, at least in our imagination, with a song in our heart or a tune in our head? Maybe that is just me. Most of us have a favourite film, and we have music at special family occasions. A poem will be read at a funeral and a song will be danced to at a wedding, and all the people involved in producing them need to be paid properly for their work.

There should not be this wild west of a shopping mall where people can access whatever they want for free, without proper provision for reimbursing those involved. Unfortunately, search engines in particular, but also other providers, are allowing that illegal shopping mall to exist, and so artists, writers and others involved in the creative industries are not getting their proper deserts. That is important.

The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West both mentioned economic value. I emphasise that according to the Government’s own website, the creative industries are contributing £9.6 million an hour to the UK economy. Since we sat down to work, the creative industries have contributed £9.6 million. UK music alone contributes £4.1 billion each year, which is something to think about. The creative industries are growing at twice the rate of the UK economy, at 8.9%, and we want them to continue to grow. We do not want to deny them part of their income—admittedly the minority, but it is still significant.

We tabled these amendments because we need to harmonise copyright and ensure that licensing laws work across the online and offline world. We want to help Conservative Members to fulfil their commitment in the Tory party manifesto, and new clause 3 would help

“the Government to fulfil its manifesto commitment to reduce copyright infringement and ensure search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites.”

We seem to have a degree of cross-party unity on the value of that measure. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, because there is otherwise an absence of a specific provision in the Bill to achieve this.

I want us to make sure that the good examples, such as Get it Right from a Genuine Site, are taken up and followed, to avoid the unfortunate misdemeanours of others, such as search engines that can remain nameless—we can all guess who they are and others may have already mentioned them. It is not okay for search engines to drive—wittingly or unwittingly, but they should reasonably have known—towards illegal sites.

Consumers do not want musicians, film makers and others to be robbed of their just deserts. Mostly, we want to be able to be sure that when musicians have made a piece of music we love, they get properly paid for it. It is incumbent on search engines and others to make sure that that happens, and to use the power we know they have to create their algorithms to work properly in this respect. We would not tolerate a shopping mall in which signs and property space were given to illegal shops selling illegal goods. This is the equivalent.

I am absolutely convinced that the Minister would want to honour the commitment in the Tory party manifesto to rectify that. On Second Reading, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said,

“there may well be a case for including a legal provision encouraging providers to establish a voluntary code.”

He also said:

“we cannot allow Google and other search providers to go on allowing people access to illegal sites.” —[Official Report, 13 September 2007; Vol. 614, c. 785.]

I am convinced that the Minister will want to take up the mantle he has been thrown by the former Secretary of State and I urge him to do so.

Digital Economy Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Rishi Sunak and Thangam Debbonaire

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Rishi Sunak]

Q We hear a lot about how technology can benefit people and that the Government need to harness technology to do just that. Indeed, some data sharing is already going on in the delivery of Government services. Can you describe how the measures in the Bill will provide greater legal certainty and clarity in that area because we want to make sure we are doing things in the right way? Your thoughts in that regard would be helpful.

Elizabeth Denham: This Bill is an enabler. It facilitates data sharing for the improvement of Government services. I think the public welcome that and they expect seamless Government services in some cases. The idea that all data must stay in ivory towers or silos does not make sense when building digital delivery services. That said, we all know that trust and transparency are critical to maintaining the public’s trust in data sharing.

The transparency that needs to be clear in the Bill is on two levels. First, at the point of data collection and in ways that are easy for citizens to access, they should understand the purpose of and how their data will be shared, and they should have the ability to challenge that.

Secondly, there needs to be another layer of safeguards and transparency scattered throughout some of the draft codes of practice, but not in the Bill. That is the transparency that comes from privacy impact assessments, from reviews by our office, and from Parliament looking at revised codes of practice. It is really important that we pay attention to both those levels. Civil society is going to pay attention to published privacy impact assessments; but right now there is no consistency across all the codes of practice for those kinds of safeguards. I believe that some improvements are needed to the Bill.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q I wanted to just go back to age verification, if you do not mind, Mr Wood. You made a good deal in your evidence and in your response to my colleague’s earlier question about the concerns that you have—and I get those. Can you push this a bit further and say what you would think was an adequate system of evidence providing for age verification? What would work?

Steve Wood: I will qualify the answer by saying we come at it from a data protection perspective, so our interest is making sure that the personal data of those individuals who would be going through that process is protected, rather than the wider policy issues relating to verification of access to that content; our the key concern is to make sure that the verification system does not lead to disclosure of information if it is not necessary. As tools like federated identity management have developed, it is often possible to use another service—another third party service—to verify the identity of the individual, which could be done using a variety of third party services that are out there. That means that the site owner that provides that pornography service would not need to collect and see all the details about the individual’s age and so on, but that that is provided by a secure, accredited third party service.

The Government’s Verify service has taken some good steps in looking at these different solutions about how identity management can now be developed using these third party services; so it is that sort of approach that we are looking to, rather than a very open-ended approach, as I said earlier, allowing a wide range of information. As to the level and standard of identity, I think that is a different question, but we are really focused on making sure the personal data collected is the bare minimum to make that requirement work.